How did the first life form on Earth know how to reproduce itself?

Should the origin of life be attributed to the fortuitous arrangement of proteins, it would lack a mechanism for replicating said arrangement.

Proteins are necessary for DNA replication and genome replication; without them, life as we know it today would not have developed from an accidental arrangement of DNA.

The most likely explanation is that RNA functions as a genetic code and codes for a small number of proteins. It is improbable that RNA could code for membrane proteins or proteins required for RNA replication. The likelihood of an unguided random accident producing the code required to produce even one protein is higher than the total number of atoms acting during the universe's entire postulated history.

Natural selection, as proposed by Darwinian evolution, could not "guide" evolution until the first life was able to reproduce itself.

Therefore, the question of how the first life could have been able to reproduce itself has no recognized scientific explanation.

Although the precise process by which the first life forms reproduced is still unknown, it is thought that over time, natural selection led to the development of self-replicating molecules, like RNA, that allowed them to replicate and pass on genetic information to their progeny.