Leslie Orgel of Salk Institute in California has indicated nucleotides to be “one of the major problems in prebiotic synthesis.”⁠⁹ They are needed to make the nucleic acids (DNA, RNA), also called an overwhelming difficulty. Incidentally, proteins cannot be assembled without the nucleic acids, nor can nucleic acids form without proteins.⁠¹⁰ It’s the old riddle in chemical garb: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

But let’s set that mountain aside and have evolutionist Robert Shapiro, professor of chemistry at New York University and a specialist in DNA research, dispose of the chance formation of nucleotides and nucleic acids in early earth’s environment:

“Whenever two amino acids unite, a water molecule is released. Two molecules of water must be set free in assembling a nucleotide from its components, and additional water is released in combining nucleotides to form nucleic acids. Unfortunately, the formation of water in an environment that is full of it is the chemical equivalent of bringing sand to the Sahara. It is unfavorable, and requires the expenditure of energy. Such processes do not readily take place on their own. In fact, the reverse reactions are the ones that occur spontaneously. Water happily attacks large biological molecules. It pries nucleotides apart from each other, breaks sugar-to-phosphate bonds, and severs bases from sugars.”⁠¹¹

“Molecular biology has also shown that the basic design of the cell system is essentially the same in all living systems on earth from bacteria to mammals. In all organisms the roles of DNA, mRNA and protein are identical. The meaning of the genetic code is also virtually identical in all cells.

The information content coded into a speck of DNA weighing “less than a few thousand millionths of a gram” is enough “to specify an organism as complex as man.”⁠¹⁷ Even the information content of a single cell, “if written out, would fill a thousand 600-page books.”⁠¹⁸ How awesome! Intelligence far beyond our powers of comprehension is an absolute must to start life on earth.

My conclusion after all of this: Without the right atmosphere, no organic soup. Without the organic soup, no amino acids. Without amino acids, no proteins. Without proteins, no nucleotides. Without nucleotides, no DNA. Without DNA, no cell that reproduces itself. Without a covering membrane, no living cell. And without intelligent design and direction, no life on earth.