The Origin of Life: Programming (Reasonable Belief part 5a)

As we previously discussed, free-living organisms must meet a set of minimum standards or requirements in order to be considered "life".  One might ask, considering that each of these requirements must be met simultaneously in order to have life, how would that have happened strictly by chance chemical interaction? Well, the simple answer is that science does not know. There are many varying and opposing hypotheses regarding the first origin of life by chemical processes, but each and every one of them has seemingly  insurmountable problems to overcome in order to work as a naturalistic explanation of first life.

The biggest hurdle, it seems, in the naturalistic explanation of life's origins seems to lie in the inability of natural processes to create Functional Sequence Complexity (FSC): A linear, digital, cybernetic string of symbols representing syntactic, semantic and pragmatic prescription; each successive sign in the string is a representation of a decision-node configurable switch-setting – a specific selection for function. Now all that is just a fancy way of saying that the information that life uses is basically just like the programming a computer uses. FSC is a succession of algorithmic selections leading to function, just as computer programming does the same. 

The discussion goes along these lines: You are currently reading an article on a computer designed by intelligent agents. That computer contains hardware and software integrated using FSC (software, programming). None of the hardware components that make up your computer (hard drive, memory, DVD/CD drive, screen, mouse, etc.) will work without FSC (software, programming). Without FSC your computer, even plugged in and energized, is an inert hunk of composite parts. With FSC your comuter functions the way it was designed to function, including allowing you access to the internet, and to this very article.

So, we see that even if every component of your computer somehow magically assembled independently and then assembled themselves together in a workable fashion, and plugged themselves in to a power supply, it would still be basically useless without FSC.

There are numerous and varied hypotheses about the (so-called) evolution of amino acids, sugars, peptides, RNA chains, proteins (described as "something like close to a miracle"), and other building blocks of life, but there is no testable hypothesis that explains how FSC could arise by naturalistic processes.

In our previous discussion of the minimum standards, the term "specified information" was used repeatedly. This is synonymous with FSC. Each one of the standards put forth requires the use of FSC in some way. Every single component and function of a free-living organism is ordered and maintained via FSC is some form or fashion.

One of the "simplest" free-living organisms known to science is the Mycoplasma genitalium (see diagram above). It has a very "small" genome consisting of "only" 525 genes. (where "small" is compared to E. coli, weighing in at 4,288 genes). Even though it is described as "free-living", this microbe is a parasite, meaning it relies on a host organism, and can not survive independently. An effort was made recently to model this organism in a software simulation. Here's what it took to partially simulate this "simple" microbe: "a cluster of 128 computers running for 9 to 10 hours to actually generate the data on the 25 categories of molecules that are involved in the cell's lifecycle processes. " This is fascinating stuff! 

"One cell. One division. Half a gig of data. Now figure that millions of bacteria could fit on the head of a pin and that many of them are an order of magnitude more complex than M. genitalium. Or ponder the idea that the human body is made up of 10 trillion (big, complex) human cells, plus about 90 or 100 trillion bacterial cells. That's about 100,000,000,000,000 cells in total. That'd take a lot of computers to model, eh?  If it were possible, that is."

"Fearfully and wonderfully made" indeed.

If it takes this much computer/programming power to partially model the simplest microbe known to exist, how do random chemical processes combine to make a living organism? Are we to accept that all of an organism's individual components formed, organized themselves, and programmed themselves to function in an orderly fashion to work in a way remarkably similar to, but vastly more complex than, the computer we are currently looking at? Are we to believe that given enough time it will ever happen?

I will leave the conclusion of those questions to the reader. In our next article we will talk about some of the other challenges to the origin of life by naturalistic processes.

Thank you for taking the time to read my article. For more information on how I keep my worldview informed please go to http://crossroadspbc.org/