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To: Stultis
your complaint that no "pre-biotic soup" has been observed "in nature". Vade was simply pointing out, in a manner that you did not happen to grasp, that even if it did form under current conditions, we would never know it as it would be "eaten" (metabolized by ubiquitous micro-organisms).

So we have no "material" evidence of a "pre-biotic soup", yet it is necessary for the paradigm so is assumed. And this is different from faith in what way?

490 posted on 02/23/2002 6:23:22 AM PST by AndrewC
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To: AndrewC
So we have no "material" evidence of a "pre-biotic soup", yet it is necessary for the paradigm so is assumed.

The "pre-biotic soup" is not a necessary assumption. That life began is axiomatic. If that's faith, it's a faith everyone on earth shares. Kumbaya!

492 posted on 02/23/2002 6:35:09 AM PST by Nebullis
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To: AndrewC
And this is different from faith in what way?

We can create abiotic conditions in the laboratory (since they don't exist in nature anymore) and we get can get complex hydrocarbon soup in fairly short periods of time. A week or so, not billions of years. With a small flask, not a whole ocean.

So, you think what a whole abiotic planet and lots of time might do.

Is that faith or just a rational model with a skoach of imagination? Before you take off on "imagination = faith," look at gore3000 woodenly assuming that each scrap of fossil bone is all the evidence there ever is or was for the reconstruction of said fossil. That's a failure of imagination, not faith.

Look at Frumious B's original argumentum ad walnut that the lack of pre-biotic soup today proves something. Faith he has. Imagination he has not.

Here, I answered, "Do you find it interesting that if you set out fresh bread, meat, milk, butter, or cheese, something large or microscopic or in-between will eat it?"

Frumious's rather jaw-dropping response:

Wouldn't happen if the lifeforms that eat these foods didn't exist. So your question really has nothing to do with the ID vs evolution debate.
When the other side does that, I want to thank them for making it so clear what's going on. Not that you're sure what it is that's going on, but it can't be good.

Stultis was analyzing this curiosity when you chimed in, "'So we have no 'material' evidence of a 'pre-biotic soup', yet it is necessary for the paradigm so is assumed."

Factually incorrect, O Accuracy-Obsessed one.

497 posted on 02/23/2002 6:53:00 AM PST by VadeRetro
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To: AndrewC
So we have no "material" evidence of a "pre-biotic soup",

Not yet, but wait until the moons of Jupiter and Saturn are examined. If there's liquid water under the ice, there is a very good chance of either prebiotic soup or life itself.

525 posted on 02/23/2002 10:10:12 AM PST by Virginia-American
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To: AndrewC
So we have no "material" evidence of a "pre-biotic soup", yet it is necessary for the paradigm so is assumed.

Actually, it is not. The origin of life being an unsolved problem, there are a number of theories (or proto-theories) out there. Some of them hypothesize a "pre-biotic soup" of some sort (and I presume these differ from theory to theory); others don't. I would imagine, as layman in these matters, that life probably formed in some kind of solvent medium, most likey water, but I wouldn't close off other possibilities. We know, for instance, that some of the simpler amino acids are created naturally in interstellar dust clouds.

And this is different from faith in what way?

The only faith here is that common to all scientific fields: That any well reasonably well defined problem concerning the behavior or history of the natural world is potentionally soluble, and might explained by some theory consistent with what we otherwise know about the laws of nature.

717 posted on 02/24/2002 11:57:57 PM PST by Stultis
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