[pcl]

And these single-celled creatures evolved from......?

Billions of years of the molecules organizing themselves by probablistic chance.

[sheltonmac]

"Billions of years of the molecules organizing themselves by probablistic chance."

Spontaneous generation, in other words. I didn't think that was scientific fact. Have we demonstrated that it is possible to get life from non-living matter?

I like your choice of words, "organizing themselves by probablistic chance." I wish my desk could get organized by chance, but I'd be willing to bet that if I came back billions of years later it would still be messy.

[Cleburne]

On the one hand, current theory states (unless it has changed lately), cells had but a mere 4 billion years to develop, and considering that earth was supposedly a very hostile place for the first couple billion years, you have a goodly bit of time sliced off. Then we must face the massive hurdles of "molecules organizing into cells", not only in a hostile environment (the first cells probably would not have had the time to develop the more complex defences of some micro-organisms of today), but with a handful of base chemicals that would first have to be organized into the correct acids and compounds, then would have to formulate themselves into workable structures, then a grand leap over the ditch, assemble into actuall working living units, all without any direction at all (so please don't give me the life in the lab story), and in a very volatile environment. Of course, we could just petition to get the erly earth's environment changed: would you like a warm pond, frozen icepack, volcanoe rim...? Or maybe we could appeal to life arriving on an asteriod (never mind we would still have to explain where that came from-eh, maybe a nice warm pond full of the right "stuff"). I'm sure that, using your imagination, one could come up with all sorts of ideas to support himself. We mustn't consider any alternatives...