You're serious? Evolution does not depend on the success or failure of biogenesis? Um, if biogenesis fails, there would be no life to evolve. There has to be a connection. You meant something less obvious than what was stated?
That is simplistic. Live is unquestionably here.
The method by which life started is independent of the theory of evolution. Here is a good illustration, from a post by Dimensio:
I submit five hypothesis regarding the origin of the first life forms.From a post by Dimensio here.
a) Natural processes occuring entirely upon earth resulted in chains of self-replicating molecular strands that eventually became the first life forms.
If, as you say, common descent "rests squarely on a specific view of the origin of life", then only one of the above hypothesis can be true for common descent to have occured. Please identify which of the five must be true for common descent to have occured, and explain why any two of the other options would prevent common descent from occuring.b) Aliens from another planet and/or dimension travelled to this planet and -- deliberately or accidentally -- seeded the planet with the first life forms.
c) In the future, humans will develop a means to travel back in time. They will use this technology to plant the first life forms in Earth's past, making the existence of life a causality loop.
d) A divine agent of unspecified nature zap-poofed the first life forms into existence.
e) Any method other than the four described above led to the existence of the first life forms.
You're serious? Evolution does not depend on the success or failure of biogenesis? Um, if biogenesis fails, there would be no life to evolve. There has to be a connection. You meant something less obvious than what was stated?
Sorry if I wasn't clear. I meant that *explanations* of evolution and abiogenesis don't stand or fall together. I was using "abiogenesis" as a shorthand for "the field of science which deals with the origin of life" or "the theory of the origin of life", not the actual origin itself.
As you correctly point out, evolution wouldn't have much to work with if life hadn't first originated. ;-)
What I meant is that evolutionary biology explains how living things change over time regardless of where or how life originated -- if various theories of natural biogenesis turn out to be wrong and instead life was, say, planted here by aliens, that wouldn't invalidate what we know of how (and by what process) life has changed once it got here.
Similarly, if we someday discovered something horribly wrong in our understanding of evolution, it wouldn't help or hurt any existing knowledge we had gained (or hypotheses we had about) the original formation/arrival of life itself.