Do the rovers have microscopes capable of seeing Martian single celled bugs? Do they have life detection experiements on them?
The Martian ambassador has agreed to destroy all of Mars's WMDs. The Democrats state that our invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with it and it won't make us safer anyway.
I guess I should be excited. Don't know why I'm not. I figure that because of cost they "have to" find something :')
Speculation was rife on Monday that space scientists were on the verge of announcing they had discovered evidence that Mars was once a wet and warm planet, possibly capable of sustaining microscopic life forms...Evidence of rocks or soil that formed in water would help validate scientists' theories that for the first half of its 4.6 billion-year existence, Mars had plentiful surface water -- even rain and snow -- and possibly, life. Opportunity and Spirit, now in sol 57 on the other side of the planet, were designed to search for signs of water for at least 90 days, or as long as their solar-powered batteries last."
A basic definition of Abiogenesis is: the chance origination of life from lifeless matter.
When abiogenesis comes up in the course of creation/evolution debates, darwinists
sometimes object that "abiogenesis is a non-issue, and has nothing to do with evolution,
because evolution only occurs with living things." ...Not true. There is a scientific term
--"pre-biotic evolution"-- which concerns evolution of biochemicals leading up to life.
And if abiogenesis is such a "non-issue," then why do Dawkins, Gould and many other
major darwinists trouble themselves to explain how it must have happened?
Why such excited headlines over the possible evidence of life on the Mars rock?
Why all the money and effort spent by SETI, and NASA (most recently on the Mars Rover probes), and many others to find life in space? (...or to find water, which --to many-- almost equals life). This is admittedly NASA's main reson for the effort. And why does every newly discovered planet (or moon) that might have water on it cause such a hopeful stir?
Oh, abiogenesis is a big issue, alright, because materialists (who believe that matter alone is real --and not intelligent spirit-beings) need a materialist explanation for the origin of life, which supposedly then evolves to higher forms. The late Carl Sagan once said that if only one planet has life on it, that could be a miracle; but if there is life on two (or more), it proves life to be a natural evolutionary process, and atheists can sleep soundly.
Sagan and others have advanced this point of view, even though it is not a valid conclusion to say that abiogenesis is "proven" by the mere presence of life in space ...or on earth for that matter. --The only issue is how that life could have originated.
Spontaneous Generation Redux
For more than one hundred years biologists have taught that spontaneous generation of life from non-living matter (believed in by the ancient Romans) was disproven by the work of Redi, Spallanzani, and ultimately Pasteur in 1859. This work was so conclusive, that biology codified the "Law of Biogenesis," which states that life only comes from previously existing life. ---However, in recent decades, it is quite amazing to consider that "modern" abiogenesis protagonists have actually revived spontaneous generation (in a biochemical form) in the minds of many biologists! This revived "creation myth" is tenaciously (almost irrationally) adhered to despite the lack of a convincing body of evidence to show that abiogenesis did happen --and not even with a coherent schema of biochemical mechanisms and pathways to theorize and demonstrate how such spontaneous generation could have a reasonable probability of occurring.
In contrast, however, Intelligent Design (ID) theorists (and creationists), think the probabilities and facts of nature come down in favor of ID, and against abiogenesis. --ID upholds the Law of Biogenesis, since the original source of biological life would be a living designer.
A good number of the major darwinist web sites address this issue, and my darwinist friends have brought pro-abiogenesis articles to my attention ---including, for example, one by Ian F. Musgrave, which can be found at the following web address:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/default.htm and also the article, "From Primordial Soup to the Prebiotic Beach," with an interview of evolutionist biologist Dr. Stanley L. Miller (who did the electric-discharge experiment discussed below). The URL is :
http://www.accessexcellence.org/RC/miller.html (This includes other articles in support of abiogenesis.)
All The Answers
To hear some scientists (such as Carl Sagan) tell it, one would almost think that evolutionists virtually have the loose ends all tied up concerning the origin of life from chemicals (abiogenesis).
---What's the recipe? ---Basically: "Take one warm planet and just add water." Many of these people think abiogenesis obviously occurred on earth, and must be happening repeatedly throughout the universe. Some of the media buzz about the results of abiogenesis research creates the almost deceptive impression and hope that science has all but proven it to have happened. --But if this is true, then why don't advocates write up the schema of how it could happen (not necessarily how it did happen), and turn it in to the "Origin of Life Prize" committee and collect the $1 million for doing so? ---Not only that, but there will surely be a Nobel Prize waiting for them.
