Random chance could produce these systems, given a large enough quantity of primordial soup. Now, here's the real question: was there enough primordial soup and chemical reactants around on the Earth to make the probability of this evolutionary development of simple lifeforms feasible?How likely is it that, just by chance, a bunch of organic molecules would clump together to form a DNA strand? How about an RNA strand (all types)? What's the probability of forming an enzyme to "unzip" the DNA strand for duplicaton if I just take the primary elemental constitutents of organic chemistry and mix them in a test tube? How likely is it that, just by chance, we'd evolve that elaborate system of codons and anticodons that ensure that we don't fuck up the DNA transcription and duplication process too badly?
How about the process of protein synthesis from DNA via transfer RNA? How likely is it that all those amino acids would just somehow find a way to arrange themselves in patterns that could be easily re-created for continuing protein synthesis?
How about the myriad of ways by which proteins organize themselves?
I'm not going to force one religious belief over another. I'm not really practicing any religion.
I do, however, believe that there must have been some external, intelligent force that guided the creation of all these systems. (Or, if not "guided", at least provided the catalyzing event.)
If we have a very specific list of everything required to create the first DNA strand, along with a calculation of the probability, we can then determine with some basic math how much of the reactants are required to produce the first DNA strand. Then, through geological records and computer simulations, we could get a rough estimate of the actual amounts of reactants on the Earth at the time life was formed. This is at least a starting point, and we can finally prove something, rather than have a bunch of Frosted Flakes playing their "what if" games to keep the scientific method out of the mainstream.
