mr mr. dawkins panetta question for you. after having read darwin and i've read almost everything you have ever written that has been published one of the questions that always seems to seep through my mind is when we talk about the big bang theory and we talk about evolution, one of the questions that i always have mulling around in my mind is when you think of the first unicellular organism. how's the scientific community figured out where that first cell originated from? >> no it hasn't and it's one of the big open questions. it's something that happened a very long time ago for probably about 4 billion years ago, not long after the earth came into existence about 4.5 billion years ago. we know the kind of thing it had to be. it had to be the origin of the first cells replicating information, the first gene although it certainly would not have been dna. dna would have almost certainly come in later and usurped the role of the original replicator so most of the theorizing and i would say perhaps all the theorizing going on

mr mr. dawkins panetta question for you. after having read darwin and i've read almost everything you have ever written that has been published one of the questions that always seems to seep through my mind is when we talk about the big bang theory and we talk about evolution, one of the questions that i always have mulling around in my mind is when you think of the first unicellular organism. how's the scientific community figured out where that first cell originated from? >> no it hasn't

mr mr. dawkins panetta question for you. after having read darwin and i've read almost everything you have ever written that has been published one of the questions that always seems to seep through my mind is when we talk about the big bang theory and we talk about evolution, one of the questions that i always have mulling around in my mind is when you think of the first unicellular organism. how's the scientific community figured out where that first cell originated from? >> no it hasn't and it's one of the big open questions. it's something that happened a very long time ago for probably about 4 billion years ago, not long after the earth came into existence about 4.5 billion years ago. we know the kind of thing it had to be. it had to be the origin of the first cells replicating information, the first gene although it certainly would not have been dna. dna would have almost certainly come in later and usurped the role of the original replicator so most of the theorizing and i would say perhaps all the theorizing going on