- Complex Specified Information — This is the idea that even if some initial metabolic process were to come about through random processes, the DNA or RNA that codes for the mechanism of those processes would not exist and it would just dissolve, or conversely, if the DNA or RNA existed the epigenetic material would not. Further, all proteins are made of amino acids, and amino acids forming in “primordial soup” do so equally in left and right handed mirror image forms. All the amino acids in life forms are the right handed variants. They have to be to allow for replication since proteins achieve their function by folding in a consistent manner. This places the probability of the first cell forming at roughly 1 in 10^150. My estimate of the number of atoms in the universe is 1 x 10^77
Addendum to #1 Paul Davies, author of The Goldilocks Enigma:
"Biological organisms are immensely complex - far more complex than Paley could have realized.
To a physicist, they look nothing short of miraculous.
The many and diverse components function together in a coherent and amazingly orchestrated manner.
The living cell contains minuscule pumps, levers, motors, rotors, turbines, propellers, scissors, and many other instruments familiar from a human workshop, all of them exquisite examples of nanotechnology.
The entire assemblage runs itself with great efficiency, sometimes autonomously, sometimes in collaboration with other cells through a sophisticated network of intercellular communication based on chemical signaling.
The command and control functions of the cell are encoded in its DNA database, which implements instructions through intermediary molecules using an optimal mathematical code to convert software instructions into hardware products with customized functionality.
And this is just one cell.
In a larger organism, vastly many cells get together and cooperate to form organs such as eyes, ears, brains, livers, and kidneys, many of them immensely elaborate in their structure and function.
The human brain alone has more cells than there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
So it all adds up to a package of marvels that boggles the mind.
The total lack of any kind of experimental evidence leading to the re-creation of life; not to mention the spontaneous emergence of life… is the most humiliating embarrassment to the proponents of naturalism and the whole so-called ‘scientific establishment’ around it… because it undermines the worldview of anyone who wants naturalism to be true."
Thomas Nagel - “In the present intellectual climate such a possibility is unlikely to be taken seriously, but I would repeat my earlier observation that no viable account, even a purely speculative one, seems to be available of how a system as staggeringly functionally complex and informationally-rich as a self-reproducing cell, controlled by DNA, RNA, or some predecessor, could have arisen by chemical evolution alone from a dead environment. Recognition of the problem is not limited to the defenders of intelligent design.”
Many “scientific” naturalists in recognition of these facts retreat to Directed Panspermia (that life was seeded by aliens) to attempt to evade reality even though such an idea is in no way scientific, verifiable, or evident in any way, and in addition, doesn’t even have the slightest implication of any precursor of a solution to their problem.
- The “evolution” of sexual reproduction - If all species reproduced asexually by dividing, as evolutionists would have one believe they all once did, there is no conceivable mechanism by which sexual reproduction could develop. For evolution to work there must be sequential functional adaptations that natural selection can select for one at a time. If by some freak accident thousands of functional elements, that have no effect on the organism by themselves, came together to produce in one organism a gender, its heartache would be immutable.
- “In order to think, we must claim for our own reasoning a validity which is not credible if our own thought is merely a function of our brain, and our brains a byproduct of irrational physical processes.” - C.S. Lewis This means that human ability to reason cannot come from the irrational physical evolutionary processes, because if even a single step of a rational process is irrational, it renders the result irrational. “[Evolutionists] ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based.” -C.S. Lewis. He went on to say that when he encounters people who don’t see the contradiction here he realizes that he has not stumbled upon a mere anomaly in their thinking but an insidious defect that pervades their entire worldview.
- The Fossil record - In the fossil record we can categorize biological kingdoms, phyla, orders, families, classes, genera, and species. Evolutionists make weak claims to having found intermediate forms between different classes, and there is legitimate variation among genera within each created kind of organism. All kingdoms, phyla, orders, and families of organisms appear abruptly in the fossil record indisputably without intermediate forms.
- Hemoglobin (and any other protein which is at least two polypeptide chains bound together) - In order for chains of amino acids (polypeptide chains) to bind to each other requires a precise placement of at least three amino acids in each polypeptide chain. The parasite that causes malaria has a mind bogglingly vast worldwide population which for the purposes of Darwinian evolution is a powerhouse. Chloroquine was once a much more effective treatment for malaria than it is today. The parasite evolved chloroquine resistance. To do this required an adaptation that involved the precise placement of two amino acids within a single protein. There was no adaptation for natural selection to select for without both amino acids in the proper place. This took the organism a population of 10^20 to have enough mutations for one to be the correct adaptation. Polypeptide chain binding, given its requirement of 3 precisely placed amino acids on each chain, would require an adaptation that would not be likely without there having been (10^20)^x (where x is the number beyond 1 of precisely placed amino acids in a single adaptation). It is estimated that 10^40 organisms have lived in the history of earth. All polypeptide chain binding adaptations could not be selected for by natural selection until the chains were successfully bound together. Hemoglobin in humans is 4 polypeptide chains bound together.
- The law of entropy (2nd law of thermodynamics) “The entropy in any given system is always increasing unless acted on by an outside force” Evolutionists try to elude the application of this scientific law by pointing out that the sun is an outside force that is acting on the biological systems of the earth. If you define entropy as merely the measure of energy not available for work in a system, they have a point. That is not the only way to define entropy though. If you define entropy as disorder, or the measure of the extent to which a system lacks order, you can see that in genetic systems the law of entropy is ineluctable.
- I won’t mention the details of this one because the subject matter is likely to render it outside the scope of propriety.
*Response to#4