Origin of Life: new commentaries (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, March 06, 2011, 15:46 (4990 days ago) @ David Turell

David has drawn our attention to what may or may not be an exciting discovery ... a meteorite with fossils of life from elsewhere.
 
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/03/05/exclusive-nasa-scientists-claims-evidence-ali...-Comments from Robert B. Sheldon-http://www.rbsp.info/rbs/RbS/cv.html -Unfortunately, the Robert B. Sheldon reference was just a CV ... or did I miss something? -It'll be fascinating to see if eventually there is consensus on this among all the scientists, but we've heard of similar sensations before, so perhaps we shouldn't get TOO excited. If it turns out to be true, what are the implications? The suggestion that life on Earth was seeded from somewhere in space doesn't solve the problem of origin, but one can already hear the arguments:-1) Theists will say there's no reason why God shouldn't have created life all over the universe, and it's still too complex to have assembled itself. However, those theists who have hitherto claimed that life on Earth is unique, and God has a special purpose for us humans, will certainly have to rethink, unless they claim that all life throughout what you call "a much larger biosphere" was geared to us. Quite literally more and more far fetched?-2) Atheists, meanwhile, will claim that the discovery vindicates their belief that with, say, 50-100 billion galaxies in the universe, "the spontaneous arising of something equivalent to DNA" (Dawkins) is inevitable, not just on one planet but on millions.-Of course neither side can prove anything, but purely for the sake of satisfying our unending curiosity, this will be a major piece of the vast jigsaw puzzle ... if it's true. Many thanks to David for spotting it and sharing it.