Actually, I think its both ways, but I might be wrong, I just hope amino acids is the same thing as acide aminé in french, otherwise, I'm lost :L

Puggsoy- I did read the second part. But that brings up a circular reference. How did life start then if the amino acids came from life?

If your talking about micro-molecules making bigger ones or the atoms then ok... ish...

anyway, what did you think of the article I found guys? That was the point I was trying to make, but didn't have quite the right words...

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. The video mentions "life at a molecular level". The way I understand that, amino acids weren't required. Obviously amino acids are required for all current life, but these beings who started life (maybe they weren't strictly "life" as such) didn't have amino acids.

But hey, isn't reproduction also one of the requirements for something to be defined as "alive"? Despite this, there was (according to the video) molecular life before DNA existed, which is obviously required for reproduction. The basics requirements for life may not have been valid at the very beginning, similar to how all the laws of physics may not have been valid at the moment of the Big Bang.

That's what I understand. Biology is my least favourite subject, so don't think I'm 100% sure about what I'm saying. This is just how I understand it.

As far as I know, "life at a molecular level" is just an unconfirmed hypothesis. I couldn't find anything about it online, though. Hmm.

All life forms started with this:
-Cytoplasm
-Cytoplasmic Membrane
-Genetic Informaion (DNA/RNA/Other stuff)

The requirements to qualify something as living:
-It is born
-It reproduces (without any help from another spiecies)
-It dies
For example, a virus cannot be qualified as a living thing.

MOM4Evr wrote:

As far as I know, "life at a molecular level" is just an unconfirmed hypothesis. I couldn't find anything about it online, though. Hmm.

Didn't Sagan mention it in the video?

But even evolution is a theory, further than a hypothesis, but not a law. I'm not saying any of what I'm saying is proof, just my arguments for it, just so you know.

What I meant was that I can't find anything about "life at a molecular level" anyplace other than the video. Carl Sagan also thought fetuses had distinct tails, so you can't take everything any scientist says at face value. Current science (or the scientists' knowledge) is kinda limited, so it's always helpful to look at newer discovered information on a hypothesis that was proposed a while ago (The video's kinda old).

NOTE: Please don't confuse the terms "hypothesis" with "theory". Just making sure you know the difference. "Proof" is also not a valid scientific term, so no worries there.

Sorry, I meant to say "evolution is a theory, further than a hypothesis, but not a law". Edited it now. I do understand the difference, but in terms of "what is and isn't proven", hypothesis and theory are pretty much equal.

But as you say, there isn't much on molecular life or much evidence for it. So yeah, I might be right, I might be wrong, I'm just glad that you don't take it as seriously or offensively as some.
For the time being, I'll just set my opinion as being that I think that it's possible that molecular life was the beginning of life. If not that, then molecules very close but not exactly life. In any case I think that the theory of evolution is probable, or at the very least, possible.

Man I love these discussions, they make me sound so smart

Momo: I know that definition, but it always makes me wonder--is a mule a living thing? After all, it can't reproduce. What about a sterile human being? Are they alive?

@puggsoy: Awesome. I'm glad we're on the same page then. I reckon the difference between you and me is I think macroevolution is possible, but improbable.

I don't want to give the wrong impression, though: I do take this stuff pretty seriously. If I seem really calm in my replies, it's probably because I've stewed over it all day long and have managed to calm myself down enough to write complete sentences about it. I'm not perfect in any sense of the word, and I'm still getting over temper problems I had years ago. But thanks for the compliment.

@AP: That post made me think, and that thinking has led me to believe that as long as there's a plan for reproduction (as long as it's in the DNA somewhere) it should be considered an organism with the ability to reproduce.

I think it's at the scale of a spiecies. A sterile human is part of the human spiecies, so it is human. For the mule, no idea!

Dictionary:

or·gan·ism
noun /ˈôrgəˌnizəm/ 
organisms, plural

An individual animal, plant, or single-celled life form

The material structure of such an individual
- the heart's contribution to the maintenance of the human organism

A whole with interdependent parts, likened to a living being
- the upper strata of the American social organism

Thank you Mr. Dictionnary, but we were talking about the definition of a living being.

ok, sorry. I was just trying to help.

Hey MOM, remember how you were asking about why we don't have fossils of some animals? I was watching this today (go to 2 minutes and 57 seconds):

Sorry, no YouTube for me again for a while. What's the overall gist?

Basically, he's saying that an organism needs to decompose in the proper conditions and environment to form a fossil. An example was "the chances of any of the people watching this video forming a fossil is pretty much nil".

He's also talking about the "in-betweeners", which would also need to exist for a long time to raise the chances of one forming a fossil. For example, if a species only lasted for, say, 10,000 years, it's less likely that you'll find fossils of them than a species that lasted 100,000 years.

But wouldn't there have to be a lot of "in-betweeners", if the mutations were indeed entirely random? The sheer volume needed would raise the number of fossils created, right?

There are fossils of in-betweeners: don't forget neanderthals. I'm sure there are a few others, but then they don't appear in the media as much since they're not closely related to us.

But as I said, I dunno too much about it. This is all just my personal logic and reasoning from what I know.

Hmm, I haven't heard much about Neanderthal fossils. Prolly something I should look into when I have the time. But I guess my point is that since DNA has quintillions of possible combinations, and if mutations are entirely random, then you should have trillions of times more missing links than regular fossils. It wouldn't matter about in-betweener "species" so much, since there are trillions of combinations anyway, and worst-case scenario, one of each case would be created. Then, out of the trillions of possibilities, only a few would form fossils, and the chances of the "normal" creature forming a fossil would be far far less than the chances of the other, mutated, forms of the creatures forming fossils. In general, you would expect more mutated fossils than regular ones.

Does that make sense at all?

Maybe, I don't think I quite got that, are you saying mutations are frequent enough to form more fossils than the regular variant of a spiecies?

People tend to make the assumption that all mutations are bad. The truth is, we're here because of them! Millions and millions of mutations! DNA changes constantly. Even our parents are slightly different than us. When breakthroughs are made with mutating forms, it is specific only to that clan until the majority of humanity also evolves.

On another note entirely, my friend owed me 8 bucks or so and gave me two visa gift cards. He said they were something around $12 combined and that I could keep the change. I checked the balances and there is about $31 combined.

Red: What's the money got to do with this discussion?

Also what about the information inside the DNA?

How did that get there? Without any information, the DNA would be absolutely usless to form any life, because there would be no correct or incorrect genes and cause so many incorrect genes that they'd eliminate each other... right?
+f
Not to mention, randomness doesn't produce information.

Example: If I type randomly on my keyboard here's what I get:

OIFUH0943eypgs89+
\8sruij;[tgf=d-[sz\7y8565t4sxkpjH(Yft=e

hd-
deuj6ejz7t8djs[des
xhbgfhxde][fdj

Is that any information to anyone at all? It doesn't make any sense much less have any pratical purpose. So if that's what the DNA info looked like there would be ABSOLUTELY NO PURPOSE FOR ANYTHING (Organs, tissues whatever) IN THE LIFE FORMED IF ANY, BECAUSE THEY'D HAVE NO FUNCTION! Does that make any sense?

I like to use bold and italics. Along with convincing fonts, you can really prove points!

Just kidding... ish...

Most of our DNA has no known use, i.e: is useless. Mutations are indeed one of the reasons for evolution.

Remember, though, that if you put an infinite number of monkeys at typewriters, they will eventually write the works of Shakespeare. As in, enough randomness can create information.

Actually, an infinite number of monkey would write the works of shakespeare almost instantly, since there's an infinite number of them.

Problem is, you don't have an infinite number of monkeys. The earth is only a few billion years old. The odds are still far against you.

It does make sense, and I get what you mean. But remember, the Earth is still very young. While there are trillions of possible mutations, there's no reason for even one hundredth of them to have been discovered.
Therefore, the combined amount of time that all the "missing links" spent on Earth is still rather small compared to the combined time that all the "regular species" have spent on Earth. Therefore, you still get more "normal" fossils than "mutated" fossils. I hope this actually has to do with what you were saying.

By the way, I dunno about Neanderthal fossils really, I'm just using it as an example. Although I do recall seeing a documentary about it a few years ago (or another one of our ancestors, anyway).

Basically, neanderthals are our closest relatives (that are far away enough to be considered another link in the evolutionary change). Eventually, enough modern humans were born to create a whole new race, a smarter one at that, too. The modern humans eliminated the neanderthals (explaining all the stones that look sharpened within the fossils) and continued breeding. Thus explains evolution.