Different kinds, different circumstances, different processes.
Science was correct in calling alchemy (including its belief that lead could be transmuted into gold) a collection of little more than old-wive's tales and myths.
And yet, with a particle accelerator, it is today possible to irradiate a lead target and convert, via nuclear physics, some of the lead atoms into gold atoms. But that's done via methods that bear no resemblance whatsoever to those the alchemists were dabbling with. It neither vindicates the alchemists, nor invalidates modern nuclear physics.
Similarly, the fact that ancient peoples believed that unliving material could give *sudden* origin to living creatures (i.e. flies "arising" from rotting meat, mice from moldy grain, fruit flies from rotten fruit, rats from sewage) was rightfully disproved as ignorant superstition.
But this hardly invalidates the idea that some form of extremely simple chemical replicators could manage form from vast oceans of chemicals over vast periods of time, and that once a replicating system beings reproducing itself, its products will vary, the variations in the products will lead to differential success, and differential success will lead to change over time (and the more time, the more change).
This is the very definition of intellectual bankruptcy.
Actually, what's truly "intellectually bankrupt" is trying to compare "garbage gives birth to rats within days" to the modern fields of abiogenesis and evolution and then pretending that you've made any sort of point worth making.
What a great analogy - alchemy vs. irradiation! I'll be using that someday.Biology teaches that spontaneous generation is an outdated myth, and yet continues to teach spontaneous generation (life from chemical soup) as truth.
Different kinds, different circumstances, different processes.
Science was correct in calling alchemy (including its belief that lead could be transmuted into gold) a collection of little more than old-wive's tales and myths.
And yet, with a particle accelerator, it is today possible to irradiate a lead target and convert, via nuclear physics, some of the lead atoms into gold atoms. But that's done via methods that bear no resemblance whatsoever to those the alchemists were dabbling with. It neither vindicates the alchemists, nor invalidates modern nuclear physics.
Similarly, the fact that ancient peoples believed that unliving material could give *sudden* origin to living creatures (i.e. flies "arising" from rotting meat, mice from moldy grain, fruit flies from rotten fruit, rats from sewage) was rightfully disproved as ignorant superstition.
But this hardly invalidates the idea that some form of extremely simple chemical replicators could manage form from vast oceans of chemicals over vast periods of time, and that once a replicating system beings reproducing itself, its products will vary, the variations in the products will lead to differential success, and differential success will lead to change over time (and the more time, the more change).