Daggah

Of course, TalkOrigins has that essay on evolution being both fact and theory, with it being a fact that species have evolved, and a theory when concerned with how that happens.

So what about abiogenesis? Unless one wants to claim that a god would be "alive" - and under what definition would a god be alive, anyway? - at some point, life had to come from non-life. Otherwise, life would be infinite, and that can safely be ruled out. Abiogenesis is, technically, simply the origin of life from non-life, so abiogenesis must have happened at some point. In other words, it is a fact that abiogenesis has at one point occurred.

The theory of abiogenesis is the aspect that is debatable. The theory, of course, would be the explanation of how life came from non-life at some point.

Thoughts?

Peter Soderqvist

ABIOGENESIS - FACT AND THEORY?
Both the bible and the theory of the selfish gene pointing to primordial soup in the sea, as the beginning of life! Genesis1 20: And God said let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life!
<a href="http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/kjv.browse.html" target="_blank">http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/kjv.browse.html</a>

Chapter 2 - The replicators
Was there to be any end to the gradual improvement in the techniques and artifices used by the replicators to ensure their own continuation in the world? There would be plenty of time for their improvement. What weird engines of self-preservation would the millennia bring forth? Four thousand million years on, what was to be the fate of the ancient replicators? They did not die out, for they are the past masters of the survival arts. But do not look for them floating loose in the sea; they gave up that cavalier freedom long ago. Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rational for our existence. They have come a long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines
<a href="http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Dawkins/Work/Books/selfish.htm" target="_blank">http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Dawkins/Work/Books/selfish.htm</a>

Soderqvist1: Try this one, next time you are in a debate with a creationist!

[ January 17, 2002: Message edited by: Peter Soderqvist ]</p>

Grumpy

I vote for "hypothesis."

Dr.GH

I'll go with hypothesis. There are some very provocative data, generated for over 60 years that support the hypothesis, but it has not achived the level of support that evolution has.

Daggah

Okay, fact and hypothesis?

I agree that it certainly does not have the mounds of evidence in support of it that evolution does; however, I do think it's a fairly reasonable hypothesis in the context of what we know right now.

Viti

Now I am not very knowledgable about all of this, but I don't see what is so hard for people to accept about abiogenesis.

Everything is made from the same basic "stuff", as far as I know there is no special "life" element...and the fact that there exists such things as extremophiles (very strange and alien, but living) and viruses (alive? not? what's the criteria?) indicates to me that life could have come from a volatile, extreme environment.

Kosh

Check out this article that appeared on CNN
today. Notice that bit about hydrogen? And what's
the most abundant element in the universe?
That's what I call good odds....

<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/01/17/strange.life.ap/index.html" target="_blank">http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/01/17/strange.life.ap/index.html</a>