Okay, if they insist. Asked for a way of describing that, we would call it… creationism. Look, it’s okay with us. We are not the Darwinian Wokestapo. Say on:
Of course, all this depends on the everything-first idea proving correct. Szostakʼs protocells and the new biochemical insights have won over many researchers, but some pieces of the puzzle are still missing. Perhaps the most persuasive argument is that the simpler ideas donʼt work. As is the case with many things in life, the beginning was probably more complicated than we had thought …
Many ideas have been proposed to explain how it began. Most are based on the assumption that cells are too complex to have formed all at once, so life must have started with just one component that survived and somehow created the others around it. When put into practice in the lab, however, these ideas donʼt produce anything particularly lifelike. It is, some researchers are starting to realise, like trying to build a car by making a chassis and hoping wheels and an engine will spontaneously appear. The alternative – that life emerged fully formed – seems even more unlikely.
Yet perhaps astoundingly, two lines of evidence are converging to suggest that this is exactly what happened. It turns out that all the key molecules of life can form from the same simple carbon-based chemistry. Whatʼs more, they easily combine to make startlingly lifelike “protocells”. As well as explaining how life began, this “everything-first” idea of lifeʼs origins also has implications for where it got started – and the most likely locations for extraterrestrial life, too…
Of course, all this depends on the everything-first idea proving correct. Szostakʼs protocells and the new biochemical insights have won over many researchers, but some pieces of the puzzle are still missing. Perhaps the most persuasive argument is that the simpler ideas donʼt work. As is the case with many things in life, the beginning was probably more complicated than we had thought. Michael Marshall, “A radical new theory rewrites the story of how life on Earth began” at New Scientist (paywall)
“More complicated than we had thought?” But wait, weren’t we just told that the origin of life was not complicated but was rather a Big Bang?
It’s basically a rehash of many wishful theories, united by a single drive: To somehow get an origin of life out of a mindless cosmos. The best thing about such theories is their inventiveness.
See also: The Science Fictions series at your fingertips – origin of life What we do and don’t know about the origin of life.