real life wrote:
He is one of the top origin of life scientists in the world, and I found it unlikely that he would be unaware of any evidence that indicated what environmental conditions may have been during the very period that is his expertise.
And here's what the top origin of life scientists has to say about...well, you'll get it. Or not.
Since we can never know in full detail how the origin of life took place, it is not surprising that it is becoming a target for intelligent design creationists. The geological and chemical evidence required to understand life's beginnings remains insufficient and difficult to understand. For creationists, that evidentiary gap provides an opportunity to erect a framework of controversy and endless discussion around the study of prebiotic evolution and the origin of life, which they assume are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than by an undirected process like natural selection.
It is true that there is a huge gap in the current descriptions of the evolutionary transition between the prebiotic synthesis of biochemical compounds and the last common ancestor of all extant living beings. Even the unanticipated discovery in 1982--by the research teams directed by Thomas Cech and Sidney Altman--of catalytic RNA molecules (ribozymes), which can be loosely described as nucleic acids that simultaneously have characteristics of DNA and enzymes, has not closed this gap. Instead, that and related discoveries have led to a more precise definition of what should be understood as the origin of life. The origin of protein synthesis is still not understood, but the surprising conservation of widely distributed polypeptide sequences related to RNA metabolism has led my group and others to suggest that these sequences provide insights into an RNA/protein world that may have resulted from the interaction of ribozymes with amino acids, and that very likely preceded our familiar DNA/RNA/protein world. Our understanding of the origin and early stages of biological evolution still has major unsolved problems, but they are recognized by the scientific community as intellectual challenges, and not as requiring metaphysical explanations, as proponents of creationism would have it......
......Creationism is a danger to science education that should be addressed by a constructive dialogue and collective actions led by imaginative researchers and educators on both sides of the border. Our answer to the fundamentalist challenge could include better academic exchange programs, common strategies designed to promote the teaching of evolutionary biology, and joint outreach activities for both Mexican and U.S. Latino students, who share important cultural backgrounds. The potential benefits of such common strategies could be manifold, including a proper honoring of the freedom of all to follow (or not) religious beliefs, while rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, to God the things that are God'sÂ…and to Darwin those that are Darwin's.
Antonio Lazcano
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/310/5749/787
