[Cicero]

It's taken about 50 years to find a barely possible way in which Miller's suggestion about how life arose spontaneously from the protoplasmic soup could possibly have worked. And after 150 years they're still trying to find a single instance that would confirm Darwin's theory of general evolution.

Talk about religious faith in an impossible dream.

[tortoise]

It's taken about 50 years to find a barely possible way in which Miller's suggestion about how life arose spontaneously from the protoplasmic soup could possibly have worked.

Has been known for some time that proto-cellular organic structures bootstrap in the metal and carbon rich minerology of hydrothermal systems in the Western US. A great many key structural parts of simple organisms are catalytically formed in these systems, and provide a fair amount of insight into just how much of primitive cellular organisms can be trivially bootstrapped in natural chemical systems. It is worth noting that these systems are quite rare on the surface of the earth; the handful of ones in the mountain west of the US which show this activity are among the few currently known on the planet. It takes very specific minerologies and geologies that are stable for tens of millions of years to create these types of bootstrap factories in nature. Crude oil is also rapidly manufactured in some of these systems.

[adam_az]

"It's taken about 50 years to find a barely possible way in which Miller's suggestion about how life arose spontaneously from the protoplasmic soup could possibly have worked."

Big deal, it took us a million and a half years to figure out powered flight, if you want to look at it that way. Now it's 100 years later, and we are planning on colonizing the moon. Patience, grasshopper. 50 years ago, we didn't have a lot of the tools we have now. Like evolution, science grows on the successes of the past, incrementally.

[LoneRangerMassachusetts]

The only thing more far fetched than the belief that life arose spontaneously from some primeval soup is the belief that some omnipotent being revealed himself and his seven days of labor to a bunch of Jews in a desolate hot-as-Hell desert.

Too many con-artists who have claimed to have spoken to God have been proven to be frauds or maniacs. The rest are confused, delusional, or self-righteous manipulators.

The Bible may be a great manuscript guiding moral conduct, but the magic is too much to take.

One point on the original post. If the conditions were ripe for a primeval soup to brew life, what are the chances these conditions would naturally repeat?

[donh]

It's taken about 50 years to find a barely possible way in which Miller's suggestion about how life arose spontaneously from the protoplasmic soup could possibly have worked.

Huh. And it took about 250 years for the Church to accept that the Earth goes around the sun, and stop murdering those who said so.

And after 150 years they're still trying to find a single instance that would confirm Darwin's theory of general evolution.

An instance that would pursuade a dyed-in-the-wool creationist, I assume you mean.