Quote from piezoe:
This is key: "were [the emergence of life] not an obligatory manifestation of the combinatorial properties of matter, it could not possibly have arisen naturally."
Which I quote from Jem's post above, although, curiously, Jem doesn't seem to understand what this means.
A very satisfactory and rigorous proof that entropy is the driving force for evolution has already been published by Vogel. Therefore both organisms and virus must evolve. They have no other choice. Furthermore, Orgel's experiments proved unequivocally the evolution of organisms. Left to be yet determined are the details of the transition from inanimate components to simple lifeforms. Though viruses are not organisms, they may hold the key to understanding this transition. Some think that earliest lifeforms were based on RNA rather than DNA, and the NIH is funding research aimed at finding RNA catalysts, which may have early on in evolutionary time served the roles later played by protein enzymes. Quite a number of RNA catalysts have already been found.
There is good evidence for the existence of multiple, parallel evolutionary pathways, and the number of these may be, or have been, astronomically high. At this point in our knowledge, there is no reason to suppose that new life forms, most of which would be virtually identical to those already existing, are not currently, spontaneously arising on Earth .
It is virtually certain that life very similar to that on Earth exists on other planets in other solar systems and that all lifeforms are carbon based. Dewar showed in his paper provocatively entitled "Why Life Exists" that life based on elements other than carbon is unlikely.
One must bear in mind that the combining of chemical elements is not haphazard, but rather highly organized and specific, so that the laws of Chemistry and Physics are obeyed. Recognition of this takes us full circle back to the Quote, originally quoted by Jem, that began this post.
Things are not nearly so complex and unfathomable as supposed by those 21st Century believers in the supernatural, that is to say those with irrational faith in religious concepts.
1. I respect your contribution... it was the first real one I have seen from the otherside in a few years.
2. In many of my comments to the band of et atheists I explained that Crick the founder of DNA suggested Panspermia as the way life got started on earth.
3. were [the emergence of life] not an obligatory manifestation of the combinatorial properties of matter, it could not possibly have arisen naturally."
When I read that I see that as an argument for directed evolution.
Then the question becomes who set up the matter to evolve into life.
