Life evolved. The whole process evolved through the same basic process of replication and differential survival. When we look at a modern organism like a bacteria we can see that it is clearly alive. It consumes, it defies entropy, it reproduces and it does so in ways which we see as organic. But there is no fundamental difference between living processes and other processes, no mystical "umph". The chemistry and physics are the same. Life evolved over a very long period. Any process that lead to replication of products would by definition tend to continue and produce more of that product. The simplest life forms we know today are based on several of these separate lineages of replicating chemistry. The precise details can never be proved but I can see no reason why it will always remain impossible to synthesize something which could be seen to be a significant step along the way between something that is clearly simply chemical to something that is clearly alive. There are things around that straddle that apparent gulf now, such as prion proteins, are they a disease pathogen (if so are they alive?) or are they just a chemical? What does that distinction really mean? The nature of the process of replication means that there only need be a very small beginning to a huge process, a forest fire can be started by sunlight focused through a droplet of liquid pulled into a lens shape by unguided forces, a tiny instance of relative improbability can lead to a huge result. Life could not start until there was a lot of non living processes to create special circumstances. Stars needed to have died to create the heavier elements that life requires. There needed to have been rocks, erosion, formation of sediments such as clay. There was no possibility of life until the universe was several billion years old and certain bits of it had gone through many stages of formation and reformation. It doesn't look to me like the way things would be run if the universe was either created or operated by a being with magical powers. And it certainly does not look like a sensible strategy to make a universe for men to live in, 13,700,000,000 years of universe to have 2,000 years of partial Christian hegemony then rapture? It doesn't strike me as the best way to do things. Science hasn't got all the answers, not by any means, but it is looking for better answers. And we certainly need them. |
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