I’m not quite sure why this is newsworthy except, perhaps, to rile the waters in which creationists and atheists swim. However, I call your attention to this paragraph from the story:
For decades the scientific community had hypothesized that a chemical process inside comets and meteorites could create elements of DNA, or Deoxyribonucleic acid. The ladder-like molecule contains genetic “blueprints” needed to create life and living organisms. It’s made up of four different molecules, called nucleobases, which lock together rung-by-rung in the now-iconic double-helix shape. (my emphasis)
The claim that DNA is necessary to create life is objectively wrong. Scientists do not know the criteria (chemical, physical, or biological) necessary to create life. The importance of nucleic acids for life lies in its ability to mediate reproduction, not create life. How life came into being? No one knows.
Nor is this a minor point. Both sides of the origin-of-life debate often conflate reproduction with creation and this surely obscures the controversy. At the moment, science and scientists do not understand how life came into being.
Truth in advertising: I am a firm believer in evolution by natural selection (ENS, aka Darwinian evolution). But when discussing the merits of ENS, anti-creationists must first acknowledge this essential truth.
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