A propos an interesting recent article by George T. Javor at Geosciences Research Institute on why the century (and more)-old dream of synthesizing life in the lab hasn’t yielded the confidently hoped for results, experimental physicist Rob Sheldon writes to say,
All these people are talking about “chemistry-first” OOL, where you put non-living chemicals in a jar and shake them and out pops life.
I think what ID is showing is that you must do “information first” OOL. It isn’t the chemicals, it’s the information that comes first.
No, this means it can never be random, just as OOL in the lab is not random. But that doesn’t mean that info-first cannot produce OOL. I’ve written a paper on the info-first OOL problem.
It would be nice if it got included in the list of OOL mechanisms.
Rob Sheldon is the author of Genesis: The Long Ascent and The Long Ascent, Volume II .
You may also wish to read: Why isn’t life being synthesized in a laboratory? Synthesis of life in a laboratory is intelligent design. But using intelligent design only means we’ve left the world of fantasy (“it all just sort of happened a long time ago… ”). Here’s an example of a typical real problem: Living cells cannot reach equilibrium because their metabolisms would stop. They must dance till the music stops.