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To: LiteKeeper
Pasteur proved, and others have confirmed that abiogenesis is impossible.

No, Pasteur proved that enormous multicelled creatures - maggots, IIRC - do not spontaneously form from meat left in a jar within a few weeks.

Abiogenesis is the theory that organic chemicals came together & formed autocatalytic or cross-catalytic relationships that kept replicating themselves, thus keeping their existence above the general "chemical noise". If so, some of the principles of evolution would apply here, though it's really still just chemistry. Eventually (maybe even several million years later) some such catalytic molecular colonies excreted bubble-like bags around themselves, thus segregating into individual metabolic entities. ("AKA cells.") These cells continued to reproduce themselves, and only at that point does biological evolution per se enter the picture, because only then do the self-replicating entities begin to fit the traditional definition of "living organisms".

This has nothing to do with Pasteur, nor with any "Law of Biogenesis". The Biogenesis Police keep pulling abiogenesis over, but he keeps getting it thrown out of court.

229 posted on 08/28/2002 1:23:43 PM PDT by jennyp
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To: jennyp
I will not grant your claim for anything other than discussion. But, if what you claim is true, and at this point it is purely supposition, there is a more basic issue which must be discussed: where did the information come from to make all of this happen. Micro-biologists tell us that the instructions for life reside in DNA. If so, where did the first DNA get the information it needs to instruct the cell to replicate? And while you are answering that question, how does the DNA interpret the information it contains? And still deeper, once it interpret the information, how does the cell know how to imploy the information that it interprets?
234 posted on 08/28/2002 1:34:34 PM PDT by LiteKeeper
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To: jennyp
No, Pasteur clearly said, "Life cannot come from non-life." Complexity is not the issue, "life" itself is the issue.
235 posted on 08/28/2002 1:35:42 PM PDT by LiteKeeper
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