Consider the RNA molecule. It is constructed of smaller molecules called nucleotides. A nucleotide is a different molecule from an amino acid and is only slightly more complex. Shapiro says that “no nucleotides of any kind have been reported as products of spark-discharge experiments or in studies of meteorites.”³ He further states that the probability of a self-replicating RNA molecule randomly assembling from a pool of chemical building blocks “is so vanishingly small that its happening even once anywhere in the visible universe would count as a piece of exceptional good luck.”⁴

RNA is required to make proteins, yet proteins are involved in the production of RNA. What if, despite the extremely small odds, both proteins and RNA molecules did appear by chance in the same place at the same time? How likely would it be for them to cooperate to form a self-replicating, self-sustaining type of life? “The probability of this happening by chance (given a random mixture of proteins and RNA) seems astronomically low,” says Dr. Carol Clelandc, a member of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Astrobiology Institute. “Yet,” she continues, “most researchers seem to assume that if they can make sense of the independent production of proteins and RNA under natural primordial conditions, the coordination will somehow take care of itself.” Regarding the current theories of how these building blocks of life could have arisen by chance, she says: “None of them have provided us with a very satisfying story about how this happened.”⁶