In an atheist view, How did Human life start?

Question

How did the first Homo sapien find themselves on Earth?

How did it grow with just one homo sapien?

etc.

Answer 1

The recipe for life is not that complicated. There are a limited number of elements inside your body. Most of your mass is carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, sulfur, plus some nitrogen and phosphorous. There are a couple dozen other elements that are in there in trace amounts, but to a first approximation you're just a bag of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen.

Now, it turns out that the atmosphere is a bag of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen as well, and it's not living. So the real issue here is, how do you take that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (or methane in an early atmosphere) and water vapor and other sources of hydrogen—how do you take those simple, inorganic precursors and make them into the building blocks of life?

There was a famous experiment done by Stanley Miller when he was a graduate student at the University of Chicago in the early 1950s. Miller essentially put methane, or natural gas, ammonia, hydrogen gas, and water vapor into a beaker. That wasn't a random mixture; at the time he did the experiment, that was at least one view of what the primordial atmosphere would have looked like.

Then he did a brilliant thing. He simply put an electric charge through that mixture to simulate lightning going through an early atmosphere. After sitting around for a couple of days, all of a sudden there was this brown goo all over the reaction vessel. When he analyzed what was in the vessel, rather than only having methane and ammonia, he actually had amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. In fact, he had them in just about the same proportions you would find if you looked at organic matter in a meteorite. So the chemistry that Miller was discovering in this wonderful experiment was not some improbable chemistry, but a chemistry that is widely distributed throughout our solar system.

The rest is evolution... survivl of the fittest advantageous features until... homosapien

Answer 2

We're not aware of an "atheist view" Here's the scientific one:

Your question may be answered several ways. The first modern humans, Homo sapien, spaien are dated from 100,000 to 40,000 years ago. The archaic form, Homo sapien goes back 400,000 years. These were "people" in that they looked very much like us. Earlier forms can be called "people" too. They made tools, used fire and controlled their environment. For me the first "people" would be Homo erectus

Homo erectus ("Upright Man") was the first hominid to leave Africa. His existence dates from 1.6 million years ago to perhaps 200,000 years ago. However, recent discovers have suggested that isolated populations may have existed even later.

Early discoveries of Homo eretus remains were variously named Peking Man, Java Man and Heidelberg Man. His range was all of Africa, most of Europe and as far east as China. Sites in California have been suggested as containing Homo erectus finds. No one had satisfactorily explained how the vast distance from China to California was crossed.

Homo eretus used stone tools made by the Acheuliam process. This mainly produced a hand ax, a fist sized piece of rock that tapered to a point. The hand ax was suitable to be used as an ax, a knife, scrapper, or to dig roots.

Camps are identified by the remains of the stone tools and the debitage (debris) left from their making. Bones, and stone circles also identify the camps. Inside the stone circles, believed to be the remains of huts made of hides or bush, are found hearths. Fire use is shown by the reddish color of the soil plus the remains of burned material (carbon products)

While Homo erectus used and controlled fire it isn't certain that he was able to create it. Most likely he was able to collect fire from lighting strikes and other natural sources. He then would maintain the fire and develop ways to carry embers to start more campfires. Fire can be made from percussion, striking sparks, by friction, rubbing wood together or by pressure as used in the fire piston. Homo erectus left no remains to suggest that he used any of these methods.

Answer 3

If only we knew. I'm not a complete atheist, I just don't know what started this and that and everything. There's a word for that I just can't remember.

Answer 4

evolution: the first Homo Sapiens evolved from other species, in a long period of time, so did its mates. Not that i believe this

Answer 5

Evolution is not just for atheists, most of todays best scientists are christians.

I am a christian, but i still believe in evolution

Answer 6

organic soup (amino acids) > self replicating molecules (primitive RNA) > cells > multicellular forms > motility > fish > amphibians > reptiles > mammals > primates > hominins > Homo Sapiens Sapiens. In the atheist (evolutionist) viewpoint, there was never just one human, although there is DNA evidence of a genetic "bottleneck", in which all humans on the planet could have been assembled in one football ground.

Answer 7

I'm a, sort of, atheist.  Because I cannot comprehend what's beyond the Universe, so I'm leaning to there being some sort of power behind the whole thing, but, as for there being a god that affects our daily life, here on Earth, who created us and cares for us, then, from my life's experiences, that's not true nor feasible.  I also consider 'evolution', with it's "goo to you" theory,  an even less feasible and therefore, unacceptable explanation for our origin.  

I think the IDists are closest, i.e. that we were, or are, a product of intelligent design, BUT NOT by a mysterious, all mighty, all powerful, loving 'god of the universe', as they think we are.  

Taking all the information available to us today, from the 'missing links' in the fossil records, to the sudden destruction of the more dangerous Dinosaurs.  The sudden appearances and dissapearances, of ALL species on this planet, and not one connected to another by any 'missing link', to our (modern humans) sudden appearance around 45,000 years ago, with our unreal and rapid advancement from flint axe to space flight, in the bat of an eyelid, compared to the Neanderthals progress to just about wearing clothes and burrying their dead, in the 290,000 years that they dominated the Earth. Plus much, much more feasible explanations and evidence that shoots the theory of evolution, down in flames.  As the tsunamis of the world, with the cruel and painfully shocking destruction of innocent people, from men of god to tiny babies, belies that there is a caring, protecting god.

Lastly.  Given that the Universe is billions of years old (or even of infinite age), and accepting that, of the trillions and trillions and trillions of 'planets' out there, there just has to be many millions with life, as we know it, on them.  And, to me, it's more feasible to consider that some of that life, could be 'millions' of years more advanced than we are today.  I can imagine that they have well mastered space travel and the problems we have of even imagining traveling faster than the speed of light.  Their technology would be totally incomprehensible, with life spans of thousands of years, instead of the 10s of years for us humans.  With all that technology (just think where we will be in a couple of hundred years from now, or even a couple of thousand years, then think a couple of million years ahead), visiting a remote habitable planet, clearing it of life threatening monsters, planting a few exotic trees and flowers, and then transplanting human embryos into unsuspecting mother apes, to ensure their survival, would be a piece of cake. Wouldn't it?  We could experiment further, by transplanting more sophisticated embryos, into the human offspring of the ape, then years later, even more advanced embryos into their offsprings (each offspring would be a different species, just like the fossil evidence is showing us today), until we end up with a human that is as mentally advanced as we are.  We would, of course, do this all over the planet (which could explain the mystery of how fossils of the same species are found so far away from each other).   We could pop to the planet every so often, even 'mate' with some of the females there, to produce an even more advanced human (like Jesus and his cousin John, for example, who could perform miricles, both of who's Mothers were 'visited' by angels whilst they slept.  The same "angels' " space craft could be mistaken for a "guiding star" and it could explain Jesus' dissaperance off the face of the Earth after his supposed death).  And it goes on and on.  The more you look at ALL the evidence, from the impossible transformation of complex, complicated, intelligent, biological beings, such as us, from a few non-biological minerals, or being created by a such super-perfect power, that makes so many human type errors, the more of what I'm suggesting, makes more sense than the other two alternatives.

So. Finally.  I don't know how human life started all those billions of years ago, somewhere else in the Universe, but I'm suggesting that Human life was started on this planet by VERY advanced Extra Terrestrials.

OK.  You can come and take me away now!!!

Answer 8

According to science and the only rational explanation, humans evolved from other hominids.  There was never a day when someone gave birth to a humans.  We have been changing gradually for billions of years, from bacteria to modern humans.

Answer 9

Atheists don't have a manual.

A lot of People who believe in Evolution believe in God.

I would assume all atheists do not believe that women were made from the rib of a man.

An atheist most likely just says "We are. Get over it".

Answer 10

In regards to such a question, a true atheist is completely comfortable with the answer "I don't know"

We cannot know anything directly about things that happened in the dimness of pre-history.  The Bible stories are explanations, but not evidence or proof. No other hypothesis can claim to have enough evidence to count as proof, either.

The only responsible thing to say is "We don't know how life started.  We don't know when or how the first humans arrived."

that's okay.