This is simply wrong, and I find Dawkins is getting frustrated and bored of Quinn's ignorance here and isn't even trying, assuming that anyone with an ounce of intellect would see through it, but it seems he overestimated his audience: This quotation says EXPLICITLY that science can NEVER explain the original spark (or sparks) of life, therefore all scientists cannot comment on the matter without a lifetime of theological/philosophical study etc..
Science COULD explain the initial spark of life, just it can't now. C'mon guys! Before Darwin, people said science can NEVER authoritatively explain how something as intricate as the human body could come about without a designer. We sure showed them...
If you want to entrench yourselves at the final hurdle - the spark of life - then by all means do so, but don't expect any sympathy when the next great biochemistry paper comes out.
Have you really??? Then why do I consider that you have not, in fact, done so? Does my simple and deeply rooted skepticism WRT your claim constitute evidence of stupidity, or show me up as a superstitious moron? Most of my objection rests on purely logical grounds.
Why is it "spark of life" questions are always "on the come" with you guys -- despite the fact that this question is not treated by Darwin at all, nor is it a component of his theory? Still you persist in saying, "we don't know yet, but we will know some day"....
Well, that statement may be true, provided that your initial presuppositions/assumptions are correct (e.g., that life has an exclusively physico/chemical basis; or to put it another way, everything that exists is reducible to "matter" and "pure chance"). You're evidently not willing to look outside that framework. Questioning foundational assumptions seems to be the very last thing a doctrinaire neo-Darwinist wants to engage in. So I just think you guys "assume" too much.
You wrote: If you want to entrench yourselves at the final hurdle - the spark of life - then by all means do so, but don't expect any sympathy when the next great biochemistry paper comes out.
Truly, I can't wait to see it.
Thank you so much for writing, TrisB.