Push the clock back even further.
Ten years ago, a team of geologists suggested a very ancient dating of life. Many were critical of their findings. They held back their return fire until last week.
A new study shows even stronger evidence that they were right. In fact, it shows that life looks like it was present even earlier than they had previously thought.
This means there is even less time for life to form from non-life naturally. That makes a bad situation even worse -- if you are a defender of a natural theory for the beginning of life on this planet.
You have to accept the fact that life appears the moment the planet has cooled to the point where life is even sustainable.
As the article points out,
The residue of ancient life that the scientists believe they have found existed prior to the end of the "late heavy bombardment" of the Moon by large objects, a period which ended approximately 3.8 billion years ago,
Harrison noted.
Now life gets started during the hellish period in Earth's geologic history known as the late heavy bombardment. This is a period where the earth is continually pounded with debris from space -- with enough force to exterminate life.
So complex photosynthetic life forms. Goes extinct. Forms again. Goes extinct. And so on.
It is amazing to imagine a naturalistic scenario where complex photosynthetic life forms instantaneously and serendipitously in hellish conditions not once, not twice, but over and over and over.
The article simply dismisses the incomprehensible unfathomable mystery with a one line wave of the hand.
An unanswered question is how life originally could have arisen from lifeless molecules and evolved into the already sophisticated isotope fractioning life forms recorded in the Akilia rocks.
Sounds innocuous -- nothing but an unanswered question. Remarkable.
Lucky for us, we can just say "God did it," and we've made an argument that's immune to any and all criticism.
Man, I wish you guys had been in charge when I took biology. Just write "God did it" in all the blanks, get straight A's! :)
Posted by: tgirsch | July 24, 2006 at 16:22
Tom,
Or, we can just say "abiogenesis doesn't work, so panspermia must be the answer!" As to how those microbes or precursors got on the comet or metorites and survived impact, well ... time and chance did it! Fill in "time and chance" and you'll get those straight A's!
Ok, I'm being faceatious. I agree that God of the gaps is weak and that the solutions to these kinds of questions don't have to be of the either/or ("nature or God") variety. But "time and chance" seem just as much a "whatever-of-the-gaps" argument within naturalistic philosophy as "I can't explain it so it must have been God" can be in theism.
Posted by: dopderbeck | July 26, 2006 at 12:43