Originally Posted by NeBassman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

Abiogenesis

In the natural sciences, abiogenesis, or "chemical evolution", is the study of how life on Earth could have arisen from inanimate matter. It should not be confused with evolution, which is the study of how groups of living things change over time. Amino acids, often called "the building blocks of life", can form via natural chemical reactions unrelated to life, as demonstrated in the Miller�Urey experiment, which involved simulating the conditions of the early Earth. In all living things, these amino acids are organized into proteins, and the construction of these proteins is mediated by nucleic acids. Thus the question of how life on Earth originated is a question of how the first nucleic acids arose.


Given that amino acids are found in nature does in no way reduce the problem to "a question of how the first nucleic acids arose". This is a gross oversimplification.

Protein synthesis is a hugely complex and sensitive process. I can not overstate this last statement. Furthermore, the problem of discovering a "wild" source of nucleic acids does not explain how these nucleic acids became encoded(chained together in meaningful ways). DNA (or RNA if you assume an RNA world scenario) are strings of nucleic acids with an incredible amount of information encoded in them that describe the protiens that make up a living cell. The complexity is beyond belief.

Watch this video. The best part is toward the end. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/david_bolinsky_animates_a_cell.html


Last edited by walkingman; 11/25/09.