Deep science questions.

Inanimate objects have only a few simple elements. Say… a plastic chair - only made up of whatever elements there are for plastic. I suppose you can call rocks inanimate, but they are so much more than that. Sure they may not walk and talk, but they can grow and shrink according to temperature, and some have magnetic charges, and some are still mysterious (e.g. Death Valley moving rocks). I consider an inanimate object to be an inorganic object, like said plastic chair.

Trees are animated beings, they ‘breathe’, grow taller, grow leaves, produce fruit and smells. But they don’t walk and talk. You can’t really say if it has a conscience, science hasn’t gone that far yet to prove the theory of that. But I suppose for now we can say that there are two kinds of animated beings, those with a conscience and those without.

For animated beings, it’s supercomplex - these elements are chemicals, and chemicals react with one another, which create many other things, like heat and energy. These chemicals also react with environmental factors, like air and temperature. It all basically started like that.

Superior intelligence in humans is also the product of evolution. Adapting and learning according to the environment. We learned to hunt, learned to solve problems (e.g. solution to food shortages = farming), and we also started to test our capabilities and push the boundaries (we started running, climbing higher mountains, hunted bigger prey, etc). You can say that we humans have always tried to find solutions in problems, and through some sheer luck sometimes, our enthusiasm for learning outweigh animals who seem to be content with themselves for the most part, and we haven’t stopped learning and trying to improve ourselves since.

Oh, and having thumbs also kinda worked out in our favor.

That’s an old question: How does consciousness come about in a deterministic, materialistic world? Are we more than the sum of our parts? The short answer is that the evidence suggests we are in fact the sum of our parts. The model that fits our observations best is the one in which the mind is solely the result of the workings of the brain.

This perspective would expect all forms of life to be driven by some physical process, and when we look at any organism close enough, that’s what we see: biochemistry. It would also expect agents like robots or humans to be driven by some form of physical computational medium. If you crack open a robot, you see electrical switches in the form of transistors. If you crack open a human you see the same thing, only our electrical switches take the form of neurons.

Everything we know about consciousness fits perfectly with a materialist understanding of the brain. We expect and see changes in personality or capability when you damage or interrupt certain parts of our neural circuits. We can generate states of mind by electrically, magnetically, or chemically stimulating various brain centers. We have no examples of consciousness in the absence of a brain. We know that what we think of as a person is lost after a certain amount of brain damage. We can even build robots using animal neurons instead of transistors. See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7559150.stm

What makes us who we are is our arrangement of neural pathways. The human brain has abound 100,000,000,000 neurons, each with a myriad of connections forming a hugely complex biological computer. It receives inputs in the form of signals traveling along nerves from our senses, and sends outputs in the form of signals to our muscles. If you look at these processes, or any that are part of life, you see a chain of interactions: A causes B causes C etc. Each step in the process we’ve looked at has turned out to be one that follows natural laws.

And He told Noah the same thing after the flood. Think !

“the very fact that this question is about “deep” science suggests that theology cant be left out of it, regardless whether you believe in a God or not”

Yes it can. It’s science, not religion. If you want to apply religious subtexts to everything, that’s your business - but it’s nothing to do with the science.

the very fact that this question is about “deep” science suggests that theology cant be left out of it, regardless whether you believe in a God or not

we can’t be created from animals. otherwised dont you thing there would still be people coming from them?

kingtutt: If you want to discuss theology and its interaction with science, you should probably pick a different question or start your own. It has nothing to do with the question being asked.

It matters not if a superior force created the first element and other elements then just evolved from that one element. The Holy Bible is a history of the Hebrews. And, that history does not conflict with science. I am not going to try to convince you. But, I will tell you why if you ask me to explain what I think about it. I am a retired science/math teacher.

They believed we evolutionized ourselves just like all other animal’s did.

For those who believe in the Holy Bible, God created Nature and the natural laws. And we do not know the length of time between Gen. 1: 2 and Gen. 1:3. After all, He told the first man that we kown of to replenish the Earth after his kind.

@geralee: Evolution is a very slow process. It takes millions of years for perceptible changes in animals with large lifetimes such as humans.

There’s also no ‘goal’ to evolution. Just because humans evolved once doesn’t mean we would evolve again. It’s vaguely possible that in time, other self-aware animals would evolve, but there’s no reason they would resemble humans.

It matters not if a superior force created the first element and other elements then just evolved from that one element. The Holy Bible is a history of the Hebrews. And, that history does not conflict with science. I am not going to try to convince you. But, I will tell you why if you ask me to explain what I think about it. I am a retired science/math teacher.

well, for those who are Christians , as I am, that can’t straightly be answered w/ out putting God into it. I see what you are asking and our bodies were created in such a design to work in such a complex manner, but with what I believe and many other Christians believe, it is impossible to answer w/ out including God, and in mentioning Him, doesn’t have to start a debate, that’s just a Christians belief through God’s word, just like you have your beliefs as an athiest. Sorry I couldn’t help much, but just wanted to throw that out. I am not a Science wiz at all and someone even w/ more knowledge of how the human body functions maybe able to answer more…if not the internet may have some resources for you.

What distinguishes life from non-life is simply self-organisation: The capacity to make more copies of itself. A rock is simply a homogenous mass, but a cell has the ability to absorb nutrients and transform them into more cells like it.

As to what it is that allows it to do that: Nothing special or mystic, just some really complex biochemistry, involving some really long hydrocarbon chains and a lot of enzymes. There’s no single component in today’s cells that you can point to and say “that’s what makes it go”, though.

And yes, it would be nice if people would leave religion out of a SCIENCE question in the SCIENCE category. This can be answered entirely rationally, there’s no need (or desire) to bring magic men into it.

Bigger and more complex brains is what gives us our superior intelligence.

Your question, though, is really what makes life life vs a rock just being a rock.

A lot of creatures don’t have brains, so it isn’t electrical currents from the brain.

I think that life is the result of chemicals that happened to get together and form cells and then started to have chemical actions within the cell(s). Eventually the cells evolved into multitudes of cells which allowed for the diversity of life.

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desperatelynervous, I do not undertand why you are nervous. Is it because you are an atheist? Why ask a question that causes further division among humans? I think that cthuclhu gave a rational answer, but because some people are not students of science or the Holy Bible, they will not understand the answer.
Did you understand? Where did the first element and all of the rest of the elements come from? You seem to have faith in science and I do too, but I also have faith in a higher power that brought Nature to react as it does.