Life is most likely intelligently designed

Thanks Pro.I. PrefaceInteresting. Remember the burden of proof is on Pro, I will be issuing a number of arguments against intelligent design of my own but Pro’s arguments need to stand on their own if Pro is to win.II. RebuttalsSince Pro has been so kind to offer me plenty of room, I will rebut opponent’s arguments first.First, Pro equivocates us with computers running a genetic code, this is an equivocation that Pro actually needs to demonstrate first, at this prima facie is clearly false, given that our cells do not ‘compute’, and mostly just translate and duplicate. Cells generally do not process inputs digitally (assuming the nucleotide chain as a digital one) in a way in which new outputs are produced which give meaningful semantics.For example a computer will be able to process 2*7=14, where it will have the input data, and generate a meaningful output which gives agreeable semantics. This is something that cells generally have not been demonstrated to do.Now Pro’s argument in summary appears to be:P1) Life was either designed intelligently, or came about randomlyP2) Life was designed intelligentlyC) Life was designed intelligentlyThis is obviously circular reasoning/begging the question, and hence invalid, it just assumes the conclusion in the premises. Strangely however it seems Pro advocates for this formulation from his second paragraph:“As far as I'm aware, it's a dichotomy and there is no third option: life either came about randomly, or it was designed intelligently. Life is obviously intelligently designed…”I would kindly ask Pro to clarify his argument here.Alternatively, he seems to also defend a valid form of argumentation:P1) Life was either designed intelligently, or came about randomlyP2) Life did not come about randomlyC) Life was intelligently designed.This argument is logically valid, so I will attack the premises of such.P1:First, this is quite simply a false dichotomy, and there is only 1 premises would be clearly valid here:P1*) Life was either designed intelligently, or not designed intelligentlyPro states that there is no excluded middle, and that there are only the two options in P1 that are valid, yet provides zero reason to accept this as true. So he has yet to fulfil his BoP on the matter, and to make things worse this premise almost certainly false.Virtually all physical processes are in some sense random. Gas molecules in the room you are breathing in are jiggling and bouncing around at random, at random speeds, in random directions. Yet you never do suffocate, the air molecules don’t suddenly collect in one corner of the room until you suffocate, and then returns to its usual business. Note there is NOTHING in the laws of physics that makes this impossible, it’s just that when you multiply many random processes together, you get a general order of things that occur.Another excellent example is quantum mechanics, which indicates the world is entirely random, with particles existing only as probability distributions, but clearly we do not see teacups warping/smearing all over the place, the macroscopic scheme of things prevents this from occurring.What’s more is that this ‘tendancy to randomness’ is actually the most significant driver of ANY natural process, the second law of thermodynamics, which depicts that the entropy of any isolated system will tend to increase over time.This is important for many reasons, it means that processes that tend to increase entropy will be driven, and also will direct random events to occur in an ordered fashion. Take any physical process, such as hydrogen fusion, radioactivity, and of course, life, every single one of them act to increase the total entropy of the system, and in fact every single one of these processes would be impossible without this driver, protons would not fuse, nuclei would not disintegrate and cells would not metabolize, as there simply would be no driving force whatsoever.With this in hand we can clearly see that there are driving forces for physical processes to occur non-randomly, and without the requirement of intelligence. Ergo I hold that P1 is a false dichotomy, there are other options. Don’t forget this is a premise that Pro hasn’t even supported yet, and hence has not fulfilled the BoP.P2:There is another way life comes about that we clearly see every day, and without the use of intelligence, and that is from OTHER life. Remember, life reproduces, and clearly unintelligent species are all capable of reproducing. In fact there is not a single example of ANYTHING that would even be remotely considered life-like that does not reproduce. Ergo, clearly we have an existing mechanism from which life comes about, which is a self-sustaining one. Life produces more life, which produces more life ad infinitum.This obviously is not going to be satisfying yet, although it already refutes the premise, if ‘life’ was to include all life that has ever existed, has an origin in an intelligent/non intelligent process, then we need to know what the very first lifeforms actually were. Since there is absolutely no reason to accept that today’s life is anything like the life that would have existed at the origin of life. In fact with knowledge of extinct species, physical changes within species, genetic variation as well as speciation seen on human timescales,[1] I can say with exactly zero confidence that life at the origin of life is anything like life today.Our oldest physical evidence appears to show us that our oldest life was originally very, very simple, simpler than the common bacteria, which gives excellent reason to suspect that progressively simpler forms gave rise to what would be classifiable as ‘life’.[2]III. Non-Intelligent Origin of LifeThe BoP is on Pro, and he needs to actually present a case for intelligent design, but it’s rare I get to talk about my favourite subject, chemistry! In chemistry we like to stick things together, and addition-type chemical reactions are very common in synthetic chemistry and natural chemistry, one famous example is the synthesis of ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen. This reaction is exothermic, yet does not readily occur at ambient conditions, despite having a thermodynamic drive to do so, even elevated conditions only perform this reaction slowly. This and a great variety of reactions are enormously accelerated by introducing a catalyst that regenerates itself at the end of each cycle. In the Haber process (shown above), the rate of ammonia formation is accelerated to commercially profitable levels with the use of a metallic catalyst. Similarly catalysis generally reduces the temperature and increases the rate of formation of the end product. This is accomplished by lowering the ‘activation barriers’ that prevented the chemical reactions occurring at room temperature. Such processes are quite life like, as life itself is essentially a type of ‘catalyst’, converting high energy molecules such as glucose and oxygen into lower energy molecules such as CO2 and water with an increase of entropy. The biggest difference is that they do not reproduce.Autocatalysis is a special case of catalysis where the product itself is identical to the catalyst (see below). We have the same thermodynamic drives to produce the product, but now the reaction is self-sustaining and self-accelerating! Any decreases in the concentration of catalyst, through loss or contamination, are negated by the new catalyst being produced at an increasing rate with each cycle. Moreover the reaction occurs at an ever accelerating rate as the catalyst that originally accelerated the reaction is present in ever higher quantities, effectively a ‘runaway reaction’.[4] Here we have a system that is very much life-like. It reproduces itself and is resistant to external effects. A good autocatalytic process will likely continue ad infinitum until the concentration of input reagents exhausts, which is never if there is a continuous source of these.An autocatalysis system is a system well-known in chemistry and is close to a system that could be classified as rudimentary life, as it is a system that not only reproduces, but is also adaptive.[4]Life is an example of such a system, that copies itself auto-catalytically, but not perfectly. Essentially all we need is a system that templates itself. The templating process is catalytic, as it would catalyse the formation of polymeric bonds (such as in DNA/RNA oligomer formation), and hence would be thermodynamically driven, and also would be autocatalytic, as the templating process also directs the formation of itself, moreover templates are not perfect, and hence have an adaptive mechanism available within it which allows for a cycle that can increase in sophistication with each cycle.This is very thermodynamically favourable, and any process that can accomplish these steps would very quickly become established and adaptive, and very conceivably lead to live as we know it today.There exist many OOL theories that are being researched that seek to fulfil this step, the most heavily researched is the RNA-World hypothesis, largely due to its obvious fulfilment of the aforementioned templating process which would lead to an adaptive autocatalytic system, but there are innumerable others.[5] Therefore, steps to producing life are very much conceivable without the introduction of intelligence, using physical processes and physical drives. Hence, intelligence is unnecessary to explain the OOL, and to suggest such is to violate Occam’s razor.IV. Conclusion:Pro has A. Not fulfilled his BoPand B. Has a mountain to climb on the abiogenesis arguments.V. References:1. http://tinyurl.com...2. http://tinyurl.com...3. http://tinyurl.com...4. http://tinyurl.com...5. http://tinyurl.com...