In the Beginning

We are not close to solving the riddle of life's origins. Origin-of-life research resembles a maze with many entries, and we simply haven't travelled far enough down most routes to know which end in blind alleys. Yet, increasingly, chemists and molecular biologists have abandoned the early view that life originated by means of improbable reactions that came to pass only because vast intervals of time were available. Most now believe that life's origin (or origens - it could have happened more than once) involved chemistry that was both probable and efficient; there is a direct route through the maze, if only we can find it.

.................Andrew H. Knoll in Life on a Young Planet

If creationists want to challenge evolution at the most fundamental level, they can merely say that no one can explain the origin of life. No one can prove them wrong. Of course that might not be true ten years from now.

To us (me and Eu), a bacterium looks very simple and a camel very complex. At the level of fundamental biology, though, even simple bacteria are factories of immense complexity and sophisticated regulation. The array of molecular machinery that must be assembled to carry out photosynthesis is daunting, and that required for protein synthesis, more so.

The fact of evolution is manifest in a million logical chains of evidence, and the theory of natural selection is unsurpassed in its elegant simplicity and intuitive appeal. The details still pose many puzzles, however, and the question of how the engine was first set in motion - what was it that was both chicken and egg - is yet unsolved.

Andrew Knoll devotes only one chapter of the book cited above to the question, but he tells the story of what is known so far with great economy and elegance.