tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post8636573080760786569..comments2024-02-29T03:57:00.088-05:00Comments on The Mermaid's Tale: Spontaneous combustion! How life began, how life begins.... Part I.Anne Buchananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09212151396672651221noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-67450667183701796842012-06-09T05:53:56.656-04:002012-06-09T05:53:56.656-04:00If I understand your comment, there are no straw m...If I understand your comment, there are no straw men, tropes, or disagreements, really. Spontaneous generation is life emerging where there was no life. We were attempting a bit of humor in this post.<br /><br />Modern science would argue as you have, that this is strictly a chemical phenomenon arising whenever the right combination of molecules, energy, etc. are present.<br /><br />Many religious groups ('deists' for example) have argued that God started everything and let it thereafter run its course.<br /><br />Nobody nowadays thinks that ready-made organized life arises spontaneously, as it was speculated for a long time, in the past, was the case. And I agree that any new rudimentary life would be absorbed, assuming it were the same kind of life we're made of. And I've said elsewhere if not also in this series that the idea of a single location for life's terrestrial origin (ponds and pools).<br /><br />As to what Darwin said, I'd have to go back and check.Ken Weisshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02049713123559138421noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-85453592960813447262012-06-08T19:15:16.326-04:002012-06-08T19:15:16.326-04:00As a part time student of astrobiology I find this...As a part time student of astrobiology I find this a curious post. It sets up strawmen only to knock them down or in some cases not, so consistently as it seems like tropes rather than descriptions.<br /><br />Just for the record, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis" rel="nofollow">spontaneous generation has been duly rejected.</a> Instead astrobiologists recognize the ubiquiteness of chemical evolution, which can't exactly repeat generation of worms. (I assume that is what the next post will describe.)<br /><br />And the transition from chemical to biological evolution is rarely if at all claimed to have happened once. In fact I believe already Darwin, who speculated in a "warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. present", recognized that " "at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed". <br /><br />Darwin left the question of universal common ancestry open, because at that time it couldn't be tested as it has been today (common genetic machinery, say). Even so, most astrobiologists recognize that many early abiogenesis attempts were likely to have happened before or during the one or ones that alone or mutually combined to originate our established UCA.Torbjörn Larssonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13304729731231255545noreply@blogger.com