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Politics : View from the Center and Left
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To: Katelew who wrote (101842)1/25/2009 8:51:53 PM
From: spiral3  Read Replies (1) of 542967
 
Anyone trying to solve this puzzle immediately encounters a paradox. Nowadays nucleic acids are synthesized only with the help of proteins, and proteins are synthesized only if their corresponding nucleotide sequence is present. It is extremely improbable that proteins and nucleic acids, both of which are structurally complex, arose spontaneously in the same place at the same time. Yet it also seems impossible to have one without the other. And so, at first glance, one might have to conclude that life could never, in fact, have originated by chemical means.

Kate I'd suggest that it's only a paradox if you make it into a binary proposition, that this persons conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. Why couldn't they just be interdependently arisen, with reciprocal causality, like a chicken and egg, chemicals and all.
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