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To: Tribune7
and the obvious failure of such attempts, should they be made, would have no impact whatsoever on science.

It seems they have an impact. Abiogenesis has fallen as a science. Getting life to sponateously arise from chemicals is akin to transmuting lead into gold. Except success is exponentially less likely.

Do you suffer the impression that you can make something true by saying it over and over? The official Tree of Life, not exactly a sideshow to biological sciences, has just been revised at its root due to mutational distance studies of the ribosomes of all the ancient microscopic families. Woese's work, upon which this revision is based, shows that prokariotes are not, in fact, the oldest lifeform. In fact, Ribosomal backvectors suggest that something way older than cellular life had to be the precursor even of thermatoga, the current longevity champ.

You are free to dislike abiogenesis, but you are not free to proclaim that it has fallen as a science without being quite properly dismissed as a delusional crank.

609 posted on 06/14/2002 1:37:18 PM PDT by donh
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To: donh
You are free to dislike abiogenesis, but you are not free to proclaim that it has fallen as a science without being quite properly dismissed as a delusional crank.

And you're quite free to waste your years -- or even 3*10^19 if you had them -- trying to get life to spontaneously arise from a chemical soup.

617 posted on 06/14/2002 8:58:09 PM PDT by Tribune7
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To: donh
Actually, according to Morowitz 3*10^19 years wouldn't even be enough. Sorry.
618 posted on 06/14/2002 9:00:43 PM PDT by Tribune7
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To: donh
And actually, if through some leap of knowledge we were to get life out of chemicals it wouldn't be spontaneous, would it?
619 posted on 06/14/2002 9:05:36 PM PDT by Tribune7
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