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>> That you don't brew DNA out of amino acids in ten seconds is also a very strawman model of abiogenesis. Strawman models are for lawyers, not scientists. Do you at least see the problem?

Actually, abiogenesis is a grave problem for evolutionary science, and one which makes the scientists look bad. The stuff about creating "Life in a flask" and such is so pure bulls--t, scientists lose credibility. In fact, although I categorically reject young-earth creationism, I must concede that abiogenesis *is* simply an article of faith.

Creationists: Don't miss a point! abiogenesis is not essential to evolution! Evolution means that natural processes were used in creation, it does not mean that there is no God!

"Creationists: Don't miss a point! abiogenesis is not essential to evolution! Evolution means that natural processes were used in creation, it does not mean that there is no God!"

I would certainly agree here. The reason I don't get upset with 7-day literalists is because... well... I hardly know any. I'm sure that if there are some around, they -will- show up around here :) But the vast number of people I know who do have genuine religious faith have absolutely no problem reconciling evolution as the mechanism for how God engineered the vast variety of animal and plant life, anymore than they have a problem with God creating gravity and nuclear fusion as mechanisms for keeping the Earth warm. They have no problem with the notion that God created life and let evolution as a natural process take it from there. Many of them -do- have a problem with the notion that God didn't create humanity directly. But to me, if one can accept that God had a hand in abiogenesis, I don't see any problem at all with accepting that He put His personal touch on the final product.

Frankly, though, I'm not even willing to say the 7-day literalists HAVE to be wrong either! The whole notion that God put those fossils there in order to test our faith, while it does seem a bit too convenient for my tastes, IS a perfectly self-consistent philosophy. I don't really lose intellectual respect for people until they start preaching philosophies that can't avoid internal inconsistencies.

Qwinn

Actually, abiogenesis is a grave problem for evolutionary science, and one which makes the scientists look bad.

Abiogenesis is a seperate issue from evolution, and thus not a problem at all. It's like how not having a working theory on the ultimate origin of all matter isn't a problem for gravitational theory.

Evolution means that natural processes were used in creation, it does not mean that there is no God!

You're wasting your time. Facts and logic are lost upon the "lack of theory of life origins means that evolution is a sham!" crowd. They're not interested in honest debate, or they'd actually study the theory in the first place.

Actually, abiogenesis is a grave problem for evolutionary science, and one which makes the scientists look bad. The stuff about creating "Life in a flask" and such is so pure bulls--t, scientists lose credibility.

How are you reasoning this? Science simply models and investigates scenarios. What is wrong with doing this? How does investigating the so-far unknown hurt science's credibility?

It is creationists who are uncomfortable with this area of endeavor. To creationists, and not the general public, every aspect of it invokes religious horror, masked in mocking rejection. All ideas within the subject area, even principles already demonstrated in repeated experiments, are mocked as "Just-so Stories." Every experiment (no matter what the actual goal) is a failure because it didn't produce a living cell, or at least DNA. (For one thing, the earliest self-replicators almost certainly didn't have any DNA. For another, no one realistically expects a short lab experiment to fully recreate eons of parallel processing over some large part of the earth.)

These are not reasoned arguments. These are blanket condemnations, Catch-22 games, strawmen.