>All you
>need is a little water vapour and a lot of volcanic activity." [If it only
>takes
>"a little water vapour and a lot of volcanic activity" why is it so hard? The
>first problem, the `hardware' is getting *all* these "vital steps" to happen
>together, and what success OoL researchers have is due to unrealistic
>assumptions, e.g. 24-carat (i.e. pure) gold occurring in nature and 500 C
>temperatures destroying nucleic acids and proteins. Assembling the
>`hardware' together is hard enough, but the second problem is even harder,
>- writing the `software' (i.e. the *information*), which Kuppers has
>identified as "*the* fundamental concept in the physicochemical theory of
>the origin of life" (Kuppers B-O., "Information and the Origin of Life,"
>1990, p.170. Emphasis Kupper's]
I thought it was abundantly clear from the article that they were
attempting to reproduce *in the lab* conditions that have been observed in
nature. Thermal vents aren't that rare.
>.... "Working out which ones are responsible for the differences between
>chimps and humans and, of those, which are important in the diseases that
>differ between chimps and humans is a very difficult problem." Meanwhile,
>scientists in Japan have already begun decoding the genomes of great apes
>in a separate venture. ... [It is interesting that some geneticists now
>saying
>that they can't understand the human genome without a chimp's genome.
>This may indicate that genomes may not be self explanatory? It is also
>interesting, and perhaps significant that apes don't get AIDS and
>Alzheimer's.]
I think it's significant also. It might explain why some people who turn up
HIV positive don't get aids. Perhaps some of their genetic sequence is
atavistic.
>... [SETI is basically a search
>for intelligent design, and the comment that "it's highly scientific" applies
>equally to ID too!]
except that SETI signals will stand out in relief against the backdrop of
nature. While you, yourself, have said that all of nature is supernaturally
designed and no individual piece of it can be distinguished--as far as its
designedness--from another.
Susan
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