To: TimF who wrote (916906 ) 1/25/2016 12:04:13 PM From: Brumar89 Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1573954 Making amino acids artificially is irrelevant. Its only a piece of the puzzle, but not an insignificant one.. Its not irrelevant. I think it is irrelevant for two reasons. One, making them artificially is intelligent design and manufacture. Two, they're only a raw material for making proteins which in turn are raw materials used in living things. Amino acids are to life as wood pulp is to books or silicon is to programmed chips. The real issue is how the recipe for making proteins out of amino acids began to be encoded symbolically in arrangements of nucleic acids. If they did that, then you would find something else to be the real issue. Their are many issues. Some of which are well understood, some not so much. On the contrary, I'd have to admit software systems could originate by undirected chemistry.If anything making amino acids artificially would be evidence that intelligent design is required even for that basic step. They were not designed. They took gasses that were reasonably common in the past, added some energy, and the amino acids formed. There were not blueprinted, or assembled. You mean the researchers weren't trying to make amino acids? Of course they were. They may not have known the exact amino acid they'd get but they were shooting for something. They designed their experiment accordingly to produce amino acids of any sort. BTW that "took gases that were reasonably common" may not be right ... I seem to recall the early ideas about the early earth were offbase, but I'm not going to look into it ... like I said, amino acids aren't that important anyway. apparently you're arguing that's the only thing that IS impossible. I'm not 100% sure I understand what you mean. I'll respond to what I think you mean - Showing that something is literally 100% impossible (with 99.9 followed by as many 9's as there are subatomic particles in the universe still not being 100%), is likely impossible (but I can't show it to be so :). Showing that something is extremely improbable, not so much. But even the later requires knowledge and evidence, you can't just say "we don't know how it happened therefore its extraordinarily unlikely that it did happen". You need something else to back up a claim like that. Mere skepticism - "No one's shown me how it can happen, and I don't believe it did", is more defensible. Of course the other side is similarly free to be skeptical about your ideas; including, but not limited to, my skepticism of your belief that life probably can not arise by non-life. It's a waste of time arguing this. I will say that you may not know it but your belief that life can arise from nonlife by simple undirected chemistry is a belief founded in faith.