The Miracle of the Origin of Life

“Everything about the origin of life on earth is a mystery, and it seems the more that is known, the more acute the puzzles get…The chemistry of the first life is a nightmare to explain. No one has yet devised a plausible explanation to show how the earliest chemicals of life — thought to be RNA, or ribonucleic acid, a close relative of DNA — might have constructed themselves from the inorganic chemicals likely to have been around on the early earth. The spontaneous assembly of small RNA molecules on the primitive earth ”would have been a near miracle,” two experts in the subject helpfully declared last year.”

Lest you think this is an argument from ignorance, it is from what we do know about DNA and proteins and amino acids and the early earth’s atmosphere. Chance or luck is out. And there is no self-organizing principle / law that made this “necessary” in any sense of the word.

Oxford Atheist Richard Dawkins on the Origin of Life (from Expelled):

Richard Dawkins: We know the sort of event that must have happened for the origin of life.

Ben Stein: And what was that?

Richard Dawkins: It was the origin of the first self replicating molecule.

Ben Stein: Right, and how did that happen?

Richard Dawkins: I’ve told you, we don’t know.

Ben Stein: So you have no idea how it started.

Richard Dawkins: No, no. Nor has anyone.