Question #f2ac3
1 Answer
A functioning membrane is vital to a living cell. Without a membrane a proto cell would be quickly absorbed into the entropy of the environment.
Explanation:
The formation of a membrane is necessary for origin of a living cell.
The formation of the membrane would have to be spontaneous before the existence of a living cell or the DNA code to direct the formation of the membrane.
The belief in the formation of the first cell by totally natural cause and material processes requires that the formation of the membrane had to be spontaneous. The membrane would have to form first in order to protect the proteins and DNA or RNA needed for life.
The difficulty is the difficulty of forming a membrane by natural causes. Also the membrane would have to then be combined with a spontaneously generated information code such as DNA and RNA that would be capable of reproducing both itself and the membrane.
Add to this that the enzyme proteins necessary for copying of the information code would also have to be formed spontaneously.
The odds of the all this happening spontaneously are greater than all of the particles and time in the observable universe. Dawkins speaks of the spontaneous formation of the first cell as a happy chemical accident. The spontaneous formation of a cell membrane is essential to the origin of life.
