Another blog comment caught up in moderation.


Of course they don't; if we knew that, we wouldn't need to do science to figure it out!

If by "it" you mean the original organism that constituted The Origin of Life, you can't "figure it out", you have to have "it".   It was a real, living organism, it wasn't some speculative, generalized organism.  You can't theorize an organism like that in the same way you  can a subatomic particle (theorized on the basis of available EVIDENCE, lest you forget) or even a relatively recent "transition" species between birds and reptiles (based on EVIDENCE of similar morphology, etc., lest you forget).   You've got nothing to go on.  That makes a difference.

If there's one thing you can be certain of the Origin of Life, it's that the first organism was unlike any of its descendants in that it wasn't generated from another organism but from non-living matter.  I am not willing to believe that its chemistry or other aspects of it are very much like far, far later organisms and the basis of that fact.  I doubt that, as your fellow ideologues kept insisting, that it contained DNA because I would not believe any original organism that did could have come about by anything but intentional design.  It would have been miraculous if it, and the RNA necessary for it to replicate, not to mention the other cellular mechanisms necessary for it to produce anything, were all present in that original organism that came about spontaneously without a design.  I think the original life was far different and that that biochemistry evolved in its descendants over hundreds of millions and billions of generations.

<i> I also, frankly, find your obsession with abiogenesis to be very creationist-like. </i>

MY obcession!  I didn't even bring it up, "Owlmirror" did.  From the first comment here I pointed out how bringing it up would allow creationists to support their contention with it, not because the argument is valid in terms of science, but it is in terms of logical discourse. You don't get to bring something into an argument to try to support your case and then pick and choose aspects of that to suit your side.   I did my best to undermine the usefulness of it to creationism by pointing out that it's unknowable to anyone in terms of science, it's unknown by creationists and to  scientists-in-their-own-minds.

I hope someone looks at this thread to see how the new atheists have an impenetrable mind set that is, in fact, as obsessed with creationists as one of my very distant cousins was with communists.  I've seen it before, especially in Daniel Dennett who couldn't stop himself from accusing real scientists, many of them committed materialists and atheists, of looking for "sky  hooks" when they pointed out some rather massive flaws in his diddling around in the parts of science,  where it was they and not he who had proven competence.

Eric, there's a large difference between being obsessed with something and coming up with some rather obvious and rather simple truths about it and not being willing to accept nonsensical tripe denying them.  Not having any evidence at all of the Origin of Life sort of stands out like a sore thumb.  Not to mention that Miller-Urey was the product of intelligent design.  The real question is why you sciency folk didn't happen to notice either of those OBVIOUS FACTS.