>From: Peter Ruest <pruest@pop.mysunrise.ch>
> Howard, I did not claim Leslie Orgel despaired of science, nor did I
> claim his work wasn't worth while.
That's why I asked the _Question_ instead of making any accusation.
> I don't believe there can be a final
> proof that life cannot arise by "natural" means - else I would not have
> proposed God might work through "hidden options" in the history of
> life's origin and further evolution.
I may be misunderstanding you here, Peter, but if life _could_ arise
"naturally" (a possibility that you here say that you cannot exclude) why
would it be necessary for God to exercise "hidden options" that override the
free exercise (not biased by divine choice) of creaturely processes?
> However, I do question that prebiotic Earth's "formational processes"
> were sufficient to produce life on their own. There is a wide-spread
> confidence, nurished primarily by metaphysical beliefs rather than
> scientific data, that the origin-of-life question is solved in principle
> (in the sense that it _has_ happened by "natural" means), and that the
> working-out of the details is just a matter of time.
I do not deny the role of metaphysical beliefs. Your proposal is a good case
in point. What I do argue strongly against is the widespread opinion (one
the you might not hold) that the metaphysical beliefs favoring what I call
the "robust formational economy principle" are necessarily the exclusive
property of maximal naturalism (materialism). There are, in fact,
theological foundations for the same metaphysical belief.
> I just wanted to
> point out that there are _no_ scientific data, beyond some hunches and
> speculations based on the ever-increasing knowledge of the history of
> the Earth and of chemical feasibility, to support that confidence. It
> may very well be that the quest will have to be given up as insoluble.
> It's all a question of the probabilities involved.
Probabilities whose actual values we do not (yet) know.
> If you counter the "on their own" in the above paragraph by saying the
> "formational capability" given the prebiotic Earth by the Creator's
> providence does not support its autonomy, then please give us some
> concrete idea of _how_ God's providence would overcome transastronomical
> improbabilities! Wouldn't it be more appropriate for us to confess
> publicly that we just don't know how life could have originated on its
> own - this, in fact, is the gist of Orgel's review, closing with his
> "The only certainty is that there will be a rational solution."
Of course we don't (yet) _know_ how the first life formed. Neither, in my
judgment, do we _know_ that "transastronomical improbabilities" had to be
overcome -- because we do not _know_ the requisite probability values. I
presume that you have correctly computed the probability values for
achieving certain molecular structures by processes (pathways) of a
specified type. My question, both for you and for other
biochemists/molecular biologists on this list, is: How does one know that
there are no other pathways that contribute substantially higher probability
values for the "natural" achievement of _some_ biologically viable system,
not necessarily identical to the one we have?
Howard Van Till
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