>> Did volcanoes help create life?

Probably - and lets add one other point to the equation:
Plate Techtonics (from Life Everywhere, Darling)

"...it turns out that the sliding of crustal plates and their subduction - when
oceanic plates delve down under lighter continental plates - is the single most
important regulator of global climate. Plate tectonics is at the heart of the
carbon dioxide recycling loop. Switch off the conveyor belt of the crustal
plates and you switch off the most important means of regulating the amount of
carbon dixoide in the atmosphere. Then one of two things happens. Most of the
planet's carbon dioxide ends up either in the atmosphere (in whcih case a
massive greenhouse effect, as on Venus, makes it too hot for life) or locked in
the ground (leading to a Mars-like freeze-up.

Venus is internally hot, it doesn't have plate tectonics... Why? Because it
doesn't have liquid water. 
The lack of water puts a stop to plate tectonics....Any
primordial Martian plate tectonics quickly ground to a halt, and thereafter
more and more of the Red Planet's stock of carbon dioxide was permanently
locked in the crust."

Tom (th)
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