Did everything come from one cell?

Question

According to the theory of evolution as we currently know it, is it thought that ultimaly every single living thing on this planet evolved from a single cell?

Makes you think...

Answer 1

Yes, every living thing comes from one fertilized egg. How is that possible? Well, the instrucation is all in the DNA. In the course of millions of years, the DNA got changed. The variations eventually led to different species.

Answer 2

Not in the sense that there was one solitary cell with no others of its kind, and from that, all life sprung.

Instead, the early earth was teeming with organic chemicals in the oceans and other waterways of the planet, bathed with harsh UV light that would be deadly today, no oxygen (which is harmful to long molecules like DNA), high volcanic activity, including steam vents at the bottom of the ocean, etc. etc.

From this the earliest cellular life arose.   It may in fact have arisen many times, and gone extinct, before one type of early cellular life ... with billions of individuals ... was stable enough to live and reproduce for a very long time, and split into many different types of cellular life.

All we know is that all modern life forms share enough properties of the DNA they contain, that it is almost impossible that they emerged separately.   Instead, it seems apparent that all modern life is related by common ancestry to those early cellular life forms.    

So it wasn't an individual *cell*.

Answer 3

No, doesn't make you think... makes you amazed.   And as well, if it happened here, it happened, happens and will happen on every planet throughout the universe with similar chemical components and temperatures.  That would not necessarily lead to something that would resemble life on earth, but it would resemble life, and be life, as we define it... the ability to divide. And how this occurred is truly wonderful.  Read The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins.....

Answer 4

Yes.

Answer 5

it does make you think... but if you look back at the evidence.. which IS there.. it all starts to make sense..

does spontaneously generating exactly the way we are (with/without the presense of some omnipotent being) sound anymore credible.. no as there's no evidence to support such claims.. we DO however have evidence that all life shares some common anscestors..

see secret's answer