Evolution and natural selection can apply to any cyclic process. In fact can you draw a hard line between the "self replication" of life and the replication that a river undergoes? Rivers change and are subject to selection pressures. Life is set of competing chemical cycles. So is a river. Abiogenesis will likely be another set of competing chemical cycles. And the lines we draw between all these cycles are arbitrary.
I completely agree with this. It is however important to be concise when we speak. So the correct way to speak of this experiment might be to speak of abiogenesis as the initiation of the process of evolution rather than evolution itself.
**) that leaves the hypothesis inorganic turned organic somewhere under some condition(s). Therefore the search for abiogenesis is not a search for if abiogenesis.
If you have all the pieces of a puzzle except one, you can usually see the picture. That last piece is needed, but it isn't going to change what you are clearly looking at.
Are you saying the one unsolved piece of a theory with otherwise overwhelming evidence keeps the theory in doubt?
http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/jarrett/talks/LiU/sci_method_2.html
I think he was remarking on the fact that there are millions of people who will certainly use any excuse to question the theory of evolution.
The answer is certainly: "Only dozens of times a day, right here on this forum alone". But, of course, Paul had only reasonable people in mind.
This isn't exactly correct. Free floating RNA molecules reproduce themselves, just less efficiently. Which brings up another point athon made, the change from organic molecule to living thing occurs by the process of evolution.
While it is often argued about what is and isn't living, this analogy is pretty faulty. The river isn't replicating, it is part of the hydrologic process of the planet.
Hello new person with the Christian symbol on your post. Welcome to the skeptical community. We are discussing facts so if you have some you specifically have evidence to challenge, feel free to post them. Most of us love a challenge.
From Shermer's definitions (the above link)
I like that, but I use the terminology "overwhelming evidence" since calling something a "fact" gets some people off on semantic sidetracks. The bottom line is we benefit from using terminology that does not imply to the lay public that there is a greater degree of uncertainty than there actually is. Those with an agenda to refute scientific findings "have a predatory relationship with the scientific language of uncertainty", (Rick Piltz, Director, Climate Science Watch, Government Accountability Project, and former Senior Associate, U.S. Climate Change Science Program, in a Congressional oversight hearing investigating the suppression of science on global warming.)
Geeze I'm retarded sometimes. Now I get it.
I wasn't suggesting the river was alive. I was saying it's a chemical cycle that will be at the other end of the spectrum from life, with abiogenesis being somewhere in between. There's a large number of chemical cycles happening on Earth on various timescales. Life is one of them and the boundaries we draw between them are arbitrary. Extreme ends of the spectrum, like life versus river, are easy to distinguish between. But in between there are no boundaries and there is a lot of overlap.
I didn't follow what DrKitten was saying but things are not as simple as one might hope. It is worth reemphasising that the phrase "theory of evolution" has different meanings for different readers and different contexts.
