@jerlands,
anybody can look **** up. Wikipedia needs to be reviewed because its unstalled without any peer review, until other volunteers add on. You dont know whats right or not by reading and accepting uncritically.
Go to the original sources and see qhat part of a Wiki are often quote"mined"
Smectites are a group name for a whole bunch of " hydrated sheet silicates" that have a layer charge of anywhere from 0.2 to 0.6 per layer and a 2:1 structure of layers. They originate as chemical erosion products of plutonic rocks (magmas). Their structures allows them to "suck up" polar liquids(anything with an ability to fully dissolve) and swell in the "c" axial direction' They hqve an extremely high cation exchange capacity at or above 110 c-mol/kg
That makes their hexagonal "fluffy" crystals them a chemistry lab for abiogenesis , due to their strong CEC and the fact that they control molecule shapes by differential attractive forces and surface chem bonding. Does this mean we understand how life formed in a sterile erth??? Hell no, but these are some ideas worth consideration (other than a"SUPERDOOPER INTELLIGENCE DONE IT"). We really cant discuss Sooperdooper god "theories", mostly cause the dont come from any scholarly study(except for one or two pages in an old book of tales from the deserts) AND, mostly, cause they dont lead you anywhere.
Heres a little test, sit around with some similarly believing friends and say that an intelligence created life, then try to wring some scientific discussions out of that. See where you go from the mass agreement with your assertion. Id say mostly Nowhere. Because NOBODY would want to disprove that belief. All you guys here on A2K are living posting proof. I think for the main part, most of us interested or working in science dont claim to really know where it started, but I know we are investigating (AND, so far, noobody has claimed we are totally wrong except for the IDers)
Yet this type pf "religion based thinking about nature" ruled our nations education systems for over 100 years and real biological and geological science was totally disallowed from being taught in schools(despite what our constitution says)
