Title Author Date

Abiogenesis Yaakov Jul 13, 2002

Abiogenesis, or spontaneous creation, has been a hot topic in a lot of the Torah-Science debate in Judaism, as many laws depend on this notion. Rabbi Schneerson, (whose approach to science Mark Perakh critiqued in the excellent Challenging the Challenge) tried to explain this away in a letter by saying that experimentation cannot prove that something *does not* exist, and abiogenetic creatures, eg, lice, can still be said to exist. This line of thinking is also trumpeted by Herman Branover, a prominent figure in the Torah-Science arena.

Aside for being contrary to common sense, and good reasoning at that, I recently read in one of Steven Pinker's books that spontaneous generation would falsify natural selection. As I'm not biologist, can anybody explain why this would be so?

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Title Author Date

Abiogenesis Atheologian , Aug 04, 2002

Yaakov writes:

"Abiogenesis, or spontaneous creation, has been a hot topic in a lot of the Torah-Science debate in Judaism, as many laws depend on this notion. Rabbi Schneerson, ... tried to explain this away in a letter by saying that experimentation cannot prove that something *does not* exist, and abiogenetic creatures, eg, lice, can still be said to exist."

We should differentiate between abiogenesis and spontaneous generation. The latter means generation of complex organisms from non-living matter (like rats from rags or lice from dirt), and is clearly impossible, while the first is the supposed process, by which simplest forms of life appeared on Earth (for more see http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/).

Related Articles: Challenging the Challenge