From ResearchID.org

An overview of current data on the Origin of Life and how this relates to intelligent design.

While some ID researchers are studying how design-theoretic premises relate to cosmology, information theory, artificial intelligence, etc., many ID researchers have honed in on the complexity found in biological organisms. Applying ID to bioscience research is by far the most contested use of the concept. Specifically, some ID biologists are very interested in the Origin of Life (OOL). Thought to have happened about 3.5 billion years ago, this is the point in time when life is assumed to have been caused by some scientifically unknown event or process.

The idea that life came from non-living material, once called spontaneous generation, now goes by the moniker “abiogenesis,” and is sometimes referred to as “molecular evolution.” According to abiogenesis, life came into being from non-biological components and developed over vast periods of time into the biological organisms we see today.

The only possible explanations of the Origin of Life (OOL) accepted by current scientific authorities offer unknown processes based on some unknown form of combinations of chance and necessity. These processes are presumed to be blind, unguided, and purposeless. Looking at current Origin of Life research and the hypothesis of abiogenesis can serve as a unique view into science as currently practiced. This is a powerful departure for discussion, since it can simultaneously draw out fine points of the debate, and also wider issues involved with the ID concept.

Evidence and the Origin of Life

What is known about the Origin of Life, and what is the evidence that validates abiogenesis? In truth, there is very little verified knowledge about the OOL event. Assumptions and guesses, however, are ubiquitous. The OOL is typically assumed to be a synchronic (one-time) primordial event. It is thought that life started as a series of highly unlikely events, within a very limited window, in the far distant past. One reason given for this claim is that we do not currently see life emerging from non-life under any existing conditions, nor is there evidence that this has happened in the recent past. Assumptions abound due to the fact that there are acute evidential problems with the scientific study of the Origin of Life:

• Long ago – The Origin of Life is thought to have occurred long, long ago. The great temporal remoteness of the OOL makes it the type of phenomenon that cannot be studied empirically by typical means and we have not been successful at repeating the Origin of Life in any given laboratory. 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.

• Initial conditions -- Researchers only a few specific facts about the circumstances of the OOL, and we do not have sufficient knowledge to accurately replicate the environmental conditions of the OOL. What could qualify as a “good guess” about the initial conditions may include a wide variety of initial reactants and circumstances.

• Virtually instant -- All current evidence from geology and paleontology points to the conclusion that life arose very shortly after the earth became a suitable habitat for living organisms. Conventional wisdom says that the almost immediate appearance of life makes an OOL scenario based on chance alone even less likely, since there would have been less "deep time" for possible trials and failures in a “primordial soup.” This seems to further exacerbate the formidable probabilistic dilemmas that abiogenesis faces. Because of the quick emergence, it is thought that necessity and natural law must have played a critical role.

• Products -- It is unclear what the resulting biochemical products of the OOL were. This brings into focus the ultimate problem of the OOL: scientists working on abiogenesis do not actually know what they are looking for. Historian and philosopher of science Harmke Kamminga has observed, "At the heart of the origin-of-life problem lies a fundamental question: What is it that we are trying to explain the origin of?"^[1] Scientists studying abiogenesis 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.

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 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 in the sense that the scientists making the guesses are educated, but not in the sense that strong evidence supports the conclusions.

George Cody, an origin-of-life researcher, provides a salient overview of the situation: "No one knows anything about the Origin of Life." ^[2] 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. This is probably one of the most problematic retrodictive undertakings in the history of science. 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.

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 the formulation of hypotheses. 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.

Investigating the Origin of Life

In order to explain the Origin of Life, one must explain the origin of the cell, the cell being the basic unit of life. What is a cell? Obeying all of the known laws of physics, the living cell is unique in two ways: the cell is the most powerful and dynamic information system in the known universe, and at the same time the cell contains the most precise and ingenious machines in the known universe. Within the cell is functional information and molecular machines that form a bustling city of activity. The cell is a very complex data-bearing, code-program-controlled entity, operating with nano-scale precision.

Taking a step back for a moment, proper inquiry demands we look closer at machines and information. In general, a machine is an entity made with material formed into independent boundary conditions to fulfill proximate purposes, often by redirecting energy to a given point or multiplying forces to do some type of work. In general, information is characters stored in a symbolic language that, when processed by a proper interpretation set, serves the purpose of representing points of data for executing functions. These mechanical and informational realities are what must be explained in order to have a proper explanation of the first cells.

So, how did the first cells come into being? As abiogenesis would have us assume, are chance and necessity responsible for the first cells? Ironically, the answer currently provided by science is an emphatic “NO!” We do not see free-standing minerals and polymers organizing themselves into machines and/or information. Blunt material does not organize itself into a car, DNA, or even a machine as simple as scissors. There are no blind physical properties of elements that would cause them to form into the shape of scissors, or any other purposive force-multiplier.

It is even more remote from reason to think that the blind physical and chemical activity of elements could yield code-dependent templates that produce force-multiplying complexes. These types of information-based machines, which cannot be explained in terms of chance and necessity, are precisely what we see in living things. Therefore chance and natural law are necessary, but alone they do not suffice as plausible explanations of life. No one has ever witnessed chance and necessity originate a self-replicating programmatic entity utilizing energy-redirecting boundary conditions that fulfill proximate purposes. Additionally, there is no evidence that chance and necessity can supply the requisite machines and information.

Two types of code-based functional machines are known to exist. The first type are technological machines created by intelligent human agency. The second type are biological machines originating from an unknown cause. So there is one solitary cause that is proven to be capable of creating self-assembling machines: intelligent agency. All machines operating under code-program control, where the origin can be determined, were caused by intelligent agency. Indeed, all functional information and all complex machines are only known to result from intelligence. No machine, whose origin is known, has ever been observed to self-assemble without some kind of intelligence involved. ID proposes that biological organisms show the tell-tale signs of being the result of an intelligent and purposive process, and so offers intelligence as an explanation. Intelligent design 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. ID and abiogenesis both invoke causes that have big unanswered questions related to them, and both causes have yet to be empirically verified or observationally identified as the initiator of life. Intelligence is preferred by many as an explanation for the OOL because the verified evidence supports this conclusion.

Permitted explanations of the OOL

There are no unintelligent processes scientifically known to cause inanimate raw materials to self-assemble into machines running under coded-program control. As Hubert Yockey has observed, "One must conclude that, contrary to the established and current wisdom, a scenario describing the genesis of life on earth by chance and natural causes which can be accepted on the basis of fact and not faith has not yet been written."^[3] Despite the evidence-based fact that only intelligence has been proven capable of yielding code-based functional self-assembling machines, this explanation cannot be mentioned as a scientific possibility. In place of ID’s evidence-based proposal, abiogenesis, a completely unproven, entirely speculative proposal, with no direct empirical evidence of any kind to support it, is granted exclusivity as a scientific explanation. Abiogenesis, which is the only currently accepted view of the OOL research community, assumes that science can only have recourse to the non-evidential explanation of an abiogenic, unintelligent cause of life. According to scientific authorities, intelligent causes can never be invoked as an explanation for the OOL. This exclusion of ID from OOL research is said to be based on methodological naturalism. Methodological naturalism is an axiom which says that science can only use “natural” explanations; “natural” meaning chance and necessity. Methodological naturalism is a “demarcation argument” which disqualifies ID as science before evidence is considered, or an investigation begins.

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.

Abiogenesis requires an amazing feat of unguided self-assembly of code-based machines. This proposal is indistinguishable from magic, and, if given a rational assessment, should be held in grave doubt. Abiogenesis should remain in doubt until this extraordinary claim, which is beyond human experience, can be backed up with some kind of physical evidence. To declare that such unguided self-assembly be taken by all scientists as an axiom, without evidence of how it happened, is unreasonable. When direct evidence is not available, claims of competing explanations should contend based on reliable knowledge and experience. The burden of proof is on the skeptic of intelligent design 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 origin of the information-based machinery of life should be presumed to require intelligent agency until substantial evidence to the contrary is provided.

Some scientists say that ID cannot be considered because 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 is that they are not based on logic or evidence, but are instead arguments from ignorance about what ID implies. It is also revealing to note that since the cause of abiogenesis is completely unknown, abiogenesis is also disqualified under these demarcations. An unknown cause cannot be tested, falsified, generate predictions, or provide a mechanism. This is where abiogenic research is at. On the other hand, intelligent design is a known cause in the universe capable of causing machines, codes, and information. ID proposes a claim that is connected to an absolute and incontrovertible fact, whereas abiogenesis has only remote connections to very little indirect evidence. Instead of allowing ideas to compete based on the evidence, ID is barred from consideration by the metaphysical idea of methodological naturalism, and abiogenesis is sheltered from scrutiny by metaphysics.

In proper adjudication of the evidence, the a priori dismissal of intelligent causes based on a metaphysical assumption is nothing but terribly mistaken dogma. The universe is an enormously large and old phenomenon. Intelligent agency capable of genetic engineering is already a proven phenomenon within it; humans. The observations outlined here, and other arguments, make reasonable the proposition that intelligent design is a viable explanation. Intelligent design is the most reasonable conclusion, and all of the observable evidence and available knowledge point toward the ID explanation. Scientists should not insist that ID is wrong because it is so obvious. Nor should a scientist say ID couldn’t be considered, since all of the evidence points towards a guided beginning of life.

Distinctions and final considerations

This is not to say that abiogenesis is, in theory, a non-scientific hypothesis. Scientific investigation of abiogenesis may proceed from an intuition about nature with its inherent properties and complexity. Abiogenesis research can also serve as an opportunity for serendipity in learning about the chemical and physical boundary properties that life is dependent on. Yet, this does not change the fact that there is no direct evidence in support of the view that raw materials can organize themselves into self-replicating living cells.

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

To recap some salient points, remember that both explanations have an obvious gap. Under current methods, 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 abiogenesis. Since current knowledge of the visible world cannot tell the identity of the particular cause invoked by ID or abiogenesis, it may or may not be natural, depending on how we define the term “natural.” If by “natural” we mean, “physical effects we can observe,” then science is opened to considering the OOL as a design event, and even more so than abiogenesis. Intelligent design is something we witness and execute on a daily basis, and can be distinguished from unintelligent processes. We have no ordinary or extraordinary experience of life coming from non-life.

References and notes