RobertE Wrote:Mister Agenda Wrote:It is definitely not a component in the sense (universal common descent) you're implying. An organism could be found tomorrow completely unrelated to other life on earth, and it wouldn't affect the theory of evolution in the slightest. It would just mean life began more than once. It would mean there are two trees of life. Universal common descent is merely a probabilistic conclusion supported by the fact that we've yet to find life that is not genetically related to all other life.
It would be a wonderful find, even though it would almost certainly be unicellular, that would shed much light on the science of evolution and the origin of life.
It is a weird thought to be honest Mister don't you think? Should scientists be able to recreate the big bang and the primordial soup with the right conditions, they could create life, or am I on the wrong train of thought here?
It may be impossible to create life in the lab just by mimicking the initial conditions. There would have been millions of separate opportunities for it to happen and it took millions of years. Even if it was nearly inevitable (had to happen eventually given enough time), we can't provide that many opportunities and that much time in a lab.
As an analogy, there are over six billion possible bridge hands. We know for a fact that all of them will turn up eventually, but if we wanted a lab to simulate that happening, they would have to do it digitally rather than have a team of scientists shuffling actual cards for years.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.
