Chemistry Creates a Crisis for Evolution

The idea of an unguided origin of the first life has been “sold to us,” but its assumptions are “insane … many, many times impossible” says Brazilian organic chemist Marcos Eberlin.

From three essential cell features: the cell membrane, protein folding, and molecular chaperones. We’re “further away than ever” from making life in the lab, he says, and it’s time now to “surrender to the data,” which he argues, points to the works of foresight and planning in the origin of the first life.