Life is Intelligently Designed

Preface I hardly think Pro has actually addressed any of my points in his previous rounds. Also I am not sure if Pro's immaterial intelligence claim is even topical. I will address it, but he just hasn't been linked to the ID of life. II. Rebuttal to ID It is not sufficient for Pro to merely to attack natural causation for life. The positive case for intelligence needs to actually be presented. I have seen precious few arguments from Pro in the way of positively affirming that an ID is a physical possibility. Pro argues for intelligence and matter being fundamentally different, for which I presented the interaction problem. I present a more formal refutation below: P1. If mind and matter are not one in the same, then mind interacts with matter P2. If mind and matter are not one in the same, then mind does not interact with matter C. 1 & 2 form a contradiction, therefore mind & matter are one in the same. Pro has already affirmed P1 for me in his opening round. In defence of P2, in order for two different substances to interact need to share properties, like a magnet and piece of iron share a disturbance in the electromagnetic field. However, if they share properties, then they are no longer different substances, mind and matter are essentially one in the same. Similarly the magnet and piece of iron are the same type of 'stuff', material stuff. To propose that immaterial intelligence is like asserting a ghost with no physical properties can move a car, to which I must ask, how? Magic?[3] Pro says that assuming natural process also assumes an illusion of intelligence. But has provided zero reasons to accept this. I can just assert that intelligence is emergent, and is quantitative, not qualitative. The evidence will be on my side given we have quantitatively less intelligent species, such as chimpanzees, cats, mice and bacteria. [1] Pro asserts that intelligence very conceivably is capable of producing life. I do not deny this at all. But we are talking about non-organic intelligence, which we simply do not have any evidence for it's existence. So we have an unknown 'intelligence', which arguably provides minimal explanatory power, with a very large number of assumptions. It's a bad hypothesis. Pro concedes he cannot do much in the way of determining probability. This is fine, but remember the BoP is on him in his debate, and provisions should be granted because his job is hard. Also, I made arguments that the physical 'possibility' of ID should be rejected altogether, due to it violating Occums Razor and being a positive assertion. We simply do not have a metaphysical intelligence as a possibility to present, the possibility first needs to be demonstrated, and THEN it needs to be shown likely. This should address Pro's assertion: "So in fact we're on more or less equal footing here" We're definitely NOT on equal footing here. Natural causation is known to actually exist, chemistry exists, thermodynamics exists, the physical universe exists. Metaphysical intelligent causation outside the human species is NOT known to actually exist. There is absolutely no reason to make additional appeals to the unknown. III. Arguments against ID/IA ID provides no explanatory power on how life would look like, and doesn't even explain WHEN the 'intelligent intervention' occurred/occurs. However there are two formal arguments against ID: P1) If life was ID, then the IA would have left other designed systems P2) There are no other designed systems C) Life was not ID To defend P1, if there was a working IA, then we would expect non-reproducing side-productions, such as we see with humans, with the cars, electronics etc in abundance. Such systems would be significant and easy to identify. Yet none exist on Earth. P1) If life was ID, then life would possess telos P2) Life does not possess intelligent telos C) Life is not ID In defence of P1, cars computers etc. clearly possess telos (an 'end'), the system as a whole has purpose for a higher intelligence. Yet the only thing life does is reproduce, metabolise, and die. It's been billions of years since life first emerged, therefore any purpose that was originally in place would have just as long to arise, which is absurd given a physical IA. IV. Naturalistic Case for OOL Evolution: First consider all life, as well as the simplest of cells. We know of one source of life, which is via. replication of existing life. Indeed all life today is distantly descended from their original forms, regardless of which view one takes on the matters. We also know that species both come in, and out of existence, via speciation and extinction. Moreover we know large variations occur across species, such as in dogs, which are naturally biased in natural selection. Therefore, the message is that I can assert with absolutely no confidence that the life that exists today is ANYTHING like the life at the origin of life (OOL), and it appears anyone who does is rather foolish. Moreover, our earliest examples of life appear to be very, very simple in their morphology, and complex life as we know it today only arose after 600 million years. Therefore the origin of life I propose will be of comparably very, very simple chemical origins.[4] Everything at this point has naturalistic drives, which are known and tangible with today's methods and supported by evidence, unlike those of 'intelligent' origins. Abiogenesis: A natural source of life is most certainly very simple, far simpler than a halobacteria, and existing evidence seems to support this. What's needed is a system that self-replicates in a way which allows for such in a autocatalytic manner, with the additional feature exhibiting tolerance to modification every cycle. Which is the equivalent to mutations. I argued in my opening that an autocatalytic system would likely accomplish this. Essentially any system that templates itself would fulfil both the role of catalyst, and as a template. That means we just need something akin to DNA, or RNA, which replicates in a self-sustained manner. Indeed one of the mainstream OOL fields is the RNA World hypothesis, which from RNA originates, lead to the increased sophistication that life is today. Autocatalytic chemical reactions as discussed are a special type of catalytic chemical reaction. The products of the reaction are identical to the catalyst itself (see diagrams linked). Because the catalyst gets generated in higher and higher concentrations, the system becomes self-sustaining and increasingly more rapid, a runaway reaction. Ordinary catalytic system: http://tinyurl.com... Autocatalytic system: http://tinyurl.com... Such reactions are greatly favoured by thermodynamics, especially on a planet with lots of high-energy 'stuff', like carbon monoxide, hydrogen, methane, sulfides etc, which are essentially gas & liquid clouds of TNT that want to explode. Once any sustaining chemical system that allows for these chemicals to reach 'lower' energies is found, then the system becomes driven. To achieve a sustaining system, a system that adapts is required, and thus exhibits plasticity to changing conditions, or to variable 'food sources'. An autocatalytic system that becomes adaptable, is essentially the jackpot when it comes to life! III. Counter-Rebuttals on Natural Case Pro's again attacks on 'spontaneous generation'. I have already affirmed has nothing to do with what I presented. Abiogenesis is a completely different hypothesis to spontaneous generation, and attacking it is a strawman.[2] "Seems to me Con's job is simple: Show me where life has been observed to arise naturally..." As I said, it's not something I claimed would be observable. Lab conditions can only replicate small portions of the early Earth for only a slither of the timescales, and are difficult to simulate. I made the case that it is accessible with known chemistry and it need only occur once, in the whole history of ALL planets, to be a strong possibility. It would be absurd to expect such would occur today, as any 'new life' that originated today would be rapidly out-competed by existing life. Also, the chemicals that would have filled the Earth in abundance are now at low concentrations since they are rapidly metabolised by existing life. Other chemicals which would likely have destroyed early life, such as O2, are now present in abundance. Pro makes a point on multiplicative chemical reactions running out of fuel quickly, which is very true, especially in autocatalytic systems, the input of reagents is limited. However on a sterile Earth, not only are these chemicals present in absolute abundance, but there would be continuous replenishing sources of these such as from hydrothermal vents, or from atmospheric generation etc. to name a few. What this provides though is a pressure, where more efficient, faster replicating and more durable examples of primitive life will outcompete and survive over weaker ones (due to the limited 'food sources'), hence sparking an 'arms race' leading to evolution of increasingly sophisticated versions of life. Life that is adapted for a larger range of 'food sources', for mobility, and for tolerating other environments' conditions will quickly reap large benefits from the relief of those respective 'thermodynamic stresses', similarly to how life does today. IV. Conclusion I demonstrated both the drives, and the mechanisms by which life can and will arise via. natural processes. Moreover it utilises physical mechanisms that are already familiar, and hence very plausible to occur eventually on a planet whose conditions permit them to, such as the Earth, and without the need of intelligence. Pro has not identified that there is a single reasonably, physically possible demonstrated ID candidate, and a hypothetical ID candidate has failed reasonable inferences, such as the presence of advanced artefacts, or ultimate telos. V. References 1. http://tinyurl.com... 2. http://tinyurl.com... 3. http://tinyurl.com... 4. http://tinyurl.com...