Re: "Life may have had an inorganic origin," July 2 article by Todd Whitcombe.
With reference to the Urey/Miller experiment as being "...a very simple, straightforward demonstration synthesized in a lab... with chemicals that would have been present on the early Earth," how did these chemicals come to be on Earth, and what a coincidence they should be in correct amounts and near enough to each other to result in "...a spark to generate more complex species."
To continue, "Consider that in a single week, Urey and Miller were able to synthesize amino acids in a very simple apparatus..."
Simple perhaps for Urey and Miller with the apparatus in their lab: not so simple four billion years ago.
Another reference is to Francis Crick, no doubt a brilliant scientist. He did receive the Nobel Prize for his work with James Watson on the double helix structure on DNA. "He also thinks life on Earth may have begun when aliens from another planet sent a rocket ship containing spores to seed the Earth."
He first proposed this in an article in 1973 in a professional science journal; ten years later wrote a book reiterating his theory and again in 1992 as he was being interviewed for his latest book still thinks the theory is reasonable.
While there have indeed been many well publicized success stories of like scientific experiments, "more than 30 years of experimentation on the origin of life in the fields of chemical and molecular evolution have led to a better perception of the immensity of the problem of the origin of life on Earth rather than to its solution... Successes though real...(also raise) a plethora of problems (once) you move beyond the simple chemical production of some of the bare compounds of life..."
All quotes (other than Mr. Whitcombe's) are from Darwin's Black Box by biochemist Michael J. Behe, except this one and I'm, not sure where it came from: man: an organic accident in a meaningless universe - not!
Finally, from C.S. Lewis: "The final truth which science will never be able to explain is why the universe exists at all."
Joan McKay
Prince George
