Replies

You said:
Darwin's presupposition, his very theory is built on "omne vivum ex vivo" which IS the Law of Biogenesis.

I said:
AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

I think I should expand on that cry of anguish.

What you called "Darwin's presupposition," that "his very theory is built on" which is supposed to be "omne vivum ex vivo" and "which IS the Law of Biogenesis" is actually not his presupposition. Nor is it what his theory is built on.

Darwin never said "omne vivum ex vivo," either in Latin or in English. Betty Boop said it, and in post 299 of a different thread she explained that it came -- not from Darwin -- but from someone named Yockey. In that post, BB also said:

Of Darwin's view of the matter, Yockey writes: "[Darwin] believed that life appeared by some wholly unknown process, and therefore [its origin] is undecideable."
[snip]
Darwin essentially takes the "origin" or "essence" of life for granted. He is saying his scientific theory is independent of it; which is a very good thing, because it is "undecideable" or "unknowable" anyway.

That's a fair statement of Darwin's position. But it's very far indeed from "omne vivum ex vivo." Yokey doesn't attribute the concept of "omne vivum ex vivo" to Darwin, nor does he attribute those words to Darwin. Nor should you (in my always humble opinion).

That said, it's clear -- at least to me -- that "omne vivum ex vivo" isn't, as you stated "Darwin's presupposition," nor is it the case that Darwin's "very theory is built on 'omne vivum ex vivo' "

One further point. The "Law of Biogenesis" is not a law recognized by biologists. It appears primarily in the literature of creation "science," and as far as I know it has no scientific standing at all. I suspect that if you took a poll of biologists, it would show that most of them believe that life does indeed originate from non-living material, but in some way not yet discovered. This is, of course, the exact opposite of "omne vivum ex vivo."

So before you incorporate that erroneous tidbit into your superb archives of scientific information, from which it might appear in future threads, I hope you will reconsider the accuracy of that statement.

From a post by Dimensio:

I submit five hypothesis regarding the origin of the first life forms.

a) Natural processes occuring entirely upon earth resulted in chains of self-replicating molecular strands that eventually became the first life forms.
b) Aliens from another planet and/or dimension travelled to this planet and -- deliberately or accidentally -- seeded the planet with the first life forms.
c) In the future, humans will develop a means to travel back in time. They will use this technology to plant the first life forms in Earth's past, making the existence of life a causality loop.
d) A divine agent of unspecified nature zap-poofed the first life forms into existence.
e) Any method other than the four described above led to the existence of the first life forms.

From a post by Dimensio here.

After some combination of a) through e), the theory of evolution works just fine.

Thank you for your reply! However, your arguments are completely beside the point.

We all agree that Darwin did not address abiogenesis v biogenesis.

The term omne vivum ex vivo literally means "no life without antecedent life."

It was coined by William Harvey (1578-1657) who believed animals and plants to spring from what he terms a "primordium vegetale," a phrase which may nowadays be rendered "a vegetative germ" "Biogenesis and Abiogenesis" (1870) by Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) from Nature vol. 2: 400-406

Darwin’s theory takes life as a given and then proceeds to explain speciation in a continuum of life descending from a common ancestor. It is visualized as a tree of life.

Think about it – that literally is “life from antecedent life” - omne vivum ex vivo. He obviously presumed “life from life” from the get-go.

Again, think about it, if he had theorized life springing from non-life, his theory would not have been a continuum, an evolutionary tree of life, explaining speciation from a common ancestor. There would not be common descent and the tree would look like a field of grass.

I am astonished when others do not acknowledge this blatant irony. “Life from life” is the necessary presupposition for Darwin’s entire theory and it also happens to be the law of Biogenesis.