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From: hua@cmu-cs-edu1.ARPA (Ernest Hua)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: re: What is this thing called life?
Message-ID: <249@cmu-cs-edu1.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 30-Apr-85 06:36:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: cmu-cs-e.249
Posted: Tue Apr 30 06:36:16 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 1-May-85 06:33:02 EDT
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 68

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> From: dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (Paul DuBois)
> 
> > --JB  (not Elizabeth, not Beth Ann, not Mary Beth...Just Beth)
> > Creationists don't usually deal with the issue of
> > where that really unique form of life came from, and when they do they
> > usually make wierd faces and say something like it "always existed".  But
> > they do seem to believe that life on earth came from non-life, especially
> > if they buy the Genesis account of God creating Adam from dust (and, of
> > course, the old dust-to-dust stuff).
> > 
> > Comments?

First, a comment on the original, which Paul does not deal with.  The
biggest difference is the responsibility for the emergence of life forms
as we know them.  Is it an act of God?  Or did it "just happen"?  There
is not problem in terms of a literal origin of life forms.  The real
difficulty lies in the forces that caused the tranformation.

> Sure.
> 
> Evolutionists claim that they do not have to account for the origin
> of the matter from which life arose.  Why then should creationists have
> to account for the origin of the creator from which life arose?

Second, on Paul's comment:  Really?  Who said so?  Actually, don't
waste your time answering that because I know of several who did.

>From my perspective, evolution is simply a grandiose label for the
natural flow of things.  If you want to categorize and subdivide
nature into, say, living and non-living, some reasonable question
might be:  "Where did the living come from?" or "Where did the
non-living come from?"  From a lot of analysis and research, some
people have proposed answers to these questions.  From a scientific
perspective, the answer is that the living originally came from
the non-living, as shown by the fossil record via some extrapolations.
(Obviously, I am by no means saying that the fossil record is complete.)
There is some development of form.  From a religious perspective, a
sample proposition might be the literal story of Genesis, which says
that life forms were created at some instants of time by a supernatural
life form.  If you want to categorize something else, like languages,
you might ask the same of languages.  In which case, evolution is
an answer again.  Certain languages changed with time.  Another answer
is the Tower of Babel story (did I get that name right?).  Now, a good
question for the non-living part of nature subdivision would be:

	"Where did it all come from?"

Again, the answer given by the Bible is that God made it all.  Ultimately,
science must assume that it was there since the Big Bang, which was the
source of the matter that occupy the current version of the universe.  No
one can prove that ... yet.  Biological evolution does not deal with
this idea.  However, evolution as a whole does cover EVERYTHING.  It must
cover everything as it does deal with the origin of everything.(*)  Some
net readers have limited the discussion to biological evolution, going on
the assumption that that is the main topic at hand.

(*)  Note that when I said "origin", I meant the states that the universe
transgressed to get to its current state.  At the moment, it is difficult
to image the states at or before Big Bang, so that is considered the the-
oretical "beginning" ... for now.
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Live long and prosper.

Keebler { hua@cmu-cs-gandalf.arpa }