> I think it’s highly likely with lots of circumstantial evidence that life is an evolutionary emergent phenomenon where inorganic material reactions create life
Out of curiosity, if you reject religion, what other possibilities are there?
Just inorganic material combining at random and eventually, over about 10 billion years, randomly creating something that self replicates in some way, beginning the process of evolution through natural selection and inevitably progressing to life as we know it.
I don't think religion is needed at all for this. I also don't think this has to be a common thing (after all, here on Earth it only happened once, but it's also possible that once life is widespread it makes it very difficult for emergent new forms of life to take off).
Where did you get 10 billion years of random chemistry?
The articles I read assert that life began just 500 million to 1 billion years after formation of earth. 3.5-4.1 billion years ago with an earth age of 4.5 billion.
Presumably like your parent, I believed this was a discussion about the probability that life has originated elsewhere in the galaxy / universe, independently of life on Earth.
Commenter is referring to the case where life is a common occurrence as an "an evolutionary emergent phenomenon where inorganic material reactions create life" in contrast to the case where life has only happened once, which would be more like an extremely lucky fluke where inorganic material reactions create life.
Simulation hypothesis: all this may be much younger than we expect.
Nonuniform physics—call it colliding universes or whatever, but the processes that gave rise to life on Earth may not be possible anywhere in this universe now. Including labs on Earth!
Out of curiosity, if you reject religion, what other possibilities are there?