Abiogenesis

From RationalWiki

Abiogenesis is the process by which a living organism arises spontaneously from non-living matter. Scientists speculate that life may have arisen as a result of a lightning strike in a primordial soup consisting of all kinds of interesting organic molecules floating around in the shallow warm seas of the primitive earth. Experiments have demonstrated that these conditions can produce some complex molecules that could be considered the "building blocks of life", but so far no experiment has produced life itself. Give those crazy scientists a half billion or so years to play,^[1] though, and they might do just as well as nature once did!

1 Evolution and abiogenesis
2 Artificial abiogenesis
3 Creationists and abiogenesis
4 See also
5 References and notes

[edit] Evolution and abiogenesis

Abiogenesis and evolution are two different things. The theory of evolution says absolutely nothing about the origin of life. It merely describes the processes which take place once life has started up.

This is something that Ben Stein is apparently willfully ignorant of.

[edit] Artificial abiogenesis

Craig Venter claims to be on the point of being able to insert a wholly artificial chromosome into a bacterial cell and thus create the first artificial life form. While not complete abiogenesis it certainly moves a long way in that direction.^[2]

[edit] Creationists and abiogenesis

Certain creationists correctly point out that abiogenesis must have taken place at some point to begin the process of evolution. They then attempt to use this premise to "disprove" evolution, claiming that Francesco Redi disproved abiogenesis in 1668.

In fact, Redi did no such thing. He only proved that maggots do not form spontaneously on hunks of raw meat.

The fact that the original organisms posited by abiogenesis are of the kingdom Archaea (and are therefore significantly less complicated than maggots), and that they had millions (or billions) of years on a planetary surface full of organic molecules that was being constantly bombarded by cosmic rays and racked by volcanic eruptions during which to arise, does apparently not occur to most creationists. This leads to stupid ideas like the Peanut Butter Argument^[3].