Re: Biogenesis question

Jim Armstrong wrote:
"Some of the YEC folks make quite a distinction between the 'stuff' of
plant life and that of animal life, to wit, it's not the same with
respect to life and death implications.
That leads me to an admittedly not-too-well-articulated question: Do
you know of any line of reasoning that considers biogenesis for
creature-kind a transition from veggie life to animal life, as opposed
to inanimate to animate? You 'nephish' oriented folks have any
thoughts in this area? Just askin'. - JimA"

Let me have a try at this... On the biological side of the question,
plants and animals are not considered to be derived from different
biogenetic origins. They are just two branches among others on the
universal tree of life. In particular, they are two of the kingdoms,
besides the fungi, protists and probably a few others, in the eukaryotic
domain (the other two domains being the archaea and the bacteria).

The first living cells probably date back to over 3.5 Ga (billion
years), according to geochemical signatures perhaps to 3.85 Ga (Holland,
H.D.(1997), "Evidence for life on Earth more than 3850 million years
ago", Science 275, 38-39). Fossils thought to represent cyanobacteria
were found in 3.5 Ga old stromatolites (Horgan, J.(1991), "In the
beginning...", Scientific American 264 (2), 100-109; Schopf, J.W.
(1993), "Microfossils of the Early Archaean Apex chert: new evidence of
the antiquity of life", Science 260, 640-646; Des Marais, D.J.(2000),
"When did photosynthesis emerge on Earth?" Science 289, 1703-1705). The
earliest eukaryotic algae have been dated to over 1.5 Ga (Yoon H.S. et
al.(2004), "A molecular timeline for the origin of photosynthetic
eukaryotes", Molecular Biology and Evolution 21, 809-818).

Apparently, the plant and animal kingdoms separated on the unicellular
levels, and that about 2 Ga after the origin of life. Thus, there
probably never was any transition from "veggie" to animal life, and in
any case, this has nothing to do with the origin of life.

Now turning to the biblical creation account in Gen.1 (I assume this is
what your "nephesh" reference points to), the creation of the first
animals on "day" 5 (v.20-23) looks like based on a concept of animal
quite different from that of modern biology's for the first animals.
These created animals, called "living souls" (nephesh ghaya), are
macroscopic, multicellular, many are big and even dangerous. Their fast
movement and visual orientation system, as well as some sentient faculty
("souls"), apparently require a well developed nervous system and blood
(or hemolymph) circulation. Their environment must contain appreciable
concentrations of oxygen. Their being "created" may point to the
creation of a new dimension, the sentient-psychological one, while their
biological constitution was derived by evolution from earlier "lower"
marine life not considered to represent "living souls".

The first "veggies", represented by the plant life of "day" 3 (v.11-13),
go back to a time about 1 Ga earlier than these animals (Douzery,
E.J.P., et al.(2004), "The timing of eukaryotic evolution: does a
relaxed molecular clock reconcile proteins and fossils?" Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences USA 101, 15386-15391). They would
include the unicellular and later large marine algae (which provided for
a faster photosynthetic oxygen production than the earlier
cyanobacteria), as well as the later land plants. The earliest land
plants (together with the terrestrial fungi requiring photosynthesis by
plants) apparently go back to perhaps 600 Ma (million years), or up to
200 Ma earlier than the "living souls". The higher atmospheric oxygen
levels required by these active animals would probably presuppose
earlier colonization of large land surfaces by plants.

Peter

-- 
Dr. Peter Ruest, CH-3148 Lanzenhaeusern, Switzerland
<pruest@dplanet.ch> - Biochemistry - Creation and evolution
"..the work which God created to evolve it" (Genesis 2:3)