Some questions I think and read about, when I am not working

1) How did the first self-replicating organic structure come into being, i.e. how did the evolutionary process of genetic variation / natural selection get started?

a) Background and references - Charles Darwin in his "Origin of Species" ends with this elequent summary..

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

b) http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.02/bigquestions.html?pg=3#life enumerates the possibilities including

- primordial soup sparked with electricity,

- God,

- extra planetary source,

- complexity theory

c) Richard Dawkins - "The Selfish Gene" - interesting speculations on self replication, but no answers

d) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life - good summary on the subject