crashfrog writes:Well, yes, but how does a putative proto-organism
exploit any of that without some degree of catalysis?
Perhaps you missed the "I am not committed to either" part of
Message 5. I am not making any claim that all of the problems have been solved.
crashfrog writes:Metabolism is a matter of living things using enzymes to catalyze chemical reactions to exploit the change in free energy.
Well, okay. If you are committed to life magically popping into existence, then we will have to agree to disagree.
I take the view that life was preceded by some earlier systems which had some but not all of what we would today consider life. That allows a possible path for life to evolve out of spontaneously occurring chemistry. If you are going to insist that terms such as "metabolism" are not to be used outside of what we today consider to be life, then you are a priori excluding such a possibility of predecessors.
Fundamentalism - the anti-American, anti-Christian branch of American Christianity