As Wolfgang Pauli (one off the luminaries of Quantum Mechanics) said, "That argument is so bad it's not even wrong!".
First off, I personally believe that life is impossible to have come into existence by chance.
Fine. That's an opinion. Everybody's got one.
I base that on my self-education of the complexity of life
You think I know nothing of it?
Is Bugs Bunny a hare or a Rabbit? Why?
What does glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase do?
What is the Krebs Cycle? What does it do?
How does cyanide kill? Why?
What is that stuff that makes (most) plants green? What is it contained in in (most) plants?
and the many chicken-egg problems re. its origin as well as the opinion of people like Hubert Yockey and others.
Name 'em.
However, let's set that "impossible" issue aside since I know I won't be able to convince you of that. I'm just going to go for convincing you the odds against it happening by chance are very high and the occurrence of life by chance is very very rare.
Scientists say that all life on earth is of common descent. The same genetic code with only slight variations in all life is one argument in favor of that. That implies life has only come into existence once in the 3.8B years life has existed on earth.
So? If it only happened once you'd expect only one basic code, wouldn't you? While you're at it, come up with another chemical structure that will perform its functions. Because if there is no other, you're STUCK.
Even if it originated more than one time in earths history, all but one line of life died out.
1. Prove it happened more than once.
2. If only one basic structure would work (and we see only one that does), any new biogenises would simply be absorbed into the existing one, wouldn't they?
If life had come into existence many many times over the last 3.8B years, its likely more than one line would have survived.
Why? Prove that.
How about: Maybe what you see IS the result of multiple biogeneses. There are forms of life known now that would even 30 years ago have been considered impossible.
Or: The forms inevitably would have things they both competed for: chemicals, light, space, ...
Only one form survived.
Furthermore if life could come into existence by chance easily and often, we'd be seeing it happening around us.
Nobody ever said "easily and often".
At least we'd see evidence around us it had happened.
You do.
So there are the arguments that life occurs very very infrequently and the odds against it happening are very very slim.
I'm saying there is a stream of lotteries we've won. The origin of life is one.
3.8 billion years is time for lots of lotteries. Particularly when millions of lotteries are happening at once.
And its reasonable to believe the winner of a stream of lotteries is the beneficiary of a rigged game.
How can you possibly know? You probably won't make 100 years. How can you say what can happen in 100 million years? |
