Before anyone comes for me, I grew up southern baptist – went to a private christian school & was homeschooled for a few years. The extent of my “science” education when it came to evolution & the origin of the universe was “if we came from monkeys why do monkeys still exist?” and “look at this galaxy that’s shaped like a cross, isn’t god amazing!!” I’m an atheist now and would like to have some sort of understanding of how our world came to be, but trying to figure it out as an adult with no real foundation has been incredibly difficult, and none of it’s making sense. I also know I’m asking a lot as all 3 of those subjects are pretty extensive, so if you know any good videos or books I’d love some recommendations!
In: Biology
For the big bang, and abiogenesis, we have absolutely no idea how or why these happened.
We can extrapolate the big bang happened by taking the current state of the universe and running the clock backward. Everything is expanding, so if you hit rewind the expansion undoes itself and you end up with a singularity. Where the singularity came from, or why it, seemingly, randomly started rapidly expanded, we have no idea.
We can extrapolate abiogenesis happened because we exist. Life came from somewhere, so it stands to reason it started in some way. The term we use to describe it starting is abiogenesis. We have *ideas* as to how it happened, but we don’t know the specific conditions that led to it.
For evolution, we can watch it happen. Genetics tend to be fairly fluid and change, sometimes rapidly. We have done experiments with bacteria and can watch evolutionary changes happen very rapidly in controlled environments. Evolution also isn’t structured. Organisms that survive pass on their genes. The genes that continue to be passed on become more pronounced over time. The ones that don’t get passed on simply dissappear. Natural selection gets twisted to make it seem as though some kind of selection processes is actually happening, but it’s not really. You either survive and pass on what you have or don’t. If you do, you’ve pushed evolution further. If you don’t, then whatever you have ends with you.
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