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Some foks are interested in an exchange of views, even with people they disagree with, and some just like sharpening their skills with the ad hominem.

You're wasting your time with the latter.

By the way, I agree with the "chemical soup" view of the origins of life, just as I believe in the "lump of iron" view of the origin of diesel engines. You start with a lump of iron, and inject energy and information (technology, plans, intelligent directed effort) and voila', an engine.

The chemical soup works the same. Its more than just the zap of electricity, because even single cell organisms are actually small single-cell machines, with moving parts. Pretty interesting, really. With an internal transmission of information and control.

Thank God for marron! Thank you, marron, for your reply!

The chemical soup works the same. Its more than just the zap of electricity, because even single cell organisms are actually small single-cell machines, with moving parts. Pretty interesting, really. With an internal transmission of information and control.

And if any of our correspondents here or the snipers over at Darwin Central actually took a few minutes to read and comprehend what betty boop, cornelis and I have been saying on this thread - they would understand that we, like you, simply want a complete investigation of abiogensis v biogensis, i.e. not just the physicochemical.

By the way, I agree with the "chemical soup" view of the origins of life, just as I believe in the "lump of iron" view of the origin of diesel engines. You start with a lump of iron, and inject energy and information (technology, plans, intelligent directed effort) and voila', an engine.

Great observation, marron! Here we are referred back to Aristotle's four causes: the formal (plan, blueprint, or schematic that specifies the design of the phenomenon "engine"), the material (the physical stuff used in its construction), the efficient (intelligent directed effort to realize the the intended phenomenon according to plan), and the final (the purpose or goal for which the phenomenon "engine" is being built). That's a heck of a lot of information at all four causal levels.

Seems to me the "chemical soup" scenario of the origin of life is directly analogous: It is a staggering improbability that the material cause alone can create a living cell, even adding an efficient cause (light, electricity, and so forth).

Ontological materialists reduce all of the universe to simple matter. That's all they've got to work with. And yet all systems in nature, living and non-living, are made up of the same exact particles and fields. Matter alone gives us no insight into what makes a thing a living thing.

Thanks for your excellent essay/post marron!

...even single cell organisms are actually small single-cell machines, with moving parts...With an internal transmission of information and control.

I would love to sit down with someone who makes such investigations his pursuit, who could describe for me in layman's terms what can be observed and what has been understood, and where this knowledge is leading to in the continuing discovery!

Thank you for your post: I know it wasn't addressed to me, but I admired it, and it awakened this delight in me, and a desire to reply.