Intelligent design is a rational explanation for the origin of species

Dean Kenyon is a prime example of how reasonable intelligent design is. Kenyon received a BS in physics from the University of Chicago in 1961 and a Ph.D. in biophysics from Stanford University in 1965. In 1965-1966 he was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Chemical Biodynamics at the University of California, Berkeley, a Research Associate at Ames Research Center. In 1966, he started as an Assistant Professor of Biology at San Francisco State University. In 1968 he co-authored Biochemical Predestination where he and his colleagues argued that there were natural processes that lead to chemical evolution and ultimately to the creation of the first living cell. According to himself, he was a full fledged neodarwinist at the time [1]. In his own words, "Then in 1976, a student gave me a book by A.E. Wilder-Smith, The Creation of Life: A Cybernetic Approach to Evolution. Many pages of that book deal with arguments against Biochemical Predestination, and I found myself hard-pressed to come up with a counter-rebuttal. Eventually, several other books and articles by neo-creationists came to my attention. I read some of Henry Morris' books, in particular, The Genesis Flood. I'm not a geologist, and I don't agree with everything in that book, but what stood out was that here was a scientific statement giving a very different view of earth history. Though the book doesn't deal with the subject of the origin of life per se, it had the effect of suggesting that it is possible to have a rational alternative explanation of the past."[2] So here is an example of a very well educated man who literally wrote the text book on abiogenesis who was convinced by reason and logic that his beliefs in abiogenesis were misplaced. There are others who have also changed their belief to ID based on reason, but Kenyon is simply a prime example. If Kenyon and other highly educated and rational people can be convinced by reason that the first life likely came from an intelligent source, than there must be rational arguments that changed their mind. I intend to present as much of this evidence as I can in the extremely limited space provided by this debate structure. I would like to point out that the term abiogenesis were used in 1870 to describe life arising from non-life on scientific grounds. The study of abiogenesis is more than 140 years old. The modern state of the study is dis-unified, because there has yet to be a model proposed which is logical enough to gain acceptance by the scientific community at large. This is glossed over by an article written by Berkeley which states life most likely arose from deep sea vents [3]. This is favored because UV light from the sun is able to destroy chemicals as they are trying to form. The Miller-Urey experiment was forced to provide a heat source without UV rays because of this very fact [4]. But some chemists notice that the chemical reactions required to produce the organic chemicals for life require an easily reversible condensation (dehydration) reaction. In the presence of water and energy, peptide bonds are more likely to break than they are to form [5]. That leads some modern chemists to believe that, in spite of sunlight, life originated on the beach [6] or surface of the ocean but not in the ocean depths as some have suggested [7]. There is also the hypothesis that life originated in clay, because clay can absorb the water produced by the aforementioned dehydration reaction [7]. Because life arising on earth is so incredibly difficult to speculate, some have come up with the theory of panspermia which states that life arose rarely in the universe and has been spread among planets by bacteria on meteorites [8][9]. Notice that all of the given hypotheses, with the exception of panspermia, focus only on the formation of polypeptides which is only a smal part in chemical evolution. These have not addressed the hypercycle, protobiont, or bacteria phases of chemical evolution [10]. The point is that we've studied abiogenesis for more than 140 years and failed to produce a scenario under which life could arise so plausible it gains consensus. That is not to say that one does not exist. That is to say that one must have faith in future discoveries of science to say that life actually did arise by natural causes. Abiogenesis has not been shown to even be a possibility within the last 140+ years of research. This fact shows belief in abiogenesis to require no small amount of faith, but I have only scratched the surface of reasons why abiogenesis isn't proven to be within the scope of possibility. As I transition into the topic of ID, I must give an introduction, because there is a lot of common misconception and prejudice against it. ID is not the same as Creationism and certainly not the same as Young Earth Creationism as is the popular opinion [11]. It doesn't help that the most active proponents of ID in the public arena are Young Earth Creationists. In fact, there is a branch of ID that embraces the Theory of Evolution [12], but heavily leans on ID as evidence for a creator. They agree with the Discovery Institute that ID makes falsifiable claims that can be shown true when tested [13]. The Discovery Institute is dedicated to ID and is lead by a secular board containing members of various faiths as well as agnostics [14][15]. So how would we identify sources of intelligence? To consult a source which is unbias on the subject of ID, we can look to the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project [16]. According to SETI, what they do first is determine what normally occurs in nature and then search for exceptions to that. The "WOW" signal is one such exception that was observed, but because nothing like it was ever seen again, it was discarded as unlikely to be of extraterrestrial origin. The same is true of many disciplines. For example, an archaeologist uses the same logic to differentiate between naturally occurring discoveries and man-made discoveries. If a stone carved in the shape of an animal is found, it is instantly considered to be man-made. It is not considered a possibility that it occurred by chance in nature. The way we identify intelligence has to do with semiotics. When we identify an object that appears to have meaningful symbology, we assume it came from an intelligent source. Pictures drawn on the wall of a cave (even if not distinguishable language) are another example of meaningful information identified as coming from an intelligent source. If we then look at even the most simplistic form of life considered to be extinct, we would still find volumes of chemical information required to produce a living organism. The search for naturalistic sources for such information have failed, which leads us to the natural conclusion that it arose from intelligence. Admittedly, both cases require an element of faith to believe, but ID is based on a common scientific method of identifying intelligence, and abiogenesis is based on faith that science will one day contain a plausible naturalistic solution. I will furthermore point out that possibility does not imply actuality. What I mean is, even if life could have arisen by natural causes, that does not mean that it did. So far, the argument I have given for identifying intelligence in DNA has been so cursory it is easy to dismiss. So I will further expound upon it. One observation made by biologists is that there are a multitude of genetic constructs which are considered to be irreducibly complex. That means that the encoding for such a genetic construct must be complete and in perfect order for the organism to benefit. A classic example of this is the flagellar motor found on every modern bacteria and is the means by which they move from one place to another. The flagellar motor is composed of 30 specifically ordered proteins and is capable of 100,000 rotations per minute. If even one protein is missing or out of place, it doesn't work (tested in a lab). There is no known natural cause for such a motor to be constructed. Without ID, it must be taken on blind faith that it arose by chance via mutation. Again, we use the same principles of identifying intelligence to conclude that this was invented by intelligence, not random chance. I will have to expound further when I have more space to do so. A more complete argument for this may be found published by the Discovery Institude [17]. Notably, this sources lists several others who renounced abiogenesis in favor of ID, including Anthony Flew who is considered to be the Richard Dawkins of his time. Looking forward to your rebuttal and defense of abiogenesis. Good luck. Let me know if one of my links is broken. It seems to go to home pages a lot instead of the full link when I give them. 1) http://www.evolutionnews.org... 2) p. 7 of: Kenyon, Dean, and Pearcey, Nancy (1989). "Up From Materialism: An Interview with Dean Kenyon." Bible-Science Newsletter, 27(9), 6-9. September 1989. 3) http://evolution.berkeley.edu... 4) http://www.livescience.com... (see #4 Chilly Start) 5) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... 6) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov... 7) http://www.sciencedaily.com... 8) http://www.panspermia-theory.com... 9) http://www.nature.com... 10) http://www.talkorigins.org... 11) http://rationalwiki.org... 12) http://biologos.org... 13) http://www.discovery.org... 14) http://www.discovery.org... 15) http://www.discovery.org... 16) http://www.seti.org... 17) http://www.discovery.org...