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Thanks for noticing, tpanther! I'd love to have Filo give me a description of the mechanism or process by which inert, unaided, lifeless matter bootstraps itself into life and intelligence. But he seems to have changed the subject.

Funny, yours isn't the question that was asked either.

For the one that was actually asked (how intelligence arose), my answer is sufficient although a bit more research into the details would do anyone a world of good.

As for abiogenesis, well, that's really not within the realm of evolution.

Once the living material exists evolution provides the answer to how it becomes trees and rabbits and stupid 'thumpers with ease.

As for abiogenesis itself, there are numerous competing theories on that - all of which take into account the relative ease with which nature produces amino acids and others of life's building blocks and the various means by which these may have assembled themselves into self-replicating systems.

After that, life is really just a matter of definition.

But, unlike evolution, those various methods are still just theories and are likely to remain that way for some time.

For the one that was actually asked (how intelligence arose), my answer is sufficient ...

Not at all. Actually you danced with the rate and why, not the how; again, reading really is fundamental and would do you a world of good.

You've proven nothing but just how helpless you are, in some 230+ posts. Nothing new to see here, just the same old tired liberal projections.

per ususal.

As for abiogenesis, well, that's really not within the realm of evolution.

Another debunked liberal myth. Of course evolution is completely dependent on origins, which is why Darwin called his book ORIGIN of species.

It all has to start somewhere and evolution does not exist within a vacuum, despite how desperately liberals wish it did!

Filo, the question I asked was: "...how intelligence could arise from a random cause."

Darwin's macroevolution theory presupposes random causation plus natural selection. And I gather you worship at the temple of Darwinist orthodoxy, piling it on top of a materialist/naturalist/physicalist worldview. On this basis, you could give a rate and a purpose in answering my question (even though Darwinian orthodoxy says that nature has no real purpose, just the appearance of purpose). But you didn't tell me how matter bootstraps itself into life and intelligence.

To say I mentioned nothing about "life" in the formulation of my original question (and therefore its restatement wasn't the "same" question) isn't a reasonable complaint. For intelligence presupposes life: Only living systems in nature possess intelligence (in some form or other).

I am well aware that abiogenesis "isn't within the realm of evolution." At least Darwinists tend to insist on this. But the fact of the matter is even Darwin speculated about the "warm little pond scenario".... Abiogenesis would answer every desire of the materialist insisting on natural causation exclusively, in support of any plausible account of the origin of life that does not involve God. This is why abiogenesis is so desirable (especially to atheists), and will probably be taken seriously as a "reasonable" hypothesis — even in the face of zero evidence — from now till the cows come home.

And life is really NOT "just a matter of definition." It's a matter of existence. No matter what the definition, Life is something we all personally, intimately experience. And when it is absent, i.e., at physical death, we can absolutely tell the difference.

My final point would be, if you do not know what Life is, or from whence it came, but you can come up with a "theory" that it "evolves," pray tell, in what way does this tell us anything at all about what it is that is doing all the evolving? Shouldn't a theory that is supposedly about biology have something to say about the nature of its very subject?

As matters presently stand, for all intents and purposes, Darwinism deals with the behavior of an unknown or undisclosed entity. Somehow, I don't find that sort of thing terribly helpful.

Yet I wonder whether the origin of life is a question that science can answer. For one thing, Life per se is NOT a "direct observable." And no human now living would have been there to see it anyway.

Your thoughts, Filo?