James Le Fanu: Why Us? (The limitations of science)

by David Turell , Sunday, July 12, 2009, 21:07 (5611 days ago) @ xeno6696

Right on! Here we are full agreement. But: we will never know 'for sure' how life originated. We can find methods in the lab that may mimic it, but that will be by the intelligent design of the scientists, and may not be the actual historical method. We cannot know the original method with certainty. - 
> If there is more than one possible chemical pathway that leads to the scientific theory of abiogenesis--much of your theological argument here is weakened. Each pathway found and correctly verified increases the likelihood of life arising without any interference or design whatsoever. (Doesn't disprove a creator, mind.) It means that creating life isn't as difficult as we would think. This is part of the reason that I find very few metaphysical positions that support a creator. - I agree with your conclusion in the above paragraph but I really don't accept the premise you have accepted. I think we can 'mimic' some of the process, but cannot ever create life de' novo. We know how DNA is coded and are currently finding out some of the purpose in iRNA and eventually will know all of how iRNA works, but the challenge is to create DNA/RNA from scratch and get the right information into that system without copying what we see now. Remember no living organism lives without an innate code. Devise the coding from scratch, not by copying it from our knowledge of it.