For years around here the evolutionist side of the debate insisted that abiogenesis was NOT part of the theory of evolution. The source information and analysis backed up the assertion quite well.
Darwin neither asked nor answered the question "what is life v non-life/death in nature". He didn't offer a theory of abiogenesis. He took life as a "given" and addressed the speciation. As I summed it up earlier:
What's the deal, PatrickHenry? Has the evolutionist side of the debate now switched horses and accepted the assertion of the numerous (and now banned) posters who argued too passionately that abiogenesis was part and parcel of the Darwin's theory of evolution (and therefore theologically speaking, completely unacceptable to every Abrahamic religion?)
What tree? I've seen this in several posts and it does not ring any bells.
Wow. You walk away for a while, and look what happens. Are you referring to this paragraph?
The modern science of abiogenesis addresses a fundamentally different question: the ultimate origin of life itself. Pasteur had proved that abiogenesis was impossible for complex organisms. Charles Darwin's theory of evolution put forward a mechanism whereby such organisms might evolve over millennia from simple forms, but it did not address the original spark, from which even simple organisms might have arisen. Darwin was aware of the problem. In a letter to Joseph Dalton Hooker of February 1 1871, he made the suggestion that life may have begun in a "warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. present, [so] that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes". He went on to explain that "at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed." In other words the presence of life itself prevents the spontaneous generation of simple organic compounds from occurring on Earth today - a circumstance which makes the search for the first life dependent on the laboratory.What is it about this concept that switches off so many brains?
Let's review some simple concepts, one at a time.
- Evolution is about change in living populations over time.
- Evolution can occur regardless of the origin of life.
- Evolution can occur even if life originates multiple times.
- Evolution can occur even if an outside agency intervenes.
- We have strong evidence that all living things on earth are related by common descent.
- We have good reason to believe that once life exists, the conditions for abiogenesis are unlikely to exist.
- Nothing about evolution excludes or requires abiogenesis.
- Nothing about evolution excludes or requires the direct creation of life.
- Darwin speculated about both scenerios. He did not say one or the other was correct.
- There is nothing about evolution that requires only one of these conjectures to be correct.
I hope separating these concepts into short declatative sentences will at least provide the basis for discussing where your confusion arises.
Nothing's changed that I'm aware of. People can do research into that topic, but it's not evolution. As you know, evolution is what happens when there is reproduction, variation, and selection. I suppose it can apply to some kind of precursor to life, perhaps non-living but self-replicating organic molecules (if that makes sense), but as to how the first self-replicating molecule appeared, that's probably rooted in organic chemistry.
Darwin neither asked nor answered the question "what is life v non-life/death in nature". He didn't offer a theory of abiogenesis. He took life as a "given" and addressed the speciation.
True.
What's the deal, PatrickHenry? Has the evolutionist side of the debate now switched horses and accepted the assertion of the numerous (and now banned) posters who argued too passionately that abiogenesis was part and parcel of the Darwin's theory of evolution ...
Not that I'm aware of. Occasional rhetorical flourishes by a freeper, or even a biologist, don't change the basic nature of a science.
... (and therefore theologically speaking, completely unacceptable to every Abrahamic religion?)
You lost me. Anyway, the answer to that last part is "no" because the answer to the premise was "no."
Are you under the impression that there's some supervisor who dictates to me what I may and may not talk about regarding science? The theory of evolution does not require abiogenesis, but it's an interesting topic in its own right.