Intelligent design is a more likely cause than Abiogenesis for the origin of life

DISCLAIMER I should point out here that both me an con share a BoP. This is a rather challenging debate in the sense that neither side can logically or empirically prove their side. The goal I have in mind for this debate is for both sides to present a good argument for their view point, because I feel the typical creationist debates on this subject fall utterly short of intellectual content. I know that abiogenesis is not a study pertaining to evolution; however, evolutionists are typically those who defend it in debates, so for the purpose of this debate I will use the term evolutionist to refer to supporters of abiogenesis. As I defend creationism, I will start by dispelling the typical creationist objection to abiogenesis. The typical creationist argument against abiogenesis involves predicting the probability of Mycobacterium genetalium (the simplest naturally occurring cell known to man) being generated at random in a primordial soup of random amino acid materials. The following link gives an excellent diagram of how evolutionists believe the first cell was actually generated. In fact, the whole article is dedicated to dispelling the typical simplistic creationist objection to abiogenesis. http://www.talkorigins.org... I do not intend to spend any of my space providing the reader with an understanding of what evolutionists teach about abiogenesis. If the reader does not understand the high level, please refer to the diagrams in the above link. I feel very limited in space for such a massive topic. I will defend, at a high level, two key points. I will likely have the opportunity to use more detail in future rebuttals. 1) Abiogenesis is a highly unlikely event Dean H. Kenyon was once an evolutionary biologist and authored a ground breaking book, "Biological Predestination". http://en.wikipedia.org... Scientists prefer to use the simplest hypothesis based on observable events (Occam's razor). http://en.wikipedia.org...'s_razor Kenyon's book proposed that in order for life to have arisen in the time frame in which it is believed to have done so, there should be some underlying principle in nature that would cause the formation of the first living cell under some rational early earth conditions. These conditions and principles are still being speculated about today. Kenyon didn't begin to question his belief in evolution until he read "CREATION OF LIFE: A Cybernetic Approach to Evolution" by Dr. A. E. Wilder Smith. You can read the forward and chapter 3 at the following link, or buy it on amazon (I saw it for about 4$). http://www.bestbiblescience.org... There are rational conditions in which early earth may have contained many randomly generated amino acids. When amino acids are strung together they form a peptide. In order to chain one amino acid to the next, energy is required to initiate a chemical reaction which produces a water molecule after the two acids are put together. This reaction is more easily reversed than it is produced. http://en.wikipedia.org... The hypothetical early earth teaming with amino acids is also full of water. In order for peptides to be formed, the water must be removed. There are hypothetical responses to this challenge. One involve peptides being formed on beaches during high and low tide. Another involves peptides forming on clay. The point is, peptides were highly unlikely to form in the ocean. Special circumstances must be employed to produce peptides. This can be shown by the Miller Urey experiement. http://en.wikipedia.org... According to my link to talkorigins, the simplest known self-replicating peptide is 32 amino acids long. The Miller Urey experiment produced well over 20 amino acids. For our math, let's say early earth had 120 amino acids, because that's the number I got from wikipedia. To produce the simplest known replicating peptide, we need to get each amino acid in the right order, so we are dealing with permutations, not combinations. So to calculate the number of peptides of lenth 32 we do (120)^32 ~ 3.418x10^66. It would be good to point out here that this number assumes that 32 amino acids are chained together without breaking apart. After all, breaking apart is more likely than being chained together. The energy source to drive these reactions is also hypothetical too. The Miller Urey experiment protected amino acids which were forming. The earth's environment is hostile to peptides. Just try buying pure peptides and find out how they have to be handled. http://evolutionpeptides.com... "You may be able to buy almost perfectly pure peptides, but can you keep them that way? They can be affected by sunlight, oxygen, and time." It seems to me that peptides are very unstable. Evolutionists propose that the earth was oozing with amino acids, so the "experiment" of creating a self replicating peptide would be taking place many times all over earth, reducing the time required to produce the desired result. However, they seem to overlook the specific requirements for forming these peptides to begin with (Miller Urey used electricity) and the overwhelming number of hazards. So I repeat that the Miller Urey experiment shows just how cautious one must be when trying to produce peptides. If the experiment were done under the circumstances of the hypothetical primordial earth, then it would not have achieved the slim results it did, because what little he did produce would have been destroyed. Even under the ideal circumstances presented in the experiment, the amino acids produced came no where near being able to produce even the simplest known self replicating peptide. So our previously estimated number of 3.418x10^66 is actually going to be much higher due to the forces that would cause peptides to break down in earth's harsh environment. And for reference, there are estimated to be about 1x10^78 to 1x10^82 atoms in the observable universe. Anything with a probability of 1 in that many chances is considered a mathematical impossibility. Now I have only addressed the formation of a simple replicating polymere. Even talkorigins claims there is no known way of assigning a probability of the transition from self replicating polymere to a hyper cycle or from a hyper cycle to a protobiont or from a protobiont to a simple cell. The likely-hood of these things occurring is so small, it led Kenyon to write a book to inspire a search for a natural mechanism that causes it, thus lowering the chances of the occurrence. Evolutionists today are still searching for the answer which Kenyon gave up looking for long ago when he became a theist. 2) The semiotics of DNA is best explained by an intelligent force For those who don't know, semiotics is, "the study of meaning-making, the philosophical theory of signs and symbols." http://en.wikipedia.org... Intelligent design is almost always, but not limited to, the idea of a deity. Renowned atheist Richard Dawkins in his interview with Ben Stein for the documentary "Expelled" sympathized with proponents of intelligent design. He admits to see the structure of life and supposed the original cell may have been planted here from outer space. It seems that Kenyon wasn't the only evolutionary scientist who saw the significance of the DNA code. Proponents of intelligent design point out that we instinctively recognize what comes from an intelligent source and what doesn't. It would be strange for someone having never heard of Mount Rushmore before to see it and wonder what forces of nature put it there. When we go on walks on the beach and see symbols we recognize, like letters and hearts, we don't question whether or not the wind and the waves put them there (but we also know from experience that humans are a more likely source for that). If you were to see a distinctive X carved onto a tree, you probably wouldn't wonder whether or not it was put there by a human. When we see symbols that have meaning we expect them to have come from an intelligent source. When archaeologists go digging, they must use the same logic to determine if what they found was put there by humans or by nature. We tend not to see meaningful symbols in nature, but when we look at DNA, we see volumes of meaningful information. At one point, it was believed that there was a lot of DNA that was non-functional. The term "junk DNA" was coined. As time went on, however, we discovered that almost none of our DNA is non-functional. As a plug on an unrelated, evolution once used junk DNA as evidence, but had to change their stance when new data was discovered. Just goes to show how evolution can adapt to just about, if not, anything. http://en.wikipedia.org... So when I look at the volumes of information contained in even the simplest cell, Mycobacterium genetalium, I see evidence of an intelligence. Occam's Razor suggests we pick the simplest solution with the least number of variables and assumptions. Evolutionists have works for decades on solving the problem of abiogenesis and have yet to find a viable solution to which they can all agree. When we see volumes of DNA in one of the correct orders without any junk DNA, our gut instinct should tell us that it came from intelligence. If I had 1 million type writers typing randomly in English for 4 billion years, I doubt even one of them would have written a story that could be sold at a book store today. We see no examples of meaningful information generated by nature without first there being meaningful information to create it.