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Please try to understand my point: If Science can't prove abiogenesis, it has failed miserably, and should be held accountable.

This will be the ultimate yardstick--abiogenesis shown to be possible under the rigorous standards of a laboratory experiement, peer-reviewed and duplicatable.

Hasn't happened. And we've had DECADES in which to affect a satisfactory result, haven't we?

Has anyone ever wondered why? What's the current view of this in biochemistry?

Do they just dismiss it as "not important" (because they're secretly embarrassed by an inability to explain the process)?

Serious repsonses only, please. ;)

"Please try to understand my point: If Science can't prove abiogenesis, it has failed miserably, and should be held accountable."

No, it will be like every other theory. None have ever been *proved*. And how will *Science* be held responsible? Will it be spanked and sent to its room?

"This will be the ultimate yardstick--abiogenesis shown to be possible under the rigorous standards of a laboratory experiement, peer-reviewed and duplicatable."

When life is created in a test tube, anti-evolutionists will just say it's an example of ID.

" Hasn't happened. And we've had DECADES in which to affect a satisfactory result, haven't we?"

No. Scientists have just barely started in the investigation. The means to explore the question are only just beginning to be developed.

Please try to understand my point: If Science can't prove abiogenesis, it has failed miserably, and should be held accountable.

What do you want, up against the adobe wall or something? Some things just take time.

For your consideration.

Clarke's Third Law:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

(Recently we could substitute "ID" for "magic.")

Has anyone ever wondered why? What's the current view of this in biochemistry?

Do they just dismiss it as "not important" (because they're secretly embarrassed by an inability to explain the process)?

Sorry to butt in, but these are interesting questions on their own.

There is a large and colorful literature on this topic that now includes PANH's (nitrogen-containing aromatic hydrocarbons) that seem to be present in nearly all of space.

Unfortunately there are still lots of hypothesis and limited resources to to test them out. There isn't a lot of use for the solutions that this research would generate. Would you give up cancer or heart disease research to find out the likely candidates for the original replicating molecules on earth?

The tools to do this kind of research are finally available, although they are still expensive and cumbersome. They will become inexpensive quickly. There are already companies that are creating DNA libraries and building the capability to build organisms one base pair at a time.

For example, 454 Life Sciences Corporation can assemble the complete 580,000-base genome of Mycoplasma genitalium in 4 hours on a machine that can be purchased for half a million dollars. Dharmacon has completed the world's first genome-wide, siRNA library that targets over 21,000 human genes.

Scientists aren't embarrassed. They're mostly excited.