Re: History Channel special on astrobiology

On 1 Feb, 04:51, j.wilki...@xxxxxxxxx (John Wilkins) wrote:
Robert Carnegie <rja.carne...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 31 Jan, 10:19, j.wilki...@xxxxxxxxx (John Wilkins) wrote:
Dogma Discharge <s...@xxxxx> wrote:
"John Baker" <nu...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:9803q35itim97effu1365th2ohqad0n5mn@xxxxxxxxxx
On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 19:19:25 -0500, Overis <g...@xxxxxx> wrote:

They claim abiogenesis is link to evolution.

Well, it sort of is, Skippy. Evolution doesn't concern itself with how
life came to be in the first place

I don't buy that, evolution surely is one long process, to say that
evolution is only concerned about life after abiogenesis makes no sense at
all to me.

Evolution is what *happens* to living things. What happened before there
were living things has nothing to do with evolution.

I think that position is excessively dogmatic, because of a difficulty
in defining "living" in scientific terms - even if you presume that
life only exists in material terms of chemistry and energy in the
industrial sense - so to speak - and not as a separate "vital
principle" which may or may not be material.  The difference between
what is considered to be the earliest life and what existed
immediately before it, is liable to be an arbitrary condition.  Like
the difference between a species flying and gliding.

Rather, say that the story of life on earth is incomplete without a
beginning, but although several plausible theories of a beginning
exist, very little is definitely known.  Some people have imagined
that the planet Earth, being formed terribly heated and sterile, then
having cooled, was infected by a living spore from outer space.  The
origin of such a spore is unknown - to suppose it came from another
living world is only to make the fundamental problem more distant -
but it /would/ allow you to say that the history of life on the Earth
was completely understood, starting with the spore.

And when you speak of "living things", of course you mean distinct
living entities, such as cells.  But the physical identity of living
things is not absolute.  I am currently absorbing oxygen from the
atmosphere.  I process it and it is incorporated into my being.  Most
of it, I suppose, combines with carbon in compounds also in my being,
to produce carbon dioxide, which is exhaled.  Later, the same oxygen
may be released, and then breathed in by you.  And then there's laying
eggs, although that isn't planned in my immediate future.
Nevertheless, that is a matter of the material substance of living
things reforming as other living things.  Or microbes that split
themselves into two clone microbes.

I suppose that life had to come in reasonably coherent bodies for
evolution to occur - or perhaps the formation of distinct bodies is
one of those early steps in the development of life that provides a
fundamental platform for evolution.  For natural selection, there must
be entities, or principles, to be selected discriminately, one to fare
better than another.

Natural history provides an understanding of a world consisting mostly
of runny slime that happened to be alive, that is, to contain living
organisms, and that eventually produced us with no need for divine
intervention, and most theists, I think, are not satisfied to imagine
a god whose act of creation and imagination stops with the slime.  So
I don't think it gives away too much ground to creationists to fail to
declare that the origin of the slime is not a question to be asked of
biologists, and to admit that the biologists don't have an answer that
they're confident of.

The core property for evolution is reproduction with close fidelity. In
so far as that is a property of chemical systems, I am happy enough to
call them alive and allow that is what evolution operates on - by
definition. So to say that evolution has to account for anything other
than the evolution of these sorts of things - which we can call living
things - is silly.

But I am also of the opinion that a process not unlike evolution by
selection accounts for the origins of life, and that doesn't imply cells
or any other benchmark entities - viruses evolve but they aren't alive.
They do, however, reproduce with high fidelity.

All I'm saying here is that the theory of evolution doesn't need to
explain anything apart from living things. If it *can* explain more than
that, and I am of the opinion it very well might, well and good.


Mmm. But the "orthodox" talk.origins position, that abiogenesis is
distinct from the evolution of modern or historic species, is
sometimes argued here unfairly, in my opinion. By "fairly" I would
mean in particular to admit that it is a deliberate choice that this
theory does not embrace the origin of living things, but only their
development, and that the ultimate origin of Earth's living beings is
an intellectually important question and, for obvious reasons, an
obscure one.

All of this I take from the stereotype "conversation" often seen in
t.o, that goes, "I don't accept that the theory of evolution accounts
for the origin of life." Response, "The theory of evolution isn't
mevant to deal with the origin of life, so you're stupid and wrong and
you know it."

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Why Evolution is a metaphysical hypothesis
    ... Your first mistake is confusing evolution with abiogenesis. ... known life and would never arise identically more than once. ... What you need for evolution to occur, is reproduction and errors during ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: The Grand Unified Theory! C and C Please!
    ... classical and living worlds ... This is an abstract description of how evolution ... :> of "Life" comes to mind. ... All the primary variables are complex. ...
    (sci.space.policy)
  • Re: Why Evolution is a metaphysical hypothesis
    ... Your first mistake is confusing evolution with abiogenesis. ... if the first living organism was beamed fully formed straight from heaven. ... and doesn't automatically imply that life has started only once. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Abiogenesis and evolution
    ... Evolution doesn't deal with how life started on this planet. ... If non living material some how comes alive it has evolved from non living matter to living matter. ... somewhere a soup of complex chemicals would eventuate ...
    (alt.politics)
  • Re: Why Evolution is a metaphysical hypothesis
    ... and the theory of evolution is perfectly valid ... Are you seriously claiming that life doesn't exist? ... The three premisses that the conclusion that abiogenesis did occur ... organisms reproductive fitness, ...
    (talk.origins)
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