Intelligent Design
What makes a man? Cells.
A cell is by no means simple. It's an EXTREMELY complex system, which is run by chemical reactions. But here is the issue. DNA simply put is data. It tells the cell how to act, how to reproduce, what to produce etc. It's sort of like a line of code.
//Create human
include ..;
int main(Chromosome){
std::cout < "Make another cell with variable X"..n;
std::cin < "Y Chromosome"';
} return man.
Where did that code come from? Well considering we are made out of chemicals and all around us are chemicals and throughout the cosmos are chemicals it's not hard to surmise where the resources originated.
But how about the code itself?
If you look at human DNA though our genetic code is very dense and complex, it's very messy as well. There are expressions that aren't even used in humans anymore. Even organs that serve no real function anymore. This is all a bi-product of evolution.
What Intelligent Design has to say is rather sketchy. There are the Ben Stein's who present a well manicured and neat philosophical version of Deism with the I.D. name-tag slapped on-top. And then there are the die-hard creationists who use I.D. as a selling point for Creationism.
However neither of these are really a real representation of I.D. The real origin of the now mainstream version of I.D. began with a book entitled "Of Pandas and People". In it the authors explore the possibility of a Deistic or Theistic God-like entity creating life on Earth, in a rather subtle way. It's implied that creatures did not evolve into present form but where intelligently created in their current form. The entire theory is based on the idea that certain organs or traits of animals are so perfect that missing any single part it could not be useful in anyway and therefore could not have evolved.
For a true breakdown of this theory and it's absurd notion that an evolved characteristic should be perfectly formed in order to have any functionality I'll elaborate further some other time.
But for now back to I.D. itself.
There's been much controversy surrounding this book and though it was primarily written for students as a text-book it's been rejected from being taught at the schools that tried to implement it as curriculum.
The main issue with I.D. is most likely its lack of uniform theory or a true model of the said 'theory'. And though there are a lot of people championing it as some scientific 'revelation' it really has no scientific support.
And to those who would retort to me that the probability of chemicals on any single planet organizing by chance so that the first self replicating molecule was introduced to 'life' then I have one more point to make. First let it be understood that it took millions of years of evolution to get to this point. The first molecule did not need to be complex at all. Just a single molecule that could replicate is all that was needed to begin the flourishing of life that has sprung onto our fair planet.
Now what do you think the probability would be on any specific planet, that at some point in the eternity of time these molecules, that are so abundant in the Universe could coalesce?
Would you say 1 in 100? 1 in 1,000? 1 in 100,000? Or even 1 in 1,000,000?
Well how about we just try 1 in 1,000,000,000.
The conservative number of planets in the Universe is a billion billion. Which means that if we applied the probability of one in a billion that any one planet may create that single self replicating molecule an estimate 1,000,000,000 molecules may be produced. The probable chance is astounding. Now of course those molecules would also have to evolve Mitochondria and all the other necessary traits that shaped life. As well as survive many threats and extinctions. But it's still a very possible beginning to life.
