[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

One of the most important but most little-discussed reasons for Darwin's unwillingness to address this problem is this issue:

If there was a "primordial soup" in which a collection of molecules "spontaneously formed life," what did the first cell of life consume?

One of the most rock-solid qualifications we have for what constitutes "life" is that all life forms must consume organic matter in order to survive. No living thing that we know of can survive by eating sand or stone, etc.

Did the earliest life forms not need to consume organic matter? And, if so, how did we "evolve" to need to consume organic matter? Wouldn't it be a far greater advantage in 'survival of the fittest,' in adaptating to changes in environment, not to need to eat? If this is the case, then this orgin-of-life theory would conflict with Darwin's theory of evolution. That is, we'd have to believe that one of the strongest survival traits known to life existed only for the first generation and then suddenly disappeared (devolved) in every generation since.

And don't bother going on about the quasi-life forms (half alive, half inorganic) forms emitting light at the bottom of the ocean. The least trace of organic, biological function is still life, even Democrats.

[bobdsmith]

No living thing that we know of can survive by eating sand or stone, etc.

What about sunlight?

[Virginia-American]

One of the most rock-solid qualifications we have for what constitutes "life" is that all life forms must consume organic matter in order to survive. No living thing that we know of can survive by eating sand or stone, etc.

This is not true. Autotrophs another reference