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To: cornelis

Discovery ( as opposed to laboratory replication) of the origins of life is extremely unlikely, for reasons outlined by Darwin in 1870.

What we may be able to demonstrate is a series of natural processes that can lead to life. The possibility that what we discover in the laboratory is the actual path taken in our history is both remote and unimportant.

Worrying about the one and only history of life is like worrying about the Brownian paths taken by each and every molecule of the air you breathe.


1,856 posted on 09/30/2006 11:46:28 AM PDT by js1138 (The absolute seriousness of someone who is terminally deluded.)
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To: js1138
I understand your position.

Darwin's reasons are cryptic, brief. He was more interested in natural selection and so on.

So we must look elsewhere in the consideration of origins. I don't think questions of origins are unimportant. For example, I think it is an profound conclusion to say certain aspects are unkowable. But this much is clear to me: the study of biological processes can proceed without a theory of origins; but this is no reason to say that life originated independent of biological processes.

1,859 posted on 09/30/2006 12:03:38 PM PDT by cornelis (Fecisti nos ad te)
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To: js1138
Worrying about the one and only history of life is like worrying about the Brownian paths taken by each and every molecule of the air you breathe.

I've analogized it to worrying about whether the Vikings got here before Columbus, and if any other Europeans did it too, and if so, precisely what routes they took. Interesting to think about, but it doesn't matter, really. Columbus is the one who made all the difference.

1,860 posted on 09/30/2006 12:13:50 PM PDT by PatrickHenry (When the Inquisition comes, you may be the rackee, not the rackor.)
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