The first life

If I may elaborate a little more, what Pastreur and others showed is that known, existing life does not spontaneously form from inanimate matter. You need flies to make more flies, and mice to make more mice.Crashfrog's other point is well made - abiogenesis has not been ruled out - just that one needs special conditions that do not exist in rotting meat. Also, the life that would arise, should the "experiment" be run again, would not be any of the species that we know.

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This, to me, is the weakest point of all evolutionary theories that try and exclude divine intervention.

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Are you implying that you accept evolution if it includes divine intervention?

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It just seems to me that for abiogenesis (if that's the right term) to have happened exactly ONCE in the history of the world (as the theory of common descent requires) and never again, without the hand of God intervening, is a bit farfetched.

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Well, scientists are trying to create conditions where life will arise from non-living chemicals. Right now there are a lot of unknowns about the process, but it's possible that someday, through experimentation, that abiogenisis WILL happen again, in someone's lab.

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I wanted throw in a question about abiogenesis that is left out in all the debate here.Just exactly how would we know it if we did come across it?

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Another complication is that there is probably not a clear dividing line between "life" and "non-life". Which brings up the question: what characteristics would an artificially produced self-replicating system have to have before we can say that the concept of "abiogenesis" is proven? Do we need a full-blown living organism, or can we accept something further down the continuum?