Claim CB010.1:
Even the simplest, most primitive forms of life -- bacteria -- are
incredibly complex, much too complex to have arisen by chance.
Source:
Sherwin, Frank. 2001. Just how simple are bacteria? Back to
Genesis 146 (Feb.).
Response:
- There is no reason to think that the life around today is comparable in
complexity to the earliest life. All of the simplest life would almost
certainly be extinct by now, outcompeted by more complex forms.
- Self-replicators can be incredibly simple, as simple as a strand of six
DNA nucleotides (Sievers and von Kiedrowski 1994). This is simple
enough to form via prebiotic chemistry. Self-replication sets the
stage for evolution to begin, whether or not you call the molecules
"life."
- Nobody claims the first life arose by chance.
To jump from
the fact that the origin is unknown to the conclusion that it could not
have happened naturally is the argument from
incredulity.
Links:
Musgrave, Ian. 1998. Lies, damned lies, statistics, and probability of
abiogenesis calculations.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html
References:
- Sievers, D. and G. von Kiedrowski. 1994. Self-replication of
complementary nucleotide-based oligomers. Nature 369: 221-224.
created 2001-2-18, modified 2003-10-4
