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The closest you came to jumping together all at once by chance was a long-ago and not-so-chance encounter of an egg and a sperm. The thing that resulted was not exactly you.

Actually, it was "me," VR. And I wouldn't say that "chance" was responsible -- at least once there was a fertilized egg (I mean, my parents might never have met in the first place.) Anything I ever became subsequent to that "long-ago encounter" was captured and specified in that instant. It just needed time to play out, plus free will (choices made or not made) so to make me recognizably the person I am today; and all preceeding and succeeding developments of "me," from the moment of conception until the day I die.

You will doubtless recognize this insight as mainly Platonic and Christian in inspiration; but I imagine Aristotle would have agreed with it, too -- he who explained to us what a "formal cause" is, in logic.

For someone who isn't all that interested in abiogenesis, you seem to "defend" it in principle as being at least possibly true and valid. Well sure, anything's "possible" given infinite time. But evidently infinite time is not what we have to work with. The biggest critics of the theory that life arose from non-life happen to be the mathematicians these days. Such men as Chaitin, Yockey, von Neumann, Hoyle, et al., have advanced trenchant arguments against it. Yet I am not aware that life scientists have made much of an attempt to refute them on the merits of their arguments. At least not so far.

Also I note that there's nothing in Darwinist evolutionary theory that says anything about the origin of life, as you have already pointed out. Why, then, do so many of the same people who accept Darinist theory insist that life got statrted by abiogenesis?

The biggest critics of the theory that life arose from non-life happen to be the mathematicians these days. Such men as Chaitin, Yockey, von Neumann, Hoyle, et al., have advanced trenchant arguments against it.

But not mathematical ones. Gosh, I wonder why that is?

Yet I am not aware that life scientists have made much of an attempt to refute them on the merits of their arguments.

Gee, would that be because they have proposed no testable hypotheses?

Also I note that there's nothing in Darwinist evolutionary theory that says anything about the origin of life, as you have already pointed out. Why, then, do so many of the same people who accept Darinist theory insist that life got statrted by abiogenesis?

Because they understand science, although they don't insist on it (that's a simpleminded Creationist projection) but they do tend to accept it as the most likely cause and they are pursuing that whole research thing you've probably heard of and wondered at.

Actually, it was "me," VR.

I was crediting you with more growth than that. ;)

And I wouldn't say that "chance" was responsible -- at least once there was a fertilized egg (I mean, my parents might never have met in the first place.)

Some chance, but not at the "all your aminos needed to jump together at once" level. Zygotes happen all the time.

Anything I ever became subsequent to that "long-ago encounter" was captured and specified in that instant.

All the forces and influences that would shape the present you were somehow contained in the world somewhere. I'm a determinist myself, having invented it as a teen-ager before I knew the word. (Turns out I got beat to the idea, though.) Most of those forces weren't in the proto-you, however. Only your genetic makeup was in "you" then. The environmental factors were in their own version of formation for their later collison with the ever-forming and growing you.

I suppose you have pictures and memories of much of that, but I bet there are gaps, too. We have a seven-year-old you and a seven-and-a-half-year-old you, but where are the transitionals? But I digress...

It just needed time to play out, plus free will...

You seem a bit conflicted here. Your free will is an illusion, meat-puppet. Your own words convict you.

For someone who isn't all that interested in abiogenesis, you seem to "defend" it in principle as being at least possibly true and valid.

I can tell when someone is paying less attention to its content than I am even as that someone flails at the idea. I don't see my real points addressed here, so I'll try again.

If you don't know all the ways a thing happened, you simply cannot assign a probability to its existence.
There is no magic "combinatorial" model for assigning meaningful probabilities to the occurrence of complex objects. They almost never happen by jumping together all at once from tiny elements. No one thinks they do.
You should really think before posting that "billion billion" strawman again.

Such men as Chaitin, Yockey, von Neumann, Hoyle, et al., have advanced trenchant arguments against it.

You'll never rebut abiogenesis flaunting mathematicians and a crackpot astronomer. The field has a real subject area, real experts, real studies, a real literature. If you're going to be the one who destroys it, you can't bypass that. There is no shortcut.

Real thinking on (the first replicator, the first cell, the first anything complex):

Bootstrapped from simpler but similar forms.
Employs sub-assemblies which can be stable or semi-stable. "Half a cell is dead and will decompose" is another strawman.
Massive parallelism of experiment.
Retains successes.
Lots of time available.

That kind of thing.

Also I note that there's nothing in Darwinist evolutionary theory that says anything about the origin of life, as you have already pointed out. Why, then, do so many of the same people who accept Darinist theory insist that life got statrted by abiogenesis?

Not a lot of alternatives there, really. Raelians and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Thank you so very much for your excellent essay-post!

The biggest critics of the theory that life arose from non-life happen to be the mathematicians these days. Such men as Chaitin, Yockey, von Neumann, Hoyle, et al., have advanced trenchant arguments against it. Yet I am not aware that life scientists have made much of an attempt to refute them on the merits of their arguments. At least not so far.

I'm not sure all of the life science disciplines are equipped to deal with mathematical theories. Physicists, certainly - biologists, it may take some time.

There exists an unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural world (Wigner) - which can also be seen in reverse, e.g. dualities, mirror symmetries, S-dualities (Vafa.) But fleshing out the math in the physics and vice versa is not the same as putting a hypothesis to empirical test.

Sometimes, as in Reimannian geometry, the mathematical theory precedes a physical application of it.

And in my very earnest opinion, the Shannon mathematical theory of communications is particularly applicable to molecular biology - and in the end, will have much to contribute to the abiogenesis investigation even though Shannon surely could not have anticipated such an application.

That is the beauty of mathematics.