Is it consistent with all the fundamental laws of physics for many different advanced forms of life to come into existence practically instantaneously out of inanimate material on a lifeless planet without there being an Intelligent Designer?
I don't think it's a question of whether it is consistent or not, but rather is it likely or not. Our Universe is a sickeningly unlikely place to exist. However a counter to that argument is the Anthropic Priniciple that many (even infinite?) other Universes also exist yet are not conducive to producing "advanced lifeforms out of inanimate material", so there is no being there to gaze in wonder at the world around them.
"Advanced", or simple, what's the difference? Do the electrochemical reactions in the body violate physical laws? Do plants accomplish a biochemical impossibility when they photosynthesize? No. Is an intelligent designer consistent with the laws of physics? No.
I think you are begging the question. Certainly it is possible based on the fundamental laws of physics and chemistry etc for life to emerge based on those principles. There are numerous suggestions of how it could have come about in our case, though they have not been verified or validated at this point.
Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely? No. Is the universe old enough for it to be likely to have happened yet? No. Is it what evolution or abiogenesis says? No. Is it even close to what evolution or abiogenesis says? No. Can organic molecules form from inorganic matter? Yes.
* Physicists don't know all the fundamental laws of physics, but we have detailed empirical demonstrations that we know to precise detail all the laws of physics which would have a role in the life cycle of a life form which which prefers temperatures on the order of 300 kelvin and absolute pressures on the order of 100,000 pascals. A term you do not define and which is not defined in the discipline of physics. Without a physics definition here, the question of "consistency" is impossible to answer. Another term you don't define. Presumably you mean here to limit the scope of discussion to the expected rate of creation given so much surface area and limited volume of time. But since you haven't defined the conditions in sufficient detail, noone knows what temperature, pressure or composition ranges to look at. So limiting it to the surface of a single planet in a certain timeframe is not useful for discussion without further definition. Now this last part makes the whole question answerable. WITH an Intelligent Designer, another term you have not defined, then there is intelligence on the planet. Since the only things with intelligence are living things, the presence of an intelligent designer would mean the planet is not lifeless and therefore you have an apparent contradiction in terms. (Why would a non-living thing need intelligence?) THEREFORE, without an Intelligent Designer, the whole event seem much more plausible to be without contradiction. But the main model of Biology (Hint -- not Physics or Math, but another scientific discipline) says abiogenesis is a fact -- Once there was no Earth, then there was an Earth that could not support life as we know it, finally there is life. Lots of research continues to go into figuring out how, where and when the initial population of replicating metabolizers got started, but all signs point to them being much less organized than the simplest bacterium today. But once we do have an imperfect population of replicating metabolizer, various mathematical models seem to guarantee that life will become more complex and diversify. Example: In a community that shares perfectly, the first replicator line to hoard essentials will outperform the community in times of scarcity. This may account for why all modern life seems to have very complicated cell boundaries. On this planet, there is no evidence that life suddenly appeared. Certain minerals, such as uraninite, cannot form under significant exposure to oxygen. Thick deposits of these rocks, laid down slowly and in contact with the atmosphere as sediment in river beds, were commonly laid down up to about 2.5 billion years ago. Banded iron deposits are very common in rocks more than 2.3 billion years old and very rare afterwards. Red beds, which are rusted iron deposits, are found to be laid down over the remaining 2.2-2.3 billion years. So 2,500,000,000 years ago, the Earth's atmosphere was changing due to an abundance of life. Whether it is "complex" or not, I hesitate to guess what you mean. But this is over 2 billion years before the so-called "Cambrian Explosion" and over 1 billion years after modern estimates of the origin of life at 3.7-4.0 billion years ago. Since the whole history of the universe is only 13.7 billion years, the 3-billion year countdown to the proliferation of non-microscopic fossils of the "Cambrian Explosion" surely can't be what you are describing as "coming into existence practically instantaneously," can it? As for "coming into the fossil record in a few tens of millions of years," that largely factual statement may be the result of an evolutionary arms race. (During the Cambrian, there was the first appearance of hard parts, such as shells and teeth, in animals.) Further reading: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/originoflife.html http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wells/iconob.html#Miller-Urey http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/geo_timeline.html http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200.html http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC300.html http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC301.html http://www.pnas.org/content/97/13/6947.full http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1099213 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acritarch http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7283/full/463885a.html http://www.nrm.se/download/18.4e32c81078a8d9249800021552/Bengtson2002predation.pdf (605 KB)
I am having trouble understanding your post. So, how does life come about. Of course, I hope you know by now, I will expect something that is recursive. If you cannot produce such a procedure, then how can one produce a negative sans group think?
When I used the phrase, "advanced forms [of] life", I meant unquestionably complex, such as a human being.
Such as a human being and ... ? You haven't begun to explain what you mean by "advanced" or "complex." I think you are demonstrating your ignorance of biology, your prejudice for a some sort of serial ranking that places man at the upper slot of a great chain of being, and your inability to pose an honest question. Everything in biology is complex. If it were simple it would be chemistry. All life present today is "advanced" since life has a history and we are looking at the most recent examples. There is no scientific way to order the forms of life from highest to lowest that is useful to science. There is no "better" or "worse" form of life in an absolute sense -- all forms of life are more or less well-suited to live in their natural habitat. Man is unique, but so is a banana slug or a particular orchid. Man might be intelligent in a way that helps him do science, but nearly every population of HIV has perversely withstood all attempts at eradication, so intelligence is no panacea. Such unscientific attempts to order life from highest to lowest are called "The great chain of being" are medieval and inherently racist in mindset. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chain_of_Being For example, in 1799 Charles White capped off his personal Great Chain of Being with: Roger Lewin, Bones of Contention, pp. 303-304, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1987. William F. Bynum, "The Great Chain of Being after Forty Years: An Appraisal", History of Science 13 (1975): 1-28. http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/...GH&whole_paper=YES&type=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html
Humans appeared about 2 million years ago. Previous to that was Australopithicus... Over the course of about 3 to 4 billion years... Your question implies that complex life forms popped into existence as they are today. That is simply not the case.
Creationist Paul Nelson has long promised an objective way to measure "Complexity." But it turned out to be baseless claim. http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2004/03/ontogenetic-dep.html http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/000217.html http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/03/modeling_metazoan_cell_lineage.php http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/03/an_anniversary_of_sorts.php http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/04/three_years_and_counting.php http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/04/have-a-querulou.html http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/ontogenetic_depth.php http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2009/04/a-paul-nelson-a.html http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/04/its_been_five_years_paul_nelso.php http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/04/happy_monkey_paul_nelson_its_b.php
If you look into the specifics then all forms of life are complex. One of the properties of life is self replication, to produce offspring. The (to use your phrase) 'unquestionable complex' organisms which, literally, walk the Earth have a fantastically complicated method of self replication. Along side all of the different kinds of cells we have (neurons, red blood cells, white blood cells, etc) we have specific cells for procreation, sperm for male and eggs for female. Within our bodies it is an industry unto itself, though what its purpose is can be done a little more straight forwardly but still of 'unquestionable complexity'. The simplest forms of life, which are so simple they no longer even exist on their own on Earth in anything more than tiny amounts, are still able to self replicate. That kind of 'life' is little more than a huge molecule, something animals and plants have in vast quantities in each and every cell, but they can bring together components of themselves and make a new copy. The specifics of how they do this is incredibly complicated to modern biochemistry. To model it you need a PhD in biochemistry and a supercomputer the NSA would be proud of. But thankfully there are such people with such resources and you get things like this amazing animation. I'm a physicist and I read research all day and still seeing something like that makes me think "Wow, science is pretty fucking amazing!". If you don't think that is 'unquestionably complex' then either you are a researcher doing mind bogglingly complicated work which makes string theory look like a homework problem or you haven't put in enough time learning science to appreciate just how much work went in to developing the knowledge, data and models behind that animation.
