From ResearchID.org

Contents 1 ID-theoretics, ID-detection, and the origin of life (OOL) 1.1 Looking at the evidence 1.2 Evidence and the origin of life 1.3 Investigating the origin of life 2 References and notes 3 External Links 4 See also

ID-theoretics, ID-detection, and the origin of life (OOL)

While some ID researchers are studying how design-theoretic premises relate to cosmology, information theory, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, etc., many ID researchers have honed in on the complexity found in biological organisms. This research area is by far the most contested application of ID. Specifically, some ID biologists are very interested in the origin of life (OOL), which is thought to have happened about 3.5 billion years ago. This is the point in time when life is thought to have developed on the earth by some unknown event or process. A brief investigation of the origin of life can draw out some of the subtleties involved with the design paradigm.

Looking at the evidence

Before proceeding, a brief discussion about evidence is appropriate. In discussions of the ID/evolution/creation issue, what qualifies as evidence and as a supported conclusion, must always be held to very close scrutiny. When considering evidence, always ask:

1. Does the conclusion have supporting evidence?
2. Is the conclusion rigorously defined?
3. Is the evidence rigorously detailed?
4. Does the evidence presented actually lead to the conclusion proposed?
5. How strongly is the conclusion supported by the evidence?

Always view the situation from both perspectives; conclusions backwards to evidence and evidence forward to conclusions. This can often reveal strengths and flaws in an argument.

Evidence and the origin of life

The OOL is typically assumed to be a synchronic (one-time) primordial event. Or, it is thought that life started, at most, as a series of highly unlikely events, with a very limited window, in the far distant past. One reason given for this assumption is that we do not currently see life emerging from non-life under any extant conditions, nor is there any evidence that this has happend in the proximate past.

There are several acute problems with the scientific study of the origin of life:

• Long ago -- The great temporal remoteness of the OOL makes it the type of phenomenon that cannot currently be studied empirically per se. For example, it is impossible to watch an abiogenic OOL event under a microscope. This means that the repeatability of the origin of life experiment is completely absent from the present investigation. That is to say, we have not been successful at repeating the origin of life in any given laboratory.
• Virtually instant -- All current evidence points to the conclusion that life arose very shortly after the earth became a suitable habitat for biological organisms. This observation makes an OOL scenario based on chance even less likely, since there would have been less "deep time" for possible trials and failures. This seems to further exacerbate the formidable probabilistic dilemmas that abiogenesis faces.
• Initial conditions -- Researchers have extremely little sure knowledge about the circumstances of the OOL, and neither do we currently have sufficient knowledge to replicate the environmental conditions of the OOL. What could qualify as a “good guess” about the conditions may include a wide variety of initial reactants and conditions.
• Products -- It is unclear what the resulting biochemical products of the OOL were, which brings into focus the ultimate problem: scientists do not actually know what we are looking for.^[1] We know we are looking for some type of transition from prebiotic materials into something like amino acids, metabolic pathways, or RNA, and up to something like a cell.

These difficulties exacerbate an already extremely difficult scientific question, since these weaknesses can theoretically allow for research goals as wide as the human mind can conceive. So, it is easy to see why there is such a furor of disagreement about how the OOL event happened and how it should be studied. This is probably one of the most problematic retrodictive undertakings in the history of science. Given the remoteness of the origin of life, and the fact that we do not actually know what we are looking for, the hypothesized event of atelic abiogenesis is not testable, it does not make predictions, it is not falsifiable, and it provides no physical mechanisms. Any predictions or mechanisms tested in a lab as part of OOL research are derived from chemical or physical properties or possible prebiotic phenomena. Yet, conclusions are drawn from what can be called educated guesses only with extreme generosity. ^[2]

The study of the OOL falls between two areas of scientific investigation. Principally, this investigation is based on what is called an “historical science” approach, and this approach is informed by using the “simple science” approach of physics and chemistry to appropriate facts and experiments for conclusions. Historical sciences compare competing hypotheses by determining the best explanation from available (indirect or direct) observations, measurements, evidence, knowledge, and reasoning. The hypothesis that gives the best explanation of the known facts is the explanation with the best scientific viability.

Current scientific explanations of the origin of life (OOL) offer an unknown process based on some unknown form of combinations of chance and necessity, which are thought to be both blind and purposeless. This view will here be called “atelic abiogenesis.” ID, on the other hand, proposes that biological organisms show the tell-tale signs of being the result of an intelligent and purposive process, and so offers “telic biogenesis” as an explanation. Telic biogenesis offers an unknown intelligence involved at the OOL, since known methods of design detection are not able to determine the identity of the proposed intelligence.

It is important to notice that both explanations have an obvious gap in explanation. Both invoke a cause that have big question marks over them, and both causes have yet to be empirically verified as the initiator of life. Let us investigate how the OOL is explained by telic biogenesis and atelic abiogenesis.

Investigating the origin of life

In order to explain the origin of life, one must explain the origin of the cell. What is a cell? The living cell is a machine that obeys all of the known laws of physics. Within it is functional information, molecular machines, and is itself a very complex information-bearing code-program controlled machine operating with nano-scale precision. A machine can generally be seen as an energy-redirection force-multiplier, made with material formed into independent boundary conditions to fulfill proximate purposes. No one has ever witnessed chance and necessity originate a self-replicating phenomenon utilizing energy-redirecting boundary conditions that fulfill proximate purposes, and there is no observable evidence that this is the case.

In the mind of an ID theorist, a property of all machines is that they accomplish tasks that would otherwise be highly improbable. This is why we have not made machines that help objects fall to the ground or help salt dissolve in water. Unless, of course, making such a machine would fulfill our purposes, but not nature’s. For ID, a machine is likened to be a physical representation of purpose.

Another dimension to this dialog is innovation and problem-solving. Our knowledge of nature and living things shows us that innovation and problem-solving are realities. Within living organisms, we see the complex interaction and interdependence of parts working together for the apparent purposes of sustaining and reproducing themselves, oftentimes requiring innovation and problem-solving. Science knows, in fact, that there are entities which appear to be purpose-driven; biological organisms.

We do not see minerals and polymers organizing themselves into a car, or even a machine as simple as scissors. There are no blind physical properties of any element itself that would cause it to form into the shape of scissors, or any other proximate purposive force-multiplier. It is even more remote to think that the blind physical and chemical activity of elements could yield force-boundary multiplying complexes based on coding dependent templates. These types of machines and information are precisely what we see in living things, therefore chance and necessity do not suffice as explanations.

All machines operating under code-program control, where the origin can be determined, were caused by intelligent agency. Indeed, all functional information and all machines are only known to result from intelligence. No machine, whose origin is known, has ever been observed to self-assemble without the involvement of intelligent agency. Atelic abiogenesis, which is the currently accepted view of the OOL research community, assumes that science can only have recourse to the non-evidential explanation of blind and purposeless natural regularity. According to scientific authorities, intelligent causes can never be invoked as an explanation for the OOL. This conclusion is said to be based on methodological naturalism. Methodological naturalism means that science holds a strict rule that only natural causes are invoked to explain natural phenomena.

Unintelligent processes are not known to cause inanimate raw materials to self-assemble into machines running under coded-program control. Two types of machines like this are known to exist. Technological machines created by intelligent human agency and biological machines resulting from an unknown cause. So there is one solitary cause that is proven to be capable of creating self-assembling machines: intelligent agency. Despite this evidence-based fact, the only cause that has been proven capable of yielding self-assembling machines cannot be mentioned as a scientific possibility. In place of an evidence-based proposal, a completely unproven, entirely speculative proposal, with no direct empirical evidence of any kind to support it, is granted exclusivity as a scientific explanation.

How can this be? Scientific authorities propose that chance and necessity are the only possible scientific explanation for the appearance of self-assembling nanometer scale protein factories under information-coded-program control. Given a reasonable assessment, the amazing feat of self-assembly, without guidance of any kind, should be in grave doubt. It should remain in doubt until this extraordinary claim, which is beyond human experience, can be backed up with some kind of physical evidence. To ask that such self-assembly be taken as an axiom without evidence of how it happened is unreasonable. When direct evidence is not available, what matches experience and previous knowledge should be considered when assessing the claims of competing explanatory hypotheses. The burden of evidence is on the skeptic of telic biogenesis to show how we can get such strong appearance of purpose without there actually being any intelligent agency involved. A scientist should presume what experience, evidence, and reason demand. The machinery of life should be presumed to require intelligent agency until substantial evidence to the contrary is provided.

In proper adjudication of the evidence, the a priori dismissal of intelligent causes based on a metaphysical assumption is a red herring. The universe is an enormously large and old phenomenon. Intelligent agency capable of genetic engineering is already a proven phenomenon within it (e.g. humans). The observations outlined here all make reasonable the proposition that telic biogenesis is a viable explanation. Intelligent design is a common sense conclusion, and all of the observable evidence and available knowledge point toward this explanation. Scientists should not insist that this conclusion is wrong because it is so obvious.

Phenomena which appear designed may or may not actually be designed. Science does not know for sure yet. If they were designed, there will not be an adequate atelic explanation, and a gap in our knowledge of how chance and necessity produced life will persist. Not because we are ignorant of reality, but because biotic reality did not result from an atelic process. Scientists should not insist that there is an unnecessary gap in our understanding simply because design offers the better explanation that fits all observable evidence.

To recap a couple of the salient points, remember that both explanations have an obvious gap. The two opposing arguments are not weighed according to logic or evidence, but solely on a philosophical premise of methodological naturalism. If by “natural” we mean “something that we can directly observe,” this requirement would eliminate much of modern science, including OOL research into atelic abiogenesis. Since current knowledge of the visible world cannot tell the identity of the particular cause invoked by ID, it may or may not be natural, depending on how we define the term “natural.” If by “natural” we do, in fact, mean, “something that has effects we can directly observe” then science is opened to considering the OOL as a design event, and even more so than atelic abiogenesis. Design is something we witness on a daily basis and can be distinguished from natural regularity.

Methodological naturalism is a “demarcation argument” which disqualifies ID as a science before an investigation begins. Other demarcation arguments against ID are that it is not testable, it does not make predictions, it is not falsifiable, and it provides no physical mechanisms. An interesting thing to note about all of these arguments used against ID, again, is that they are not based on logic or evidence. It is also revealing to note that since the cause of atelic abiogenesis is completely unknown, neither can this atelic cause be said to qualify under these demarcations. An unknown cause cannot be tested, falsified, generate predictions, or provide a mechanism. Intelligent design is a known cause in the universe. ID proposes a claim that is connected to an absolute and incontrovertible fact, whereas the atelic premises have no connection to any facts. Instead, atelic abiogenesis is sheltered from physical evidence and scrutiny by a metaphysical axiom.^[3]

References and notes

External Links

• Evolution in the light of intelligent design

See also

• Origin of life
• ID-detection
• Skeptics