Our all-time most-read post here at Uncommon Descent was about renowned chemist James Tour: A world-famous chemist tells the truth: there’s no scientist alive today who understands macroevolution (visited 363,901 times, 66 visits today, 484 responses).
At Inference Review, he writes,
Cellular and organelle bilayers, which were once thought of as simple vesicles, are anything but. They are highly functional gatekeepers. By virtue of their glycans, lipid bilayers become enormous banks of stored, readable, and re-writable information. The sonication of a few random lipids, polysaccharides, and proteins in a lab will not yield cellular lipid bilayer membranes.
Mes frères, mes semblables, with these complexities in mind, how can we build the microsystem of a simple cell? Would we be able to build even the lipid bilayers? These diminutive cellular microsystems—which are, in turn, composed of thousands of nanosystems—are beyond our comprehension. Yet we are led to believe that 3.8 billion years ago the requisite compounds could be found in some cave, or undersea vent, and somehow or other they assembled themselves into the first cell.
Could time really have worked such magic?
Many of the molecular structures needed for life are not thermodynamically favored by their syntheses.More.
In its present state, origin of life is only a science topic out of deference to naturalism, not on account of its research success.
See also: Biophysicist: Order can arise from nothing! I have evidence! – Rob Sheldon replies
Is origin of life really a science problem?
and
What we know and don’t know about the origin of life