Phagocyte wrote:
Preston wrote:
Life arising from non-life is proven science? Links please. I'm agnostic, but...
Yes, it is proven science.
I think that's an overstatement.
Phagocyte wrote:
http://www.chem.duke.edu/~jds/cruise_chem/Exobiology/miller.html
This, and related astronomical work showing the presence of organic molecules, including amino acids, in space only shows that the most basic building blocks of life can be generated without the active assistance of an intelligent designer. It doesn't yet show how you get from those building blocks to life. That question is still open over 50 years after the Miller-Urey experiment . I see no merit in the creationists' claims of irreducible complexity, so I see no obstacle in principle to a scientific explanation, but if that exists already, I haven't heard of it yet.
Cairns-Smith's clay model is, as the article says, an example of the
kind of model that can fill the gap the creationists claim, because it suggests a possible series of intermediate steps that can be selected, instead of going to life as we see it today in one giant leap, but this specific model hasn't been widely accepted. I haven't followed theories of abiogenesis closely enough to tell you where this field has gotten to.