English Deutsch Français Italiano Español Português 繁體中文 Bahasa Indonesia Tiếng Việt ภาษาไทย
All categories

The law of biogenesis:

Pasteur's (and others) empirical results were summarized in the phrase, Omne vivum ex vivo (or Omne vivum ex ovo, Latin for "all life [is] from life", also known as the "law of biogenesis". They showed that life does not currently spontaneously arise in its present forms from non-life in nature.

The "law of biogenesis" is not to be confused with Ernst Haeckel's Biogenetic Law. [1] [2]

No life has ever been observed to arise from non-living matter. However, the Miller-Urey experiment did show that amino acids, and other subsequent organic compounds, can be synthesized from simple carbon atoms in the early earth conditions.

From wikipedia.org

2006-11-15 02:29:52 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture Religion & Spirituality

Oh JP once again you jump to conclusions based on incomplete data. The Miller exiperiment is still questioned by many scientists and for a long time completely reputed due to lack of evidence. In other words Miller stacked the deck. He used the circular reasoning that "well this is what we need to do to create amino acids, so this is what the Earth must have been like, so it is this Earth that created the amino acids"

Recently there is more evidence to suggest that Miller could have been right about early Earth bu nothing has been confirmed. And it still leaves the glaring gap that amino acids do not imply life.

In other words, an amino acid is not alive.

2006-11-15 02:52:59 · update #1

4 answers

I think it is likely that some form of energy sparked life from the basic building blocks of our current life forms. I do not call that energy "God".

2006-11-15 02:34:49 · answer #1 · answered by Kathryn™ 6 · 1 0

Pasteur's 'law' was a theory -- the best analysis of the available information. We've since obtained new information (from Miller-Urey and other similiar experiments), as well as new geological and chemical information about the earliest conditions on earth. Physical chemistry shows that the formation of self-reproducing DNA, RNA, and proteins are possible in the conditions of earth (again, witness Miller-Urey). So the philosophical implication is not of 'biogenesis' which is disproven, but 'abiogenesis', which removes on more 'gap' that a deity is needed to fill in science.

Will we ever know if the first self-reproducing system was RNA or protein based? Probably not. Is a deity required to start life though? No.

---------

Miller-Urey is simply the best known of the experiment. Many, MANY others have replicated the same setup and come to the same results. There have been other experiments that were similiar but not the same and still yielded the same results.

One amino acid is not life. Is two? Probably not. How about 100? Still probably not. But if those 100 are a peptide chain that catalyze the formation of still others like it? Does that make it life? If life is the ability to absorb energy from the environment and use it to the ends of reproduction, then yes, such a protein would in the most very basic sense be 'alive', despite its global version of metabolism.

In short, give me your distinct definition of life and I'll gladly show you the experiments that lead up to that point.

Either way, you accuse me of circular logic while using it yourself by implication -- "Do we know how life started? No. God must have done it. How do we know god exists? Life started, so it must have been god!" Otherwise, you would have agreed with my admission that humans will probably never know exactly how life started on this planet. The implication that you did not is that you believe you know how it happened.

Mr. Kettle, this is Mr. Pot. Mr. Pot, Mr. Kettle.

2006-11-15 10:34:13 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 2 0

Since we know for a fact that the earth originally had no life, since its early history was utterly incompatible with any life form; and since life is now present on earth; there are only two possible explanations. Either living things came to earth from extraterrestrial sources; or life arose on earth from non-living matter already present on earth (with or without the action of God - this question is irrelevant to the scientific view). I think the latter explanation is surely the more likely one.

2006-11-15 10:50:59 · answer #3 · answered by PaulCyp 7 · 0 0

This is kind of like the "tree falling in the forest" question.

Just because no one has seen or no one has heard something does not mean it does not exist.

This type of reasoning is a reflection of the arrogance of human beings and in part the reason we are in the "fix" we are today.

2006-11-15 10:35:52 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

fedest.com, questions and answers