Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site bbncca.ARPA
Path: utzoo!linus!bbncca!rrizzo
From: rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo)
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Re: The Probability of Life from Non-life
Message-ID: <540@bbncca.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 1-Feb-84 14:57:10 EST
Article-I.D.: bbncca.540
Posted: Wed Feb  1 14:57:10 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 2-Feb-84 01:31:52 EST
References: <120@digi-g.UUCP>
Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma.
Lines: 25

Right on, Mervyn Leroy!

To emphasize how wrong-headed Terry Brown is, suppose despite everything
we miraculously had evidence from the Creation of Ls & Ds being present
in a 50/50 mix.  Brown's resort to "probability" & calculations is
STILL absurd.  From many analagous situations successfully treated in
the sciences, the situation (50/50 Ls & Ds then, only Ls in developed
life) is clearly a case of a selection mechanism at work (by definition
not a probabilistic device).  This in turn points up Brown's equivocating
use of the words "impossible" & "insurmountable" : he confuses "impossible
in principle" with "impossible in fact".  At best, the specific theories
he criticizes are the latter.  His criticisms don't impugn the ability of
a "mechanistic" account to succeed.  The mere fact we're able to imagine
things like "selection mechanisms" shows that mechanistic accounts of the
origin of life are indeed possible in principle.

Brown inflates his case in another way: he misrepresents the state-of-
debate in origins research by omitting to make the obvious point that
Miller's production of amino acids by a discharge in a "primeval" gas
mixture, which he cites, creates "life" from "nonlife", destroys for
all time the first & most crucial claim of vitalists & supernaturalists,
forcing creationists into quibbles over matters of detail: components of
a fully worked-out account.  To appreciate the enormity of such a (forced)
concession, one need only call to mind the century-long debate vitalists
waged (& lost) in the 1800s.