Life is Intelligently Designed

Con says I caught him off guard with my opening argument. I, in turn, was surprised by how much time he spent telling me how I should argue. Seems to me Con's job is simple: Show me where life has been observed to arise naturally, or else devise an experiment that shows how it might have happened. Let me jump down to Con's closing sentence: "...Pro has yet to demonstrate ID is even physically possible, and therefore should be immediately rejected on those grounds". Well, lol, has it been demonstrated that the alternative is physically possible? So shall we just reject the debate right now since neither option can be demonstrated? And ironically, we are far closer to demonstrating ID than spontaneous generation. We have a rapidly developing field of genetic engineering that may well synthesize a cell from scratch at some point, thus demonstrating the feasibility of intelligent design. A demonstration of abiogenesis or Darwinian evolution is no closer today than it was 150 years ago. Let's get back to the surprise about "metaphysical", Con even claiming I have shot my in the foot. First, any good sophist must define his terms, so that's where I started. I perhaps didn't show that my definition is in fact necessary: If intelligence is not metaphysical (i.e. 'after, beside, or beyond physical') then arguing for Intelligent Design is in fact arguing for a physical origin of life. It would be a different theory from Darwin's, but still a theory of a natural origin for life. To invert the equation, to argue for intelligent design is to argue for genuine intelligence in humans, while arguing for an evolved brain is to argue for the mere illusion of intelligence. If Darwin is right, we only have debates like this because it somehow promotes the reproduction or survival of our species. And the paradox that always escapes the naturalist: Darwin can only be right or wrong if man in fact has a metaphysical intelligence, otherwise our opinions about Darwin are the product of mutations that are either being selected or eliminated from the species. Darwin can only be right or wrong if Darwin is wrong. Next issue: We should immediate eliminate the word probability from this debate. Probability can only be done on data sets, and there is one and only one ecosystem in play here. What people often mean when they talk about the likelihood of this or that is actually a description of how we narrow down the options presented by our subconscious. We weight them, and often call that scoring "likely" or "unlikely". But let's be clear: When we talk like that we're talking about intuition, not any sort of science or field of mathematics. Ok. Con says "We clearly know the natural world exists... potential mechanisms [exist]" So yes, a naturalistic cause is prima facie plausible, and I don't reject the possibility out of hand. But then Con makes a grave blunder: he says of naturalism "we know it exists (unlike ID)." So Con leaps from rightly claiming that a naturalistic cause should be given a hearing because nature exists to saying "it exists", "It" being the natural mechanisms that could create life. In fact, we don't know "it" exists, that's begging the question. It has NOT been shown that natural mechanisms can create or differentiate life. And conversely, we most certainly DO know ID exists - where would we get the concept of 'Intelligent Design' if we didn't know of intelligence and design?? So in fact we're on more or less equal footing here: We are extrapolating from observed causes to a possible historical cause. I would claim, as above, that ID is in fact demonstrated in a way that spontaneous generation has not been. Spontaneous generation and evolution remain the wildest of speculation, in fact. As to "thermodynamically driven" - that's clever, to try to turn the 2nd law argument on its head, but I frankly don't see what it has to do with proposing a naturalistic origin of life. The ID argument is not that life violates any laws of nature, just that the laws of nature are insufficient to explain it's origin. A ball rolls down a hill by simple obedience to gravity. We're debating how the ball got on the top of the hill in the first place - hurricane, glacier, or did somebody carry it up there. I would point out, though: Con makes the analogy to multiplicative chain reactions, and the problem is that such reactions typically run out of fuel quickly. Think of TNT, for instance. So, as in all of life, it takes extreme sophistication - a system! - to keep the exponential growth aspect of living things in balance. Species must not only reproduce, but feed themselves, and many feed on other living organisms. I love statements like this "This is all that is needed to seed life". Well, if it's simple as all that, then demonstrate it already! But of course it's as far from simple as anything could be. I often say - the best inoculation against Darwin is to learn all you can about life. Life is such an elegantly designed system that it can seem simple and inevitable, but is anything but. So, here's how I see the score: 1) We have the speculation that some unknown natural causes might have produced life. Some experiments have suggested some building blocks, but no one has come within a thousand light years of producing anything like observable life. 2) Intelligent Design is a well known phenomenon, which has taken man to the moon. We have not yet created anything with the complexity and sophistication of life, but it requires far less imagination to suppose a superior intelligence might have made life. Life looks like the kind of thing that is designed, not like the kind of thing that happens when you shake a bag of rocks. Those who want some kind of certainty here are out of luck, and will likely fall into all sorts of bad thinking if they pretend they can get it.