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