One of my favorite rebuttals against Intelligent Design comes from The Talk Origins Archive, and is titled Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations. You often see in print, or hear in conversation, how improbable life seems. This article does all of us a favor by pointing out some argumentative sleight-of-hand that is used by the ID crowd to reinforce this perception, and also shows how the "improbability" should really be considered.
Fast forward to this weekend, when I started reading Life Ascending by Nick Lane. It's already a fascinating read - but focuses on a more recent understanding of abiogenesis, initially the view that simple life forms (primarily bacteria) would be formed near deep sea thermal vents. This book is some good stuff - I'm already recommending it - and I'm only a quarter of the way through it!
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