Researchers: Life didn’t just hang on but throve 3.5 billion years ago

10 Replies to “Researchers: Life didn’t just hang on but throve 3.5 billion years ago”

1. 1
   bornagain77 says:

   February 9, 2019 at 6:17 pm

   You got to love Darwinian theory, it can predict everything and be falsified by nothing. They predicted that life took a long time to evolve from some prebiotic soup. When that prediction failed, well by golly, they predict that life must be very easy to evolve from some prebiotic soup. Small problem, not only do Darwinists unexpectedly have life appearing on earth as soon as it was possible, but now Darwinists do not even have their hypothetical prebiotic soup to appeal to anymore.

   Dr. Hugh Ross – Origin Of Life Paradox (No prebiotic chemical signatures)- video (40:10 minute mark)
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=UPvO2EkiLls#t=2410

   “We get that evidence from looking at carbon 12 to carbon 13 analysis. And it tells us that in Earth’s oldest (sedimentary) rock, which dates at 3.80 billion years ago, we find an abundance for the carbon signature of living systems. Namely, that life prefers carbon 12. And so if you see a higher ratio of carbon 12 to carbon 13 that means that carbon has been processed by life. And it is that kind of evidence that tells us that life has been abundant on earth as far back as 3.80 billion years ago (when water was first present on earth).,,, And that same carbon 12 to carbon 13 analysis tells us that planet earth, over it entire 4.5662 billion year history has never had prebiotics. Prebiotics would have a higher ratio of carbon 13 to carbon 12. All the carbonaceous material, we see in the entire geological record of the earth, has the signature of being post-biotic not pre-biotic. Which means planet earth never had a primordial soup. And the origin of life on earth took place in a geological instant” (as soon as it was possible for life to exist on earth).
   – Hugh Ross – quote as stated in preceding video

   Here is a little honesty as to the ‘small problem’ of life that they hand waved off as no big deal.

   An Open Letter to My Colleagues – James Tour – 2017
   Excerpt: We synthetic chemists should state the obvious. The appearance of life on earth is a mystery. We are nowhere near solving this problem. The proposals offered thus far to explain life’s origin make no scientific sense.
   Beyond our planet, all the others that have been probed are lifeless, a result in accord with our chemical expectations. The laws of physics and chemistry’s Periodic Table are universal, suggesting that life based upon amino acids, nucleotides, saccharides and lipids is an anomaly. Life should not exist anywhere in our universe. Life should not even exist on the surface of the earth.17
   http://inference-review.com/ar.....colleagues

   “We have no idea how the molecules that compose living systems could have been devised such that they would work in concert to fulfill biology’s functions. We have no idea how the basic set of molecules, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins, were made and how they could have coupled into the proper sequences, and then transformed into the ordered assemblies until there was the construction of a complex biological system, and eventually to that first cell.
   Nobody has any idea how this was done when using our commonly understood mechanisms of chemical science. Those that say they understand are generally wholly uninformed regarding chemical synthesis. Those that say “Oh, this is well worked out,” they know nothing, nothing about chemical synthesis – Nothing!
   Further cluelessness – From a synthetic chemical perspective, neither I nor any of my colleagues can fathom a prebiotic molecular route to construction of a complex system. We cannot figure out the prebiotic routes to the basic building blocks of life: carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins. Chemists are collectively bewildered. Hence I say that no chemist understands prebiotic synthesis of the requisite building blocks let alone their assembly into a complex system.
   That’s how clueless we are. I’ve asked all of my colleagues – National Academy members, Nobel Prize winners -I sit with them in offices; nobody understands this. So if your professors say it’s all worked out, your teachers say it’s all worked out, they don’t know what they’re talking about. It is not worked out. You cannot just refer this to somebody else; they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
   James Tour – one of the top ten leading chemists in the world
   The Origin of Life: An Inside Story – March 2016 Lecture with James Tour
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zQXgJ-dXM4

   Origin of Life: An Inside Story – Professor James Tour – May 1, 2016
   Excerpt: “All right, now let’s assemble the Dream Team. We’ve got good professors here, so let’s assemble the Dream Team. Let’s further assume that the world’s top 100 synthetic chemists, top 100 biochemists and top 100 evolutionary biologists combined forces into a limitlessly funded Dream Team. The Dream Team has all the carbohydrates, lipids, amino acids and nucleic acids stored in freezers in their laboratories… All of them are in 100% enantiomer purity. [Let’s] even give the team all the reagents they wish, the most advanced laboratories, and the analytical facilities, and complete scientific literature, and synthetic and natural non-living coupling agents. Mobilize the Dream Team to assemble the building blocks into a living system – nothing complex, just a single cell. The members scratch their heads and walk away, frustrated…
   So let’s help the Dream Team out by providing the polymerized forms: polypeptides, all the enzymes they desire, the polysaccharides, DNA and RNA in any sequence they desire, cleanly assembled. The level of sophistication in even the simplest of possible living cells is so chemically complex that we are even more clueless now than with anything discussed regarding prebiotic chemistry or macroevolution. The Dream Team will not know where to start. Moving all this off Earth does not solve the problem, because our physical laws are universal.
   You see the problem for the chemists? Welcome to my world. This is what I’m confronted with, every day.“
   James Tour – rated one of the top ten leading Chemist in the world
   http://www.uncommondescent.com.....nt-design/
2. 2
   PeterA says:

   February 10, 2019 at 5:36 am

   “Actually, that doesn’t quite follow. There could have been very special conditions at the beginning. And, absent very special conditions, maybe life just would not originate at all.”
   Ok, forget all those special conditions.
   What about near-perfect conditions in a lab?
   Has anybody done it yet?
   Humpty Dumpty issue?
   Really? Still don’t get it.
   But we believe those just-so hand waving fairytales?
   What a gullible species we humans are.
   Shame of us.
3. 3
   bornagain77 says:

   February 10, 2019 at 5:58 am

   delete
4. 4
   bornagain77 says:

   February 10, 2019 at 6:05 am

   In further rebuttal to their claim that “life should be common in the Universe”, they simply do not have any evidence to support their ‘prediction’ that “life should be common in the Universe”. As Dr. Ross noted in November, “with a database of 2,888 planetary systems and 3,877 planets, only one planetary system and only one planet possess the characteristics that the possible existence of advanced life needs. It requires little effort to discern the identity of that single planetary system and single planet.”

   (Our) Rare Solar System Gets Rarer – Hugh Ross – November 5, 2018
   Excerpt: Astronomers have detected and measured the mass and/or orbital features of 3,869 planets in 2,887 planetary systems beyond the solar system.1 This ranks as a staggering rate of discovery, given that the first confirmed detection of a planet orbiting another hydrogen-fusion-burning star was as recent as 1995.2 What do the characteristics of these systems reveal about potential habitability for advanced life?,,,
   How many of the known multiple-planet systems exhibit these life-essential features? The answer for the 638 known multi-planet exoplanetary systems is zero.13 How about the known exoplanetary systems where only one planet has been discovered? Of these 2,249 systems, they either lack a cold Jupiter closer than 14 times Earth’s distance from the Sun or the planet they contain possesses characteristics that would rule out the possible existence of another planet in the system capable of sustaining advanced life.
   The presumption back in 1995 was that astronomers would find many exoplanetary systems where the probability of advanced life possibly existing in that system would be greater than zero. More than twenty-three years later, with a database of 2,888 planetary systems and 3,877 planets, only one planetary system and only one planet possess the characteristics that the possible existence of advanced life needs. It requires little effort to discern the identity of that single planetary system and single planet.
   https://www.reasons.org/explore/blogs/todays-new-reason-to-believe/read/todays-new-reason-to-believe/2018/11/05/rare-solar-system-gets-rarer

   In fact, the planetary systems discovered thus far are turning out to be wildly different from our own and are overturning what we thought we knew about the formation of planetary systems

   Our Very Normal Solar System Isn’t Normal Anymore by Robert Krulwich – May 07, 2013
   Excerpt: As of this month, we’ve discovered 884 planets, 692 planetary systems, 132 of them with more than one planet and, strange to tell, almost none of them look like us.,,,
   “Before we ever discovered any [planets outside the solar system] we thought we understood the formation of planetary systems pretty deeply.” We had our frost line. We knew how solar systems formed. “It was a really beautiful theory,” he says. “And, clearly, thoroughly wrong.”,,,
   “It really is something that I find deeply weird,” he (an astronomer) writes. “What does it all mean? I don’t know. I am certain that this single-minded emphasis on planets-in-habitable-zones is making people forget that there is still a lot of weird stuff happening out there and that we still don’t even understand the basics of how we ourselves got here.”
   http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulw.....al-anymore

   Moreover, the fact that the Earth has enjoyed a stable planetary orbit for billions of years, at just the right distance from the sun in order to allow liquid water to exist on earth at the right temperature, is nothing short of miraculous,,,

   “You might also think that these disparate bodies are scattered across the solar system without rhyme or reason. But move any piece of the solar system today, or try to add anything more, and the whole construction would be thrown fatally out of kilter. So how exactly did this delicate architecture come to be?”
   R. Webb – Unknown solar system 1: How was the solar system built? – New Scientist – 2009

   Is the Solar System Stable? By Scott Tremaine – 2011
   Excerpt: So what are the results? Most of the calculations agree that eight billion years from now, just before the Sun swallows the inner planets and incinerates the outer ones, all of the planets will still be in orbits very similar to their present ones. In this limited sense, the solar system is stable. However, a closer look at the orbit histories reveals that the story is more nuanced. After a few tens of millions of years, calculations using slightly different parameters (e.g., different planetary masses or initial positions within the small ranges allowed by current observations) or different numerical algorithms begin to diverge at an alarming rate. More precisely, the growth of small differences changes from linear to exponential:,,,
   As an example, shifting your pencil from one side of your desk to the other today could change the gravitational forces on Jupiter enough to shift its position from one side of the Sun to the other a billion years from now. The unpredictability of the solar system over very long times is of course ironic since this was the prototypical system that inspired Laplacian determinism.
   Fortunately, most of this unpredictability is in the orbital phases of the planets, not the shapes and sizes of their orbits, so the chaotic nature of the solar system does not normally lead to collisions between planets. However, the presence of chaos implies that we can only study the long-term fate of the solar system in a statistical sense, by launching in our computers an armada of solar systems with slightly different parameters at the present time—typically, each planet is shifted by a random amount of about a millimeter—and following their evolution. When this is done, it turns out that in about 1 percent of these systems, Mercury’s orbit becomes sufficiently eccentric so that it collides with Venus before the death of the Sun. Thus, the answer to the question of the stability of the solar system—more precisely, will all the planets survive until the death of the Sun—is neither “yes” nor “no” but “yes, with 99 percent probability.”
   https://www.ias.edu/about/publications/ias-letter/articles/2011-summer/solar-system-tremaine

   Moreover, the soil on both the moon and mars give no hint of being favorable for life to ‘easily’ originate,,,

   Moon Dust Is Super Toxic to Human Cells By Brandon Specktor – May 17, 2018
   Excerpt: NASA scientists now understand that pieces of moon dust — especially the smallest, sharpest particles — pose clear health risks to astronauts. A recent study published in the April issue of the journal GeoHealth examined exactly how dangerous that dust can be on a cellular level — and the results are as ominous as the dark side of the moon. In several lab tests, a single scoop of replica moon dust proved toxic enough to kill up to 90 percent of the lung and brain cells exposed to it.
   https://www.space.com/40618-moon-dust-bad-lungs-brain.html

   Growing plants in lunar soil – 2014
   Excerpt: But would anything grow in it. The short answer is no. The minerals it contains are locked up in a form that plants can’t access.
   https://theunconventionalgardener.com/blog/growing-plants-in-lunar-soil/

   Toxic Mars: Astronauts Must Deal with Perchlorate on the Red Planet – June 13, 2013
   Excerpt: The high levels of perchlorate found on Mars would be toxic to humans, Smith said.
   Smith said microbes on Earth use perchlorate for an energy source. They actually live off highly oxidized chlorine, and in reducing the chlorine down to chloride, they use the energy in that transaction to power themselves. In fact, when there’s too much perchlorate in drinking water, microbes are used to clean it up, he said.
   “Anybody who is saying they want to go live on the surface of Mars better think about the interaction of perchlorate with the human body,” he warned. “At one-half percent, that’s a huge amount. Very small amounts are considered toxic. So you’d better have a plan to deal with the poisons on the surface.”
   http://www.space.com/21554-mar.....icals.html

   Mars Life Would Spit Out the Water – October 2, 2015
   Excerpt: What if the water is so bad, Martians would spit it out? Nadia Drake at National Geographic is a tad more realistic:
   “You might think that the first human explorers on Mars will park next to a salty stream and use it to manufacture fresh drinking water. Maybe they could even find life in damp Martian nooks and crannies, areas where the dusty red planet can still fuel microbes.
   Reality is much more subtle. Finding evidence for flowing water is not the same as finding life.,,,”
   “[Chris] McKay notes that the type of salts near the Martian streaks, called perchlorates, form different watery mixtures than the salts we’re most used to on Earth. In fact, it’s possible the perchlorate streaks could behave similarly to Antarctica’s Don Juan Pond, which is the saltiest liquid water body on Earth—and totally dead.
   “Such a brine is not suitable for life and is of no interest biologically,” McKay says. “Nothing can live in the brine of Don Juan Pond.”
   http://crev.info/2015/10/mars-.....the-water/

   As the preceding articles gave a glimpse of, one false assumption the authors in the OP made is that the chemical compositions of exoplanets will be somewhat similar to the Earth’s chemical composition and will therefore be favorable for life. Yet, they have no basis for that assumption,

   Compositions of Extrasolar Planets – July 2010
   Excerpt: ,,,the presumption that extrasolar terrestrial planets will consistently manifest Earth-like chemical compositions is incorrect. Instead, the simulations revealed “a wide variety of resulting planetary compositions.”,,, The team concluded that terrestrial planets in these systems would have “compositions and mineralogies unlike any body observed within our solar system.”4
   https://tnrtb.wordpress.com/2010/07/12/compositions-of-extrasolar-planets/

   Besides having the right chemical composition, there are many other factors that must be met in order for a planet to be able to host life in this universe. Dr. Hugh Ross has assembled a list of these factors,

   Linked from Appendix C from Dr. Ross’s book, ‘Why the Universe Is the Way It Is’;
   Probability Estimates for the Features Required by Various Life Forms:
   Excerpt:
   Requirements to sustain bacteria for 90 days or less:
   Probability for occurrence of all 501 parameters approx. 10-614
   dependency factors estimate approx. 10^-303
   longevity requirements estimate approx. 10^22
   Probability for occurrence of all 501 parameters approx. 10^-333
   Maximum possible number of life support bodies in observable universe approx. 10^22
   Thus, less than 1 chance in 10^311 exists that even one such life-support body would occur anywhere in the universe without invoking divine miracles.

   Requirements to sustain unicellar life for three billion year:
   Probability for occurrence of all 676 parameters approx. 10^-859
   dependency factors estimate approx. 10^-303
   longevity requirements estimate approx. 10^22
   Probability for occurrence of all 676 parameters approx. 10^-578
   Maximum possible number of life support bodies in observable universe approx. 10^22
   Thus, less than 1 chance in 10^556 exists that even one such life-support body would occur anywhere in the universe without invoking divine miracle

   Requirements to sustain intelligent physical life:
   Probability for occurrence of all 816 parameters approx. 10^-1333
   dependency factors estimate approx. 10^-324
   longevity requirements estimate approx. 10^45
   Probability for occurrence of all 816 parameters approx. 10^-1054
   Maximum possible number of life support bodies in observable universe approx. 10^22
   Thus, less than 1 chance in 10^1032 exists that even one such life-support body would occur anywhere in the universe without invoking divine miracle
   http://d4bge0zxg5qba.cloudfron.....3_ver2.pdf
5. 5
   bornagain77 says:

   February 10, 2019 at 6:06 am

   ,,, And that is just the probability against getting a life supporting planet in the universe,,, that does not even take into consideration the probability against ‘simple’ life ‘easily’ appearing on that life supporting planet.

   DID LIFE START BY CHANCE?
   Excerpt: Molecular biophysicist, Horold Morowitz (Yale University), calculated the odds of life beginning under natural conditions (spontaneous generation). He calculated, if one were to take the simplest living cell and break every chemical bond within it, the odds that the cell would reassemble under ideal natural conditions (the best possible chemical environment) would be one chance in 10^100,000,000,000. You will have probably have trouble imagining a number so large, so Hugh Ross provides us with the following example. If all the matter in the Universe was converted into building blocks of life, and if assembly of these building blocks were attempted once a microsecond for the entire age of the universe. Then instead of the odds being 1 in 10^100,000,000,000, they would be 1 in 10^99,999,999,916 (also of note: 1 with 100 billion zeros following would fill approx. 20,000 encyclopedias)
   http://members.tripod.com/~Black_J/chance.html

   Perhaps the most basic false assumption the authors in the article in the OP made is the false assumption of the Copernican principle and/or the principle of Mediocrity,,,

   Copernican principle
   Excerpt: In physical cosmology, the Copernican principle, is an alternative name of the mediocrity principle,,, stating that humans (the Earth, or the Solar system) are not privileged observers of the universe.[1]
   Named for Copernican heliocentrism, it is a working assumption that arises from a modified cosmological extension of Copernicus’s argument of a moving Earth.[2] In some sense, it is equivalent to the mediocrity principle.
   – per wikipedia

   Yet, despite many people (including many Christians) holding the Copernican principle to be unquestionably true, the fact of the matter is that both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics have themselves now overturned the Copernican principle and/or the principle of mediocrity as being a valid principle in science.

   (January 2019) ,,, the fact of the matter is that both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics have themselves now overturned the Copernican principle and/or the principle of mediocrity as being a valid principle in science.
   https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/bill-nye-should-check-wikipedia/#comment-671672

   Moreover, when taking into consideration the recently discovered anomalies in the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation which line up with the earth and solar system, then the earth should, by all rights, once again, contrary to the Copernican principle, be considered ‘special’, even central, in the universe once again:

   Here is an excellent clip from “The Principle” documentary that explains these recently discovered ‘anomalies’ in the CMBR, that ‘coincidentally’ line up with the earth and solar system, in an easy to understand manner.

   Cosmic Microwave Background Proves Intelligent Design (disproves Copernican principle) (clip of “The Principle”) – video
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htV8WTyo4rw

   Moreover besides the earth and solar system lining up with the anomalies in the Cosmic Background Radiation, Radio Astronomy now reveals a surprising rotational coincidence for Earth in relation to the quasar and radio galaxy distributions in the universe:

   Is there a violation of the Copernican principle in radio sky? – Ashok K. Singal – May 17, 2013
   Abstract: Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) observations from the WMAP satellite have shown some unexpected anisotropies (directionally dependent observations), which surprisingly seem to be aligned with the eclipticcite {20,16,15}. The latest data from the Planck satellite have confirmed the presence of these anisotropiescite {17}. Here we report even larger anisotropies in the sky distributions of powerful extended quasars and some other sub-classes of radio galaxies in the 3CRR catalogue, one of the oldest and most intensively studies sample of strong radio sourcescite{21,22,3}. The anisotropies lie about a plane passing through the two equinoxes and the north celestial pole (NCP). We can rule out at a 99.995% confidence level the hypothesis that these asymmetries are merely due to statistical fluctuations. Further, even the distribution of observed radio sizes of quasars and radio galaxies show large systematic differences between these two sky regions. The redshift distribution appear to be very similar in both regions of sky for all sources, which rules out any local effects to be the cause of these anomalies. Two pertinent questions then arise. First, why should there be such large anisotropies present in the sky distribution of some of the most distant discrete sources implying inhomogeneities in the universe at very large scales (covering a fraction of the universe)? What is intriguing even further is why such anisotropies should lie about a great circle decided purely by the orientation of earth’s rotation axis and/or the axis of its revolution around the sun? It looks as if these axes have a preferential placement in the larger scheme of things, implying an apparent breakdown of the Copernican principle or its more generalization, cosmological principle, upon which all modern cosmological theories are based upon.
   http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.4134

   Moreover, on top of the overturning of the Copernican principle by the CMBR anomalies, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics, in the following video physicist Neil Turok states that we live in the middle, or at the geometric mean, between the largest scale in physics and the smallest scale in physics:

   “So we can go from 10 to the plus 25 to 10 to the minus 35. Now where are we? Well the size of a living cell is about 10 to the minus 5. Which is halfway between the two. In mathematical terms, we say it is the geometric mean. We live in the middle between the largest scale in physics,,, and the tiniest scale [in physics].”
   – Neil Turok as quoted at the 14:40 minute mark
   The Astonishing Simplicity of Everything – Neil Turok Public Lecture – video (12:00 minute mark, we live in the geometric mean, i.e. the middle, of the universe)
   https://youtu.be/f1x9lgX8GaE?t=715

   And here is a picture that gets his point across very clearly:

   The Scale: 10^-35m to 10^-5m to 10^25m – picture
   http://www.timeone.ca/wp-conte.....-scale.jpg

   The following site is also very interesting to the topic of ‘geometric centrality’ in the universe;

   The Scale of The Universe – Part 2 – interactive graph
   http://htwins.net/scale2/scale.....olor=white

   The preceding interactive graph points out that the smallest scale visible to the human eye (as well as a human egg) is at 10^-4 meters, which ‘just so happens’ to be directly in the exponential center of all possible sizes of our physical reality. As far as the exponential graph itself is concerned, 10^-4 is, exponentially, right in the middle of 10^-35 meters, which is the smallest possible unit of length, which is Planck length, and 10^27 meters, which is the largest possible unit of ‘observable’ length since space-time was created in the Big Bang, which is the diameter of the universe. This is very interesting for, as far as I can tell, the limits to human vision (as well as the size of the human egg) could have, theoretically, been at very different positions than directly in the exponential middle and/or geometric mean.

   Thus all in all, the findings of modern science paint a very different picture than the one promulgated by atheists, via the Copernican/Mediocrity principle, that the “human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet”,,,

   “The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant that I can’t believe the whole universe exists for our benefit.,,,”
   – Stephen Hawking – 1995 TV show, Reality on the Rocks: Beyond Our Ken,

   ,,, A very different picture than ‘chemical scum’ indeed. The findings of modern science reveal a universe where humans have far more significance and purpose than anyone had dared imagine just a few short decades ago.

   Hebrews 4:13
   “And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to Whom we must give account.”

   Psalm 33:13-15
   The LORD looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men. From the place of His dwelling He looks on all the inhabitants of the earth; He fashions their hearts individually; He considers all their works.

   Atheistic Materialism vs Meaning, Value, and Purpose in Our Lives – video
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqUxBSbFhog
6. 6
   PeterA says:

   February 10, 2019 at 7:39 am

   BA77,
   Excellent insightfully informative commentaries, as usual.
   Thanks
7. 7
   PeterA says:

   February 10, 2019 at 7:50 am

   Naming such a controversial principle after the famous astronomer denotes a shamefully deep ignorance of the history of modern science. We clueless humans deserve the bottom of the abyss at best.
8. 8
   ET says:

   February 10, 2019 at 8:51 am

   Yes, dehydrated life came in dissolvable packages that said “just add water and energy”. Nature is even more clever than you thought. 🙄
9. 9
   OLV says:

   February 10, 2019 at 10:53 am

   no agreement in the near future: they haven’t figured it out yet… the debates continue:

   Typological thinking: Then and now

   Joeri Witteveen  (2018)

   DOI: 10.1002/jez.b.22796

   the question “Why are all phyla old?” resurfaces as a live empirical issue. If the number of thirty five or so animal phyla that are recognized today has remained stable since the Late Cambrian, this raises the question why such a large share of extant phyla arose during a short period and why so few have seen the light of day since.

   a top-down view of classification: taxa of higher rank evolved before taxa of lower rank originated

   the range of surviving phyla is unlikely to be explained by the extinction of intermediate forms

   the sudden appearance of phyla is possibly related to the origin of distinctive regional patterning mechanisms

   The debate about how the crown/stem group distinction should be related to the definition and delimitation of phyla continues, with different conceptions of phyla being preferred by different researchers

   Continued assertions to this effect stand in the way of advancing genuine debates about the empirical and methodological constraints on what the study of development can tell us about macroevolution.

   attributions of these three grades of typological thinking—[1]conceptual-methodological, [2]logical, and [3]theoretical-empirical—continue to feature in current debates about the nature and origins of phyla and phylum-level body plans. However, while these attributions of typological thinking are meaningful as such, it is not always clear that they represent their contemporary targets accurately.
10. 10
    vmahuna says:

    February 10, 2019 at 4:02 pm

    “If it has been around for almost as long as the planet, this suggests it is easy for life to originate and life should be common in the Universe.”
    Well, NO. If Life was INSTALLED on Earth, then the arrival of Life and the conditions necessary to CREATE Life are entirely UNCONNECTED things. And clearly the Designer could choose any other planet or moon on which to ALSO install Life.
    But the guys who NEED for Life to have arisen “naturally” (without external intervention) also NEED there to be some reasonable biological soup in a tidal pool or someplace in which prebiotic molecules just HAPPEN to attach themselves together in patterns that then replicate.
    But if we accept Intelligent Design, then the ENTIRE discussion of how geochemistry might produce a self-replicating molecule is irrelevant. So I wish those guys well and hope then have lots of friendly luncheons together, at which they discuss nonsense.