On Mon, 07 Aug 2000 21:00:23 -0700 Cliff Lundberg <cliff@cab.com> writes:
> Tedd Hadley wrote:
> >
> > Well, considering that the most single-minded passion of all
> > critters smaller than a breadbox (and most larger) is wolfing
> > down food so that they can reproduce more hungry critters, the
> > idea of having nutrient-rich building blocks lying around long
> > enough to even ponder the possibility of assembly is about as
> > likely as the idea of a box of Twinkies (tm) growing mold at a
> > diet-camp cafeteria.
>
> The concept is clear, but there should be a nice term for it.
> The problem of low-level incipience in the face of evolved
> predators and competitors.
I see another problem with this explanation for why abiogenesis does not
occur today.
The advent of the first lifeform would have indeed placed pressure on the
population of pre-biotic molecules. But this predator-prey dynamic
theoretically would have been naturally selective. Yes, many of the
biomolecules would have perished in the process, but conceivably a few
(or more than a few) should have survived due to their randomly mutating
self-replication. This is especially true since mechanisms for
self-checking replication would not have existed back then. RM would
have been running wild, and so possibilities should have existed where
prebiotics would have biochemically escaped the hunger of the new
lifeform. Perhaps the apparent ability of viruses to elude bacteria is a
modern-day analogy to this hypothetical situation.
Those that did have mechanisms for escaping the new life species would
have kept on replicating, and thus the population of predator & prey
should have reached some type of equilibrium. This would last until the
next development of evolution, in which case the whole process would
theoretically repeat itself until a new equilibrium is established.
So, then, if my logic is not mistaken, evolution does predict that a
population of prebiotic molecules should exist in equilibrium with
present-day species. Of course, extinction does occur but it is my
understanding that evolutionary theory blames extinction, not on the
generation of new species, but on some kind of non-biological event, e.g.
KT impact which killed off the dinosaurs. So, barring any outside
extinctional events, the fact that such prebiotic populations do not seem
to exist anywhere in today's natural world is a mystery.
I thus perceive it as a challenge to Darwinist theory that prebiotic
evolution was, by all appearances, a singularity. Untended, natural
processes don't seem to produce too many singular occurrences. They
instead tend to be regular and repeatable (hence our feeble attempts at
reconstructing pathways to life in the laboratory).
That the advent of the first lifeform was a singularity would seem to
favor ID more than Darwinism. ID'ers have a nice, neat explanation for
such a singularity occurring -- the generation of life on Earth is
according to the choice of the designer(s). If natural processes are
able to produce living organisms, they would need help according to ID.
This assistance would be available only so long as the designer is
pleased to continue it.
Of course, this opens the larger question of whether or not the "will" of
a designer is truly a scientific explanation. I dare say it is more
"scientific" than a Darwinist one since -- unlike Darwinist notions of
life's first origins -- we at least can observe "free will" presently
occurring today. It happens in at least one class of designers, namely
us. We may try to dismiss the ability of choice as some kind of
illusion, but at least we agree there is something about us or else such
dismissals are not necessary.
Steve C.
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