Just for the record, John, there is a lot more to the evolutionary theory discussion on the subject of inanimate to animate matter than "because it did".

The Blind Watchmaker is one excellent text that explores this area and examples that indicate the lieklihood of it occurring.

THat said, in all fairness, I think there IS a bias toward non-spiritual interpretations of existence itself by scientissts, just as there is a bias toward obeying CYrillic road signs in Russia -- it's a natural byproduct of the symbol system they are bred with.

There have been many threads here on the Cat about this dichotomy between pure materialism versus matter + spirit in various combinations.

One of the reasons the subject seems to be so thorny and hard to cut through might be that the material framework is the one area where solid agreements, as made manifest in experience, rule. Spiritual spheres of activity tend to be highly subjective, with wild variables among different groups' perceptions. Sure, there are commonalities, but they are difficult to frame and communicate compared to the solid certainty of "32 feet per second squared" and Boyle's law.

It is possible, someday, that the scientific method will be able to test and codify the boundary region between spirit and matter, but it is not going to be soon, because the momentum of material agreement is hard to steer in any new direction, like an aircraft carrier trying to make a turn at sea.

A