"Did you mean to say nuclear reactions played a part in the origin of life?" DO #446
I neither suggested nor implied that.
Instead I was reminding that under ambient terrestrial conditions (unlike that in stars) some reactions require precise process controls; whereas others are spontaneous.
I cited it as an example of the distinction.
Such CHEMICAL reactions happen spontaneously on Earth.
Such NUCLEAR reactions do not; thus the counter-example. Capisce?
"To get from lifeless chemical reactions to living things requires a code of some sort or you end up with haphazardly arranged molecules." DO
It's somewhat the reverse.
It starts with haphazardly scattered chemicals. And life might be said to begin when an aggregation within such chemistry begins to duplicate itself.
"And almost all of these are too volatile to survive because they would be subject to degradation." DO
Yes, we know.
Too stable, and life would not have begun.
Too volatile and the instability would have undermined, overwhelmed, & prevented evolution.
"If you believe life can self arrange from chemicals you have faith in miracles." DO
So it might seem to some.
I quoted Venter in #442. All that goes on in one teaspoon full of water. Well how many teaspoons full of water do you suppose Earth had back then? Quintilians? Brazilians?
But it's not merely the vast volume.
It's the chemistry variation, some portions of the sea are fed by fresh water rivers unusually high in alkalinity.
There are variations not just in chemistry, but sunlight, temperature, turbulence, depth, etc.
With a laboratory the size of a planet, and with time scales that are thousands if not millions of millennia, the wonder might have been if it had NOT happened.
UNDERSTOOD.
To the mortal mind, it's difficult to comprehend.
But to the disciplined scientific mind, it's the most plausible explanation.