The Improbability of the Origin of Life

In this podcast episode, Richard Dawkins discusses the origin of life and the improbability of its occurrence. He highlights that unlike the complex processes of evolution, the origin of life only needed to happen once and therefore could be a highly unlikely event. Dawkins explains that chemists studying the origin of life are not looking for plausible scenarios but rather very implausible ones. He also explores the debates between Necessitism and Contingentism, two opposing views on the nature of the origin of life. Both camps accuse each other of having hidden theological agendas. Dawkins concludes that the origin of life remains one of the greatest mysteries in contemporary science.