Oolon Colluphid

In the <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=000616&p=" target="_blank">Big Bang</a> thread, Thanatos posted thus:

Which dictionary are you using? Faith is belief in the absence of evidence, not absence of understanding. Plenty of people claim to have some understanding of god and its will. Does this mean they do not have faith in it?

But it is most parsimonious to assume it was not supernatural in origin. Hence the many good testable hypotheses about it that are being worked on right now. Have a browse round these for starters:

<a href="http://www.resa.net/nasa/origins_life.htm" target="_blank">NASA’s Origins of Life site</a>

<a href="http://www.accessexcellence.org/WN/SUA03/RNA_origins_life.html" target="_blank">RNA and the Origins of Life</a>

<a href="http://www.gla.ac.uk/projects/originoflife/html/2001/menu.htm" target="_blank">Origins of Life (University of Glasgow)</a>

<a href="http://www.origins.rpi.edu/chem.html#rna" target="_blank">Formation of the RNA World</a>

<a href="http://www.syslab.ceu.hu/corliss/Nature.html" target="_blank">The Emergence of Living Systems
in Archaean Submarine Hot Springs</a>

<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=Display&dopt=pubmed_pubme d&from_uid=11539076" target="_blank">Here’s 130 PubMed articles</a>.

And these two are interesting too:

<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=115394 67&dopt=Abstract" target="_blank">Hydrogen cyanide polymerization</a>

<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=115413 37&dopt=Abstract" target="_blank">Hydrogen cyanide polymers</a>

For the intellectually malnourished.

Is ‘Thanatos’ short for Cephalothanatos, by any chance? Or are you merely in the grip of your twin brother Hypnos? Time to wake up to reality. Autotrophic, eh? My, that’s a big word for one who knows so little about it. Define ‘organism’, old chap. Simply by being so complex, you are right, even the simplest organism is too unlikely to happen by chance. Hence nobody except creationists think that’s what science proposes. The origins of life are in chains of carbon atoms, not things as complex as ‘organisms’. See the links above.

Good question. Define what you think 'life' is, and we'll try to answer.

Oolon

Oolon Colluphid

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