(July 15, 2014 at 3:43 pm)Rhythm Wrote:(July 15, 2014 at 3:31 pm)SteveII Wrote: My genetic material came from the same man that yours did. That would be fact. Before that?...now you are into theory.That fact is all that modern synthesis deals with. "Before that" falls under the purvey of other explanations, other theories. How do you know that your genetic material comes from the same man as mine? Also, where did his genetic material come from?
Quote:My assumption? Since the more we realize how complex life really is, the more unlikely there are alternative methods to getting to that point. Scientist can't figure out how the origins of life came about when they have all the ingredients sitting on the table. Imagine having multiple sets of independent building blocks of life.We know that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Carbon chauvinism has been out for awhile now. In the case of our lives, it's not an issue of likelihood or probability, again, evolution is an observation, not just a good guess based on how likely we think something might be (or unlikely). I love imagining multiple sets of building blocks for life, we just don't see that here - but nothing prevents it from being so, and we also know that. Silicon is a candidate (and we see alot of chemistry in our carbon based life that leverages silicon), as are other elements, and adding complexity is just useless, life doesn't have to be carbon based, nor does it have to be as complex as our own to qualify as life. Once you do away with that unnecessary qualifier a whole host of other "building blocks" become candidates.
How is that assumption looking now?
I should have learned by now not to use words like assume in this forum. Word choice notwithstanding, I have seen no discoveries of life existing that does not share the same building blocks, so my point still applies--we should expect to see vast similarities between all living things if we share the same building blocks.