While we try to explain abiogenesis over and over again to newbie theists who think the theory of evolution covers it, progress on finding a mechanism for abiogenesis continues to be made in laboratories. Recently a team of Japanese scientists filled a major hole in the potential process by which living things could have formed from nonliving chemicals. To quote a Medium.com post:
But the main issue was the propagation, which according to the lead researcher, requires spontaneous polymer production and self-assembly under the same conditions. When they added water to the mixture at room temperature, they condensed & arranged it into peptides — which then spontaneously formed droplets. These peptides grew in size & quantity as more amino acids were fed to them.
Not only did this process work for amino acids forming proteins but also for (more complex) genetic material being formed from nucleic acids (genetic material building blocks).
Sensibly, the scientists stated:
While this new find does not guarantee that this is how complex life evolved on our planet but it does lend some credibility to the possibility.
Whenever a significant gap in our knowledge gets filled, one of two things happens: the religious apologists try to incorporate it into their theology, a la, the Big Bang theory or <cricket, cricket, cricket>. I have referred to the first effort as a manifestation of the time honored process of grasping at straws, meaning trying to find some way to succeed when nothing you choose is likely to work. (Well, besides my cartoon mind showing the God of the Gaps getting smaller and smaller crying “Oh, I’m melting” like the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz.)
I suspect that this time, we will get <cricket, cricket, cricket>, that is silence, about this finding, because the last thing these goobers want is a clear pathway between dead chemicals and living cells be shown to exist. They’d rather that no one notice that progress is even being made.
Why such a abiogenesis process is possible is a shock to anyone is beyond me. The facts are clear: whenever anything dies, it decomposes into a pile of not very valuable chemicals. That tells us is that, since everyone of us decomposes into roughly the same pile of chemicals, then all that we (you and I) are is a particular arrangement of those chemical’s atoms. So, it seems logical that there is a pathway for those dead atom’s to be arranged to create something alive (possessing the ability to eat, ability to propagate, etc.) The claim for the existence of a material or immaterial soul has no evidence, so that is just wishful thinking, so far.
I think I understand why organizations like Answers in Genesis and wealthy individual Christians do not sponsor research to find “the soul” they so dearly love to refer to, because not finding it would be evidence it did not exist. (Absence of evidence is evidence of absence, if many attempts are made to find the evidence and they all fail.) They would rather the question remain “open,” asking instead “well, how hard are those atheistic scientists trying to find the evidence?”