First things first. Even Dawkins admits that getting to the point where evolution can take off is no easy matter. How far back before evolution do we need to go? For the sake of following out his argument, we need to go to the beginning of the universe. Before there was ever biology, there was only chemistry. That is, if we trace backwards the history of Earth as it fits into science’s current account of the history of the universe, we find the first very simple cells arising on Earth some 3.7 billion
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