delete repeat post

Completely and utterly incorrect. The atmosphere 3 billion years ago was mostly carbon dioxide. The very first ancient organisms were lithotrophic prokaryotic life living deep in the ancient hydrothermal vents of the Earth.

Let me now share with you, since you don't know, how oxygen was made and how it gave rise to the next stage of evolution.

Long age the Earth was mostly Carbon Dioxide. Simple Prokaryotic life forms survived by metabolizing Carbon Dioxide and hydrogen, sulfer, phosphate, and a cocktail of minerals that existed in the Earth's warm mud, shale and hydrothermals. They were happy and there was no need for them to evolve. They slotted perfectly into the simple taxonomy, into the mud and shale and very warm climate that made up the ancient Earth. But trouble was brewing. The by-product of their metabolism was oxygen, a gas that was toxic to these little prokaryotes. As oxygen in the atmosphere increased, it started to resemble more and more what we see today: A 21% oxygen atmosphere. As soon as the oxygen reached this number, it caused a bacterial apocalypse. Oxygen is highly reactive and toxic, it interfered with their metabolic systems and protein synthesis. Only a few hardy bacteria survived. They were the ones buried deep in the mud and shale, who could escape to the anoxic world, but it could not last. Eventually, a new class of protozoa arose . These new cells could metabolize oxygen and thus gave rise to the next stage in evolution: The dawn of the Eukaryotes. The arisal of Eukaryota from prokaryotes is one of two known examples of rapid punctuated equilibrium. The other one is the arisal of proto-cells from self-replicating bimolecular structures. These two events are the quantum leaps in evolution, the understanding gaps where intelligent design still lurks. But both can be explained by catastrophic environmental changes that brought about rapid evolution. Obviously evolution cannot hinge on quantum leaps, it has long stretches of slow evolution, where all organisms drive to operate in better symbiosis with the environment.

Every cell in every advanced organism is more or less the same. A fluid filled membrane with a nucleus containing a series of base pairs that encode for all the proteins that make up the organism, surrounded a cytoplasm swimming with Lyosomes and Peroxisomes and other organelles that play a function in life. The endosymbiosis theory states that the oxygen-hating bacteria of the old world found their home in symbioses with the Eukaryotes. They became our mitochondria, safe from the oxygen of the outside world, metabolizing gases and powering their new homes. Indeed, there is vast evidence to support this (notice this is called endosymbiosis theory, not hypothesis).

The extraordinary structural similarities between Prokaryotes and mitochondria is obvious, they can be traced directly from very ancient proto bacteria that had highly simplified metabolic systems, perhaps making hydrogen sulfide, scratching out a living in the ancient shale and warm mud (Hydrogen sulfide metabolism is what gives Lithotrophes their distinctive yellow glow) Because of the symbioses, looking at our mitochondria is like looking back in time. They haven’t had to evolve, just like their oxyphobic brethren of the Mesoproterozoic world did not. And of course, the fact that this is the only organelle besides the nucleus that has its own genetic code is a clear indicator of endosymbiosis. We used to think the nucleolus contained all the genes. No more. Deep inside the twisting folds of the metabolic catalysis that operates inside our mitochondria is a tiny genome. 60,000 base pairs that contain the structural encoding to perform the metabolic pathways that keep us alive.

Charles Darwin knew there must be a Mesoproterozoic origin for the explosion. He thought the molecular stage was being set for a massive jump in life. He was right. The rise of the Eukaryotes was crucial. Oxygen is much more reactive than Carbon Dioxide, therefore metabolism involving it is much faster. Eukaryotic evolution could work so much faster because it was based upon a much faster fuel. Mitosis and breeding speed increased, and clumps of quasi-independent cells would clump to form tissues that would later make up plant-like organisms, as the process of photosynthesis developed from the simple carbon dioxide metabolism.
The punctuated equilibrium is obvious and brings up a standard mathematic rule. The harsher the environment, the faster the evolution and the steeper the advantage gradient. An environment has got to have some limiting factors, because if an organism is in happy symbiosis with the environment, nothing will happen. The prokaryotes that first inhabited the Earth did not evolve for a billion years, they just happily existed until their oxygen metabolism changed the atmospheric gas concentration to the point that most of them died, and that forced an end to their Camelot-esque existence in the warm mud and shale of the Mesoproterozoic.
Fortunately the environment is a cold hearted bastard who is always harsh as hell. The planet has gone through seven ice ages in the last 700,000 years, three mass extinctions since life began and numerous other cataclysms.

This exhaustive and creative story still assumes life to have already begun. 

How did the early harsh environment produce life for the Prokaryotic friends from non living sources?

After you answer that, how is it that in a billion years they converted all the world's CO2 to O2, but in the past couple billion years it has not become almost pure CO2 again...right now 1% maximum is CO2.

After you answer that, how do simple single cell organisms "know" without any means of sensory capabilities that it is time to overhaul the past billion years of presumed evolution and suddenly now breathe O2?

No matter how complex of an explanation you weave, if it is founded on uncertainty, you will have nothing in the end but more complicated uncertainty.

I still await a satisfactory answer.  What you build upon an assumption, and then spent 785 words defending I can sum up with 4. There is a Creator!

You're confusing evolution with abiogenesis. 

Harsh environment? But he already explained why oxygen wasn't a problem. Are you wondering about the UV? Water blocks that rather well, especially if it's mud.

Besides, proteins aren't as fragile as you seem to think.

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Sadly, your certainty is based solely on ignorance as your argument falls back to "we don't know, therefore it must have been god." Thousands of years ago, people used that argument to attribute all sorts of things to gods, things which we can now actually explain. 

-Triften 

Without abiogenisis, the rest of the evolutionary process doesn't have a crutch to lean on.

So they were in mud...what rejuvinated the mud with fresh CO2 and ridded the mud of toxic O2? How did it manage to rejuvinate into mud the entire atmosphere?

Where did the protiens come from and how did they all meet up in the mud so by chance create something needed for life, then how did the estimated 250 protein chunks align together to create life, where the above story begins.

The point is that without abiogenesis, the rest of the story is void.  If you wish, explain to me how the uncontrolled environment of the day miraculously created proteins, but that cannot be reproduced today without controlling energy exposure and raw materials? Much less how life sprung up from these scattered Lego pieces.

Without abiogenisis, the rest of the evolutionary process doesn't have a crutch to lean on.

Typical. It is going to be hysterical to watch when molecular biologists recreate nucleotide assemblage in a permanent dipole.

The article you copied and pasted was from a geologist. So obviously he gets everything right about geology. But I am a biologist and I can tell you his bio is dead wrong.

So they were in mud...what rejuvinated the mud with fresh CO2 and ridded the mud of toxic O2? How did it manage to rejuvinate into mud the entire atmosphere?

What are you talking about? These prokarytotes metabolized  CO2 because it made up the whole atmosphere. It was the prokaryotes themselves that created the oxygen as a metabolic by product (indeed, the process works much like photosynthesis, and just like mitochondrion, the chloroplasts are also ancient bacteria). So they had no problem surviving until they filled the air with oxygen. Then they died or evolved, the ones that survived were stronger (surivival of the fittest) or buried deep within the hydrothermal vents.

Where did the protiens come from and how did they all meet up in the mud so by chance create something needed for life, then how did the estimated 250 protein chunks align together to create life, where the above story begins.

Proteins are formed by amino acids. Furthermore, the arisal of proteins is not necessary to explain evolution. Even if God infused the primordial soup with energy to create protein (a baseless assertion) then the evolutionary processes can still provide natural explanation for everything from RNA to man. Honestly, confusing evolution and abiogenesis is ridiculous.

The point is that without abiogenesis, the rest of the story is void.  If you wish, explain to me how the uncontrolled environment of the day miraculously created proteins, but that cannot be reproduced today without controlling energy exposure and raw materials? Much less how life sprung up from these scattered Lego pieces.

How is the story void? OK. Lets pretend God helped create the 250 proteins necessary for life. Evolution can still explain how proto-cells arose from those proteins, how Eukaryota arose from the proto-cells, how multicellular plants and animals arose from the eukaryotes, how etc etc

Thank you for that creative story

Ahem. It is the truth, not a story. You do not know how we gather information about ancient life. So you have no right to judge it's validity.

After you answer that, how is it that in a billion years they converted all the world's CO2 to O2, but in the past couple billion years it has not become almost pure CO2 again...right now 1% maximum is CO2.

Unbelievable ignorance. Study the carbon cycle. The exchange of Carbon between plants, oceans, gas pockets, the atmosphere, bacteria and animals keeps everything at a constant rate. One word can answer your stupid question: Respiration. Please educate yourself in biology. Remember how I said mitochondrion are a symbiotic bacteria (twice)? Same with the chloroplasts that perform photosyntesis. THey have the same catabolic functions as the ancient prokaryote that existed when the world was mostly carbon dioxide.

deludedgod, are you going to give lectures?

This is all fascinating and I would very much like to learn more about the evolutionary process.  I was schooled by fundies, but I love biology and wish I knew more about it. 

Do you mean on the private chatroom? I shall have to think about it. The funny thing is, evolutionary biology is not even my speciality, but I can still answer these ridiculous questions. By lecture you must mean video lecture and if so I should have to think about purchasing a video camera.

Now I must go, I am leaving for Lingayen Gulf in the Phillipines in the hour, so don't expect me to respond for at least another 15 hours.

It would really be cool if you could lecture. I am hoping to catch some interesting evolutionary biology lectures. Once it was no longer forbidden, I found I was greatly interested in paleontology, natural history, etc.

I hope you have a wonderful time in the Philippines!

P.S. (for when you return) Didn't the Carboniferous have a much higher oxygen content than today?  I believe that is what allowed for the humongous arthropods (insects, etc.). 

Abiogenesis is not necessary for evolution to exist. Stop combining the two, it's dishonest.

There's these crazy things called wind, weather, and water that could have churned up the mud.

Regardless of how "harsh" (a relative term) the environment might have been, the early forms of life (and pretty much all life beyond that) only needed to survive long enough to make a copy or two of themselves in order to perpetuate.

Proteins are formed from various chemicals, the building blocks of which are abundant in nebulae (hydrocarbons, formaldehyde, that sort of thing.) They don't form "randomly", chemical properties govern the interactions.

The standard creationist claim of needing a particular 250-300 long chain of amino acids for life is incorrect.

 A simple replicator (that we know of) is 32 amino acids long. The chance of forming this replicator in a single trial is on the range of 1 x 10^40. This seems extraordinarily small by itself, but keep in mind we aren't dealing with a single trial. A single kilogram of amino acid contains more than 1 x 10 ^ 24 molecules so a soup would have many, many parallel trials. The amount of water on the Earth is on the range of 1 x 10^24 liters there could have been a lot of soup. Additionally, only one replicator needs to form and survive long enough to make a copy or two of itself so we only need one success. Even if it takes a year for a group of proteins, that still gives over 1 x 10^9 rounds of trials.

So, if we've got a pretty dilute soup thats 1x10^15 parallel trials per liter times 1x10^24 liters times 1x10^9 rounds giving us 1x10^48 trials! The odds of not forming that protein are incredibly low.

And that's only talking about a single particular protein! Who knows what interesting and potentially self-replicating molecules we've made in the mean time. Not to mention the fact that amino acids have an affinity for assembling into larger chains, so these interactions aren't truly random.

Simply put, we have a lot of lego pieces and a lot of attempts at building something useful. Given enough time with monkeys punching randomly on typewriters, we can produce the works of Shakespeare.

Except in this case, the "works of shakespeare" are able to evolve and reproduce, so we really just need the monkeys to produce Shakespeare's notes and outlines. 

-Triften 

 Holy, I took a closer look and realized your articles were from between 1960 and 1975. Please do not embaress us and yourself with your outdated nonsense!

OK children, lets review.

There are three stages to the atmospheric evolution of the Earth: Pre-Oxygen, oxygenated, and Oxygen-nitrogen stasis.

In the pre-oxygen Earth, the atmosphere was dominated by Co2 and H2, possibly methane.

There were two classes of life arising in this world. The first were phototrophic cyanobacteria that could survive in the environment because UV is stopped by water. The other were anaerobic lithotrophes that lived off inorganic materials, a cocktail of iron, magnesium, calcium and other minerals, metabolizing carbon dioxide.

The cyanobacteria's metabolic processes waste product was oxygen. The process is all but identical to photosynthesis in plants. As it should be considering the cyanobacteria make up the choloroplasts!

This triggered the oxygen catastrophe. The Earth's atmosphere, as soon as it reached a proportion around perhaps 20% triggered a bacterial apocylpse that wiped out the cyanobacteria.

The fundamental altering of the atmospheric concentration was permament. The CO2 was replaced by inert nitrogen.

The archaebacteria and ancient cyanobacteria were forced to evolove into proto-eukaryotes, a process not fully understood. The proto-eukaryotes were very different in terms of their ampipathic strutcure, phagocytotic nature and size.

One offshoot of the proto-eukaryota that made an endosymbiotic relationship with the mitochondrial bacteria was plant cell forerunners that engulfed the phototrophic cyanobacteria.

The Eukaryotes started out as predators, this is why they evolved to have a flexible bilayer that could engulf small organisms. The other two offshoots were animal cells and fungi. The animal cells never lost their phagocytotic ability because they evolved to be predators.

The plant cells, however, did not need this function, as the cyanobacteria provided all their energy. Thus their structure evolved differently. They have a rigid cellulose wall and high turgidity. They evolved into the plant forerunners: ancient algae. In fact, plant life was critical to the progression of the animal proto-eukaryotes because one of the most ancient symbiosis between plants and bacteria is nitrogen fixation.

One IDT proponent argued that plants could not evolve because they need nitrate, but that can only be formed from inert nitrogen by the bacteria found in certian plants (legumes to be precise) nodules. He was wrong. There is another way to fix nitrogen: Lightning.

Anyway, the whole point is that eukaryotic life keeps the atmosphere is stasis.

Holy, to cure yourself of your ignorance, you should perhaps study 4th grade chemistry: Nitrogen cyle and carbon exchange.

So the early CO2 breathing organisms  were burried under mud to be protected from the scorching sun's light rays in the O2/O3 void atmosphere, but the process by which they metabolize CO2 requires light if it is like photosynthesis, which they wouldn't readily get from under mud. Help me here please.

 ...and the by product of metabolizing CO2 would be some kind of simple sugar, just like with photosynthesis...an entire atmosphere's worth of CO2...where is that byproduct found today?

It needn't be mud. Water works, too as I mentioned before.

-Triften 

So the early CO2 breathing organisms  were burried under mud to be protected from the scorching sun's light rays in the O2/O3 void atmosphere, but the process by which they metabolize CO2 requires light if it is like photosynthesis, which they wouldn't readily get from under mud. Help me here please.

most of the mud-dwellers were anaerobic chemotrophs. The cyanobacteria are mostly referred to as blue-green algae. They can live in water. It halts the UV but allows the light through. Cyanobacteria have diverged alot since they first arose. They are by far the oldest organisms.

  ...and the by product of metabolizing CO2 would be some kind of simple sugar, just like with photosynthesis...an entire atmosphere's worth of CO2...where is that byproduct found today?

Um, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but the waste product of photosynthesis is oxygen. You are thinking of the useful catabolism, which makes glucose. THe cell itself uses glucose. All cells use glucose. Nothing special about that.