Problems with the first life

They are two different, though related, arguments. One points out that because the radiation doesn't penetrate deeply through water, increasing depth provides increasing protection from it.The other points out that the greater the radiation, the greater the mutation rate, potentially accelerating evolution.You can combine these two arguments to conclude that the deeper an organism resides in the ocean, the slower its rate of mutation due to radiation.--Percy

Gee, I don't know. I understand your point, but Windows must be millions of lines of code and is far more complicated than a single DNA strand. I wouldn't argue that it's a better work of engineering, though.I haven't read Lam's reply yet and so don't know what he's arguing, but I would urge you to be skepical of any claims that we have any satisfactory answers to the puzzle of the origin of life. There's plenty of well informed speculation, but at present we really do not know how life first began. We may never know.I think two of your key issues, namely a) environmental isolation (cell wall) and c) replication, are fine, but b) the building block of the genetic code forming is already known not to be a problem. Nucleotides are not all that complex, and some nucleotides can even form spontaneously in outer space, and we find them in meteorites that fall to earth. Nucleotides can no longer form spontaneously here on earth, because since life is already present, any complex organic molecules that formed would be immediately consumed as food by bacteria and other microscopic life.There is hardly any available evidence to help us figure out how the first life came about, and scientists accept a natural origin of life primarily because of a simple logical progression. When we look inside a cell we see nothing but chemistry. Complicated organic chemistry, to be sure, but just chemistry nonetheless, and certainly no evidence of the divine. Even reproduction is just chemistry. So if all life is just complicated chemistry, then as you trace life back to its beginnings you should still find nothing but chemistry.Hutton gave us the phrase, "The present is the key to the past." In thinking about life's origins scientists assume that the same array of forces and influences for which we have evidence have been present throughout all time. All that is necessary to add a divine force to the list is to discover evidence for it.--Percy