RE: Argument #1: Transitional Fossils
April 22, 2014 at 7:51 pm
(This post was last modified: April 22, 2014 at 7:54 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(April 22, 2014 at 7:38 pm)Coffee Jesus Wrote: I thought the Miller-Urey experiment was evidence for abiogenesis.
Miller Urey experiment shows critical steps towards life can occur spontaneously in conditions simulated in the experiment. The conditions simulated in the experiment was thought at the time to be a reasonable approximation of the condition was likely prevalent on earth 4 billion years ago.
Unfortunately subsequent geological discoveries strongly indicates the conditions on earth 4 billion years ago was different in critical ways from the condition simulated in miller Urey experiment.
Also miller Urey experiment didn't show all critical steps would occur spontaneously.
So miller Urey experiment showed hurtles for abiogenesis is not as great as previously imagined under certain conditions. But it didn't add much to understanding of how abiogenesis might have actually happened on earth.
Modern research into abiogenesis on earth have concentrated on deep sea geothermal vents, where conditions are totally unlike what was simulated in miller Urey experiment.
The thinking about the site of Abiogenesis on earth have shifted from a warm sun lit pond on the surface of the earth to boiling hot water vent under great pressure in absolute darkness at the bottom of the sea, swirling in sulfur and other noxious chemicals.
So modern thinking is life was not born in something like Eden, but started in what is very much like hell. Not for nothing is the era when life began called hadean.
So tell Christians start of life had nothing to do with god.