Fully explored? You make me laugh.

Proven or disproven? Again, haha.

So far, I have not seen much beyond a blind faith in Darwin, on Frank's part. Calling the magnificent spread of life on this planet purely a mathematical probability of inorganic chemicals merely experimenting with each other and having elegant (some) accidents does not do the whole job for me.

Frank does share some precious knowledge of the details of life sciences from time to time. Most of the time, he is woodenly resistant to looking at other probabilities, testing the main previous assumption. The clincher for evaluating his moderating style is when he supported Skibummer in his flat "no" answer to the question: "Is a foetus even an animal, yes, or no?"

In brief: Approaches to "truth" and obtaining truth in a narrow fossil-examining and classifying in "orderly" ***presumed*** progression style evidently preferred by Frank is lame. It's difficult to say, really, who has the right answer on how life originated from nothing, and progressed step by step. Frank seems out of his element, unexcited, as I review the ongoing and expanding evidence of planets (environments?) in other star systems. This has really been warming up of late.

Reported this week:

http://www.newkerala.com/one.php?action=fullnews&id=8923

"But until now, none of the 270 known extrasolar planets had been found around stars young enough to still have protoplanetary discs. That's because most planet searches have excluded young stars, whose pulsations can mimic the telltale wobbles caused by potential planets."

Summary: Surely appropriate discussion on an open forum entails ventures into thought experimenting, and allowance for at least as many tricks on either side of the dissecting table.