Origens da vida

Abstract

Apresentamos um panorama geral das idéias sobre a origem da vida na história. Após delinearmos os principais temas necessários para o entendimento da origem da vida, mostramos as características básicas da vida atual e as relações entre os seres vivos que sugerem um ancestral comum. Revemos as condições químicas pré-bióticas no ambiente terrestre e fora dele. Quanto ao aparecimento da vida, confrontamos as principais vertentes sobre a precedência do código genético ou do metabolismo. Evidenciamos a curta janela de tempo para o estabelecimento da vida na Terra, indicando a facilidade de esse processo ocorrer no Universo. Finalmente, são apresentados os fundamentos dos projetos atuais de procura de vida fora de nosso planeta.

Scientific and Religious Beliefs about the Origin of Life and Life after Death: Validation of a Scale

“…This negative relation between scientific and religious beliefs has a nuance in the fact that the origin of species through Darwin's natural selection [19] generated the opposition of the Protestant and Catholic Church, this by weakening two pillars that had as immovable: on the one hand biblical authority, and on the other, a way of conceiving the creation of the world and the emergence of the various species closely linked to the literalness of the Genesis narrative [21,33,54].…”

“…On the other hand, the subcategories Darwinism, Death: Scientific Advances and Science: Conceptualization of the Death displayed a significant relation between themselves in a positive way, that is to say, the beliefs on the Theory of the Evolution of Charles Darwin [19] like it best explains the origin of life by being complete in itself and not requiring the intervention of mysterious forces alien to scientific understanding [21,22], correlate with beliefs that the phenomenon of death is the total cessation of brain function, of cardiac and respiratory activity, bringing with it the end of the existence of the human being and with it, the total rejection of a life after death. In these terms, being biologically dead means that at least the brain has ceased completely and irrevocably to function.…”

“…In this sense, Darwin proposed a mechanism, natural selection (the variations observed in species in nature can be inherited, some of these variations grant adaptive advantage and its carriers will survive, thus producing a natural selection), material law that eliminates the need for an 'invisible hand' guiding the Universe and therefore 'the theory of evolution is complete in itself and does not require the intervention of mysterious forces unrelated to scientific understanding' [21,22]. The human being lives daily different personal, environmental and socio-cultural events, processes that, more often than not, involve existential reflections.…”

“…According to Damineli and Damineli [21] throughout the last century, the origin of life began to be approached in a scientific way, through laboratory experiments and the study of theoretical processes. It became an eminently interdisciplinary subject, involving cosmology, astrophysics, planetology, geology, organic chemistry, molecular biology, mathematics, and complex systems theory.…”

“…The fossils allow to recover some information about the body structure of the ancestors of the current species. This allowed to build an exuberant map of evolution over the last ~ 540 million years [21]. b…”