In response to Tom Moore, Jim Bell writes... [...]
> I did say the data, IF true, "deals a blow to traditional evolutionists"
> (so your characterization is correct here), but then I said it DOES
> NOTHING TO HARM Intelligent Design (in this you are not accurate, for
> I did not claim it was further evidence of ID).
On Aug 7, 1996 Jim wrote:
"[...] It deals a blow to traditional evolutionists (what, we had
spontaneous generation in TWO places in the solar system?) and
does nothing to harm Intelligent Design. In fact, it rather
supports the idea. [...]"
I think the confusion stems from the last sentence: "In fact, it rather
_supports the idea_". Only if NOT(traditional evolution) = ID. I
agree that life on Mars (or Pluto, for that matter) can't harm the
concept of ID (I'm not sure much could), but I wouldn't say that
it supports it.
Personally, I'm not even sure what "blow" this deals to "traditional
evolutionists". I think Brian addressed this point. If anything it
only makes the question of where life first originated more difficult
to determine. In some sense, I agree that this discovery, if true,
could lend some support to Crick's panspermia hypothesis and even
Fred and Chandra's "evolution from space" -- If only in the sense
that up until now, there has been *no good evidence* that life, (or
despite the dreams of Hoyle et al, complex biomolecules), existed
outside of earth. But it really doesn't help their cases much further.
On a side note:
I wonder how one would go about detecting existing life on Mars.
This is not a simple problem. For example, most of the bacteria
present in any particular terrestrial sample are not culturable on
most standard media -- so growth assays might not be reliable.
Perhaps direct assays for putative biomolecules?
Regards, Tim Ikeda (timi@mendel.berkeley.edu)