The Relationship Between the Beginnings of Life and the Evolution of Life

I dunno, ogon; dividing up phenomena into "cause" and "effect" seems to me to be...medievel. I think a better description of what the sciences try to do is to study phenomena and the processes that give rise to those phenomena.And that is what those researchers who are studying the questions of abiogenesis are doing; we have the existence of life, and a legitimate question is how life originally arose. Presumably, life is the result of natural chemical processes occurring on the ancient earth. What scientists studying abiogenesis are doing is trying to figure out the actual chemical environment that existed, and the steps along the pathway during the evolution of the first cells that we can call "life".Now, the theory of evolution is independent of research into abiogenesis, but they certainly do have similarities. Evolution is more the description of the how new species arise and the processes that led to the structure that we see in the phylogenic tree, while abiogenesis is, of course, the study of how life first arose on earth. But both are obviously concerned with historical matters in the biological sciences, and clearly biology would be (and is!) incomplete without a good theory for both.-Incidentally, Darwin himself used the word evolutionist to describe those who accept common descent (and, more specifically, perhaps those who accepted his theory of mechanism), so I don't know if the use of this word can really be chalked up to some creationist plot.

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine

I guess, in the same sense that methane and water in a closed flask with an electric spark going off will "somehow" create amino acids and a few other complex hydrocarbons.It really isn't a question of "somehow" or "why". It is a matter of normal chemical elements that we know existed on the earth, under conditions found on the earth, reacted according to the known laws of chemistry and physics (and known properties of self-organization) to produce, as Coragyps phrased it, a catalytic chemical system that was able to replicate.The question is to understand what the possible environments that existed on the early earth, and the exact conditions were, that will, due to the rather mundate laws of physics and chemistry, produce a system of chemicals that catalyze its own production.

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Actually, if their god makes better pancakes, I'm totally switching sides. -- Charley the Australopithecine