One more atheist questionnaire add-on question...
Posted on: February 13, 2010 - 4:41am
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One more atheist questionnaire add-on question...
Hello again, here is another add on question to the questionnaire (I swear this is the last one)...
What is your most convincing theory for the origin of life?
From what I've studied thus far the best answer I could give would be that it started either with a primodial soup in oceans or lakes, or that it came from somewhere else in space via a metor or asteroid, or that it started in volcanos. Let me know if you would like to elaborate on these or add something completely different. Thank you all for your time and responses. 
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I think you have a fundamental problem with the question as posed here and so far. The term "most convincing" doesn't appear in science, and this is a scientific question. So far, your questions have been primarily regarding theology and philosophy. But if I have any area of expertise here at RRS, this may be it. So if you can rephrase somehow, so that personal favorites don't play into it, I'll answer tonight. Are you asking the most widely accepted theory among scientists, or the most recent, or what?
I like the "Replicating Crystal" theory in Richard Dawkins The Blind Watchmaker. Why? because its the only one I've read. I really don't know much about these things but there's my answer.
I find this question a bit odd, because in this day and age, abiogenesis is kind of a non-issue.
With any study of material science at a molecular level, and biochemistry, the differences between inorganic and organic just aren't there- I believe that's what Dawkins was getting at.
Studying it, it becomes implicitly obvious that there are many ways it can happen.
Pondering this is like opening your cereal and finding it full of ants, and then puzzling about the exact path the ants took to get there- out of millions of possibilities through your cupboard and around your house to the many ant nests outside.
The bottom line: There were ways for the ants to get into your cereal, and they did it- who cares how? As it turns out, mostly just creationists who think a god had to put them there, and who believe the fact that we don't have the road map of how those particular ants got into that particular cereal (despite it being readily apparent that there are many way they could) proves that it was the act of a deity.
There are a few scientists who are curious about it for more reason than to shut up those people, but for the most part, it seems better to focus on more useful applications of biochemistry than wasting resources to recreate events long past.
Evolution is a force very much like gravity- it doesn't just apply to living things, but all information systems; this has been long evident.
I'm not sure if that helps you understand the question, or its underwhelming [lack of] significance, but there it is.