The concept of faith

This is true, and that's why science rigorously tests its own premises. The highest honors in science are gained when established theory is disproven with evidence. This is irrelevant. Atheism only states that there is no evidence for the existance of a deity. Even if evolution were disproven conclusively, there would still be no reason to jusmp to "Goddunit!"As to your statement itself... Here is a document you may find interesting about cell walls.

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Algae are the plants with the simplest organization. Many of them are single-celled, some have no cell wall, others do though its composition and structure differ strongly from that of higher plants. They are good specimen for tracing back the evolution of the cell wall. Primitive cell walls do not fulfil the same requirements as that of higher plants.

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It seems quite likely that a structure like that of the cell wall has developed several times in the course of evolution. All archaebacteria, eubacteria and blue-green algae (cyanobacteria or blue-green algae) have complex walls with an energetically rather costly biosynthesis. Neither in composition nor in biosynthesis do they have any common ground with the cell walls of plants.

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Although the evolution of plants from early eucaryotic cells is not known in detail, is it commonly agreed on that primitive algae are flagellates closely related to the non-green flagellates. Many, though not all species of this stage of evolution, among which the euglenophyta are typical green representatives, have no cell wall. It is not only a simple membrane, but by a pellicle of already quite complex organization, that separates them from the surrounding. It consists mainly of glycoproteins organized in regular patterns the way two-dimensional crystals are. Helical ribs wind round the cell's surface.

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More importantly, laboratory experiments duplicating the conditions of the Earth millions of years ago have, in fact, produced amino acids, the building blocks of life, in the laboratory. Remember that the beginning of life as predicted by the theory of evolution does not have to be a cingle-celled organism - it was simply a self-replicating molecule, similar to a primitive form of RNA. The process of imperfect replication (as in tiny differences between generations) and natural selection (which molecules continued to self-replicate) eventually led to the formation of a more complex life-form - a single-celled organism. The rest proceeded from there. Incorrect. Anyone who believes life arose from purely natural processes does so based on evidence. Since there is every reason to suggest life formed naturally, and no reason at all to invoke the supernatural (since the supernatural doesn't actually explain anything anyway, and it hasn't shown itself anywhere), evolution is the rational choice. Faith has nothing to do with it - if conclusive evidence were put forth tomorrow that evolution was totally wrong and that life did not form from natural means, whoever found that evidence would receive a Nobel Prize!Faith, as an irrational belief in something for which there is no evidence even in the face of evidence to the contrary, is the far more immutable and unbending position.

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Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.

Wrong. It is possible to ascertain the composition and properties of the young Earth. We know what chemicals were present in what concentration, we know the general temperature, amounts of solar radiation, and so forth. We know a LOT about what the Earth was like a few billion years ago. We can create conditions very similar to those in the lab. No, they will not be identical. But if amino acids are spontaneously formed in a laboratory recreation of the early Earth, this is enough evidence to show that abiogenesis is at least possible.The fact that an intelligent being set it up is irrelevant - those elements unter those conditions can spontaneously form amino acids. The experimentor is irrelevant.To say otherwise invalidatyes all laboratory science, wich has particular cpmsequences for medical science. If an experiment set up by an intelligence to recreate a certain environment is not a valid way to test that environment....well, you had better go and tell some doctors that their medicines don't work.

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Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.

What is this mysterious property of life you call the "ghost?"Prove that it even exists. Not at all. If the formation of amino acids can be shown to be possible in completely natural circumstances, it is not a jump in logic to conclude that the spontaneous formation of self-replicating molecules, and thus life, is entirely possible.It IS a rather large leap in logic to state that some edditional entity, ie God, was involved. There is no evidence of His existance, and no reason (in light of the amino acid experiments) to conclude that abiogenesis requires a supernaural "explanation."It's all Occam's Razor. Evidence supports the notion that life arose through natural means. There is no evidence to support any supernatural hypothesis. Occam's Razor tells us to cut out any extraneous entities unless they are absolutely necessary for the equasion to work.In other words:abiogenesis + evolution = modern life-forms.abiogenesis + God + evolution = modern life-formsTherefore, God = 0 and is irrelevant. There is no reason whatsoever to throw the supernatural into the mix.

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Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.

Semantic nitpicking. Evidence is evidence. All atheists need is a reason to believe that there is a deity, and they will believe. As it is, the only "evidence" of any deity's existance is a bunch of old books and some people who believe what the books say. THat's not evidence, and so atheists have no reason to conclude that a god exists. Read it again. It spoke of cells that do not have cell walls, but instead have a primitive barrier - not quite a cell wall, but apparently a precursor. Incorrect. Evolution, being a scientific theory, makes certain predictions as to what we should see if its mechanism actually occurs. When we see something like a precursor cell wall, it validates those predictions. We similarly validate the predictions of evolution when we look at vestigial organs, and the different forms of organs that are slightly different in various species but are still the same feature (like mammalian eyes). My evidence is the spontaneous formation of amino acids in a laboratory recreating the conditions of the early Earth. This suggests that it is entirely likely that life could spontaneously form, first in the form of a self-replicating molecule, and eventually developing into a true single-celled organism through the process of evolution.Since there is NO evidence of the supernatural existing, and there IS evidence that suggests abiogenesis was possible, the latter is the more probable, and Occams Razor cuts out the former. Of course it did - and we saw EVIDENCE of such a force in the form of the compass, or lodestones. People saw but did not yet understand.The difference is that thus far there is not magical "force" or whatever to suggest that a deity may exist. It's not that we don't understand something, as was the case with electromagnetism, there is simply nothing there to investigate. Um...Yes. The fact that an inteliigence guiding evolution while somehow remaining unseen and undetectable even in cases where we directly observe evolution in progress is like proposing that magic fairies do it when we aren't looking.The real evidence is that intelligent design is bunk - many organisms, including humans, have such horrible "design" flaws that any designer would have to have been an idiot. We breathe through the same tube that we eat with - meaning we can easily choke on our food. Our appendix is a completely useless organ that actually poses a high risk of infection, and can kill if it is not removed. Our eyes are horribly inefficient and poorly "designed" compared to certain birds, and even some aquatixc species - certain parts of our eyes are actually backwards.I could go on if needed, but this thread isn't about ID. I think this is enough to show that no deity is required, and if a deity DID directly design every species, he did a horrible job on quite a few of them. That's not what the experiment was set up to confirm. The experiment was only intended to show that the building blocks themselves could have been present - meaning abiogenesis should be possible.Harvard is now setting up a new department for the specific study of abiogenesis - perhaps we'll see more experiments along these lines soon. You mean with religion? That's what I see, too.Of course, the lack of evidence is exactly WHY atheism exists in the first place - if there is NO evidence, and no observable reason to believe in something, then such belief is irrational.

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Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.

No, YOU typed them.

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However, it doesn't say anything about probability. Moreover, it just reinforces what we already know: Life minus the ghost yields water and minerals.

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Remember now? Something that has shown to BE possible is more likely than something that has not. No deity has provided evidence that it exists, but we have evidence that the building blocks of life can form on their own.And it's not that different. We aren't talking about the spontaneous formation of a cingle-celled organism becuase certain amino acids just happen to line up right. That's not what abiogenesis proposes. Abiogenesis proposes that amino acids combined to form a very simple self-replicating molecule. Through errors in replication (ie, mutation), and natural selection, these self-replicating molecules eventually evolved into a singel-celled organism.

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Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.

Abiogenesis is a hypothesis, an educated guess based on observed data. Life exists, but it didn't always exist. Abiogenesis is a naturalistic explanation for this. Some experimentation has been done that supports the idea that abiogenesis is possible - the creation of amino acids from a laboratory simulation of early Earth conditions. Further research is being done on the subject, and hopefully we will know for sure whether abiogenesis is a valid description or not.This is entirely different from "faith." It's testable and falsifiable., and is based on observations and evidence, not blind supposition and stubborn adherance to an idea despite evidence to the contrary.

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Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.

We know the chemical composition of our planet. By observing other planets and the mineral composition of rocks dated to the appropriate times, we have a pretty good model of the early Earth and its chemical makeup.The rest of your post shows that you really don't understand what abiogenesis claims. A bacterial cell did not simply form out of its constituent atoms from pure chance. That's silly.The chemical makeup of the Earth allowed amino acids to form, as has been shown in the laboratory. Abiogenesis postulates that eventually these amino acids could form proteins, and eventually a very simple self-replicating molecule, something like a primitive version of RNA. Through imperfect self-replication, small differences surfaced in each subsequent generation, eventually eveolving into the fists virus-like organisms (virus-like in their simplicity and composition, not their dependance on existing cells for reproduction), and from there into the first true single-celled organism.Abiogenesis really stops at the spontaneous formation of the first self-replicating molecule. The rest is evolution.Abiogenesis doe not postulate that a cell spontaneously formed from some chemical soup. You're right - the cnaces of that happening are so miniscule as to be impossible. But the formation of a self-replicating molecule from constituent amino acids is not unreasonable, and is really all that abiogenesis claims.

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Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.

You didn't read what I said, or didn't understand. The evidence as to the chemical makeup of the young Earth is frankly not up for debate. Certain rocks date to when the Earth was being formed. Those rocks have a chemical makeup that is representative of the chemical composition of the Earth as a whole at that time. We aren't talking about a hypothesis - modern geology is pretty damned certain about the composition of the young Earth. Yes, but you leave out the most important parts. Attacking a strawman of my argument is a logical fallacy. Prove it. Idle speculation is irrelevant. Incredulity is irrelevant. Only evidence matters, and so far the evidence supports abiogenesis. Further experimentation will either strengthen the hypothesis and turn it into an accepted theory, or falsify it entirely, but the simple statement that "chance cannot account for it" is meaningless. Chicken and egg. Which came first, the Universe or Life? Obviously the Universe came first - the processes that gave rise to life are the direct result of the natural laws of the Universe. Life doesn't have to be "tuned" to be well-adapted to its environment - it simply formed based entirely on the laws of that environment.When you pour water into a glass, it conforms to the glass, but not becuase some entity "tuned" it to fit - it simply conforms to its container based entirely on the natural laws of the universe. One could say that the water is "perfectly adapted" to its surroundings, but that in no way suggests intelligence or intent. Now you demonstrate a lack of understanding. MODERN life uses ATP. Cellular life. But a self-replicating molecule from billions of years ago does not necessarily use the same fuel that modern cells use. You're making an assumption, and that assumption is not necessarily true. ATP could have naturally existed, or the early self-replicating molecule could have used a different compound for energy.As a matter of fact, this thread discussed the origins of life and ATP a couple of months ago.Basically, we don't know. That doesn't mean we aren't going to find out. Suggesting that a self-replicating molecule could not have formed becuase there was no life to synthesize ATP requires evidence that life cannot exist without ATP being used as it is today - not simply that it does not currently.As a matter of fact, here is a paper that discusses a precursor to ATP.

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Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.

Well, several researchers agree with me. But the real point is that we don't knowif ATP was even necessary to the proposed self-replicating molecule. That's part of what the researchers are going to try to find out. Your assumption is logical based on the evidence provided by modern life forms, but is note necessarily true of the first self-replicating molecule. Who says it still occurs? I didn't. No scientists I know of claims it still does. The conditions on Earth today are fundamentally different from those when life first formed. That's why we need to simulate those conditions in a laboratory, instead of just watching it happen. No, I assume that it may be possible that a chemical reaction took place that formed a self-replicating molecule, and the chain reaction of replication eventually developed into what we call life today. There is no "nothing" in that statement, only pre-existing chemicals in a suitable environment for a specific chemical reaction to take place.Abiogenesis is certainly far from proven. It's not really a theory yet, just a hypothesis that seems to fit pretty well. We'll see what happens now that some universities (including Harvard) are devoting more resources specifically to abiogenesis research. That's basically what the researchers at Harvard and other Universities are going to find out. And DNA and complex working machines have little or nothing to do with abiogenesis. All they need to create is a self-replicating molecule that could have formed spontaneously given the conditions present in the young Earth. DNA didn't form until much later in the evolutionary tree, and we still aren't even talking about cells yet. Just a single self-replicating molecule. Faith has nothing to do with this. THis is a scientific hypothesis being tested through research. I think it sounds like a good possible explanation, but that doesn't mean I'm going to claim that it definitely happened. Not before adequate research has been done.Abiogenesis does not assume - it builds from the known conditions of the young Earth and hypothesizes a possible explanation for the origins of primitive life. Whether that explanation is accurate or not remains to be seen, though the evidence so far supports it.

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Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.