How did A-biotic matter create a living cell?

You bring up one of the things the keeps biology interesting for me. However, as a biology student I try not to look into this in too much detail because it's mind boggling. The only thing I can suggest is look into scientific articles that involve cell theory and do some more research. You got a good way of thinking so I'm sure you can handle a little personal research in that area. Good luck!

In the words of George Cody, an origin-of-life researcher, "No one knows anything about the origin of life." Experiments such as RNA-Catalyzed RNA Polymerization might show brilliant modern combinatorial and engineering methodology but the conditions are so carefully controlled the do little to explain the origin of life in the real world. Even the minimal genome is estimated to be 387 protein-coding and 43 RNA-coding genes, plus the cellular machinery to put it into effect. This is hardly likely to self assemble from non-living matter.

I understand what you are getting at. Because science does not know the answer to this question, then we must say that God did it! When natural selection was proposed, religous people said the same things you are saying. How can information be passed on? And then genetics was uncovered. I am sure that when science finds the answer to your question, religous people will go back even further, to the first possible moment when matter was created.

I can see how this is not a religious attack but a valid question. As an atheist I have wondered the same question. The complexities of life and its processes is amazing. The primoridal soup theory really depends on the fact that all of these molecules are being formed by chance at the same time in high volume. Though one find find it extremely rare for all the necessary components to come together at the same time resulting in a cell, one also has to consider the amount of time it took for this to happen. Given a lot of time and a lot of small-scale chemical reactions all taking place in a rich soup of compounds, it is less of a stretch to imagine that the components eventually started working together; especially since most of them have the same fundamental backbone structure (in the sense that RNA and DNA, etc have interactive relationships based on their bonding). It might also be helpful to keep in mind that "organisms" exist which do not need all the components of a cell which still emulate some of the characteristics necessary to define something as "living", such as viruses and prions. Perhaps one ancestral "organism" involved in the development of life as we know it possessed such properties? You have to ask whether you need a complete and complex cell to carry out functions. It gets really hard to define what is living and what is not at this junction in evolution.

I can see how this is not a religious attack but a valid question. As an atheist I have wondered the same question. The complexities of life and its processes is amazing. The primoridal soup theory really depends on the fact that all of these molecules are being formed by chance at the same time in high volume. Though one find find it extremely rare for all the necessary components to come together at the same time resulting in a cell, one also has to consider the amount of time it took for this to happen. Given a lot of time and a lot of small-scale chemical reactions all taking place in a rich soup of compounds, it is less of a stretch to imagine that the components eventually started working together; especially since most of them have the same fundamental backbone structure (in the sense that RNA and DNA, etc have interactive relationships based on their bonding). It might also be helpful to keep in mind that "organisms" exist which do not need all the components of a cell which still emulate some of the characteristics necessary to define something as "living", such as viruses and prions. Perhaps one ancestral "organism" involved in the development of life as we know it possessed such properties? You have to ask whether you need a complete and complex cell to carry out functions. It gets really hard to define what is living and what is not at this junction in evolution.

In the words of George Cody, an origin-of-life researcher, "No one knows anything about the origin of life." Experiments such as RNA-Catalyzed RNA Polymerization might show brilliant modern combinatorial and engineering methodology but the conditions are so carefully controlled the do little to explain the origin of life in the real world. Even the minimal genome is estimated to be 387 protein-coding and 43 RNA-coding genes, plus the cellular machinery to put it into effect. This is hardly likely to self assemble from non-living matter.

I understand what you are getting at. Because science does not know the answer to this question, then we must say that God did it! When natural selection was proposed, religous people said the same things you are saying. How can information be passed on? And then genetics was uncovered. I am sure that when science finds the answer to your question, religous people will go back even further, to the first possible moment when matter was created.