--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "PaliGap" <compost1uk@...> wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "salyavin808" > <fintlewoodlewix@> wrote: > > > All life on this planet is descended from one cell, a > > hybrid between two types of bacteria - which is all there > > was for billions of years - there would be no complexity or > > consciousness without that one chance event. That is as hard > > a fact as you'll find, religious types can sit around > > dreaming otherwise till the cows come home. > > Well in my (limited) biochemical understanding, bacteria are > themselves made of cells. I believe that they have a few > million nucleotides of DNA. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteria#Cellular_structure > > Surely the question is how did such complex biochemical > machines as these come into existence from 'random stuff'? > > Darwinian evolution, whatever its other merits, is not going > to explain the origin of life. We need a chemical, physical > theory for that. Darwinian evolution *presupposes* an accurate > inheritance mechanism. The mechanism needs to be one that is > sufficiently reliable to further the line, but sufficiently > fallible to allow the odd random mutation. The balance of > accuracy to error probably needs to be rather finely tuned. > > I think I'm with the Robin/Nagel camp (but also impressed by > Michael Behe, James Le Fanu and David Stove): It beggars > belief that from a chemical mush there could spring ready- > formed (and sufficiently robust) a biochemical inheritance > mechanism capable of carrying the weight of a Darwinist > process.
So you think that because something seems unlikely it must have some sort of outside help? Seems to me that just pushes the start point back to some (presumably ineffable) "other" thing. Doesn't help really. Especially as the universe seems full of just the sort of organic compounds with the requisite *potential* for complexity that life would need, but chance still played a massive part, it took billions of years before the accident that allowed for the evolution of complex life, why would a creator leave that potential as a maybe? Why not do it straight away - but I can say that about the evolution of consciousness too. God was really playing dice around here. You can't say that something must have supernatural help because you don't currently understand it can you? Paley said that about the eye and look how wrong he was! > How does goop get to beget and have kids? Or am I missing > something? Nope. But we are all made of sand. I think the big problem with consciousness is going to be accepting that that is all it is, the old habit of thinking "It's so amazing so it must have been designed by something even more amazing" is a tough one to break, it's Darwins great gift.
