Lack of Evidence “Proves” Intelligent Design?

New and highly sophisticated arguments are brought forth in the never-ending struggle to cast doubt on Darwin’s theory of evolution. Books and charts with symbols and complex matrices have been prepared and circulated that purport to prove that the first living cell on Earth was too complex to have arisen by chance alone, so it must have been deliberately designed by “something” intelligent. Most of the original Intelligent Designers now seem to accept, or weakly tolerate, Darwin’s proposition that all life forms evolved by natural selection over time from a single living cell.

Since their attacks on the mountain of scientific evidence supporting Darwin’s theory have failed to convince school boards to stop teaching evolution theory in their schools, they now want schools to encourage children to question the validity of the entire theory because scientists have never proven how the first living cell got here. The Designers go to great lengths describing the internal workings of a cell and state categorically that one so complex could not have occurred by chance alone. They further state that it will always be impossible for anyone to prove how the first cell got here. In other words, their new “evidence” for Intelligent Design is now the lack of any.

Does that make sense?

Scientists agree they don’t know precisely how the first living cell—capable of obtaining nutrients, converting them into energy, and then reproducing itself—came to be. They do know that Earth’s oceans accumulated vast quantities of simple and complex organic chemicals and minerals for over a billion years before life occurred. They also know that chemicals naturally grow together in complex clusters. They can only surmise that some of the trillions of slightly different independent clusters formed different kinds of membranes around their complex mixtures of enzymes, proteins, and amino acids. Over time (millions of years), a particular combination formed a rudimentary DNA molecule within one of the clusters protected by a simple protective membrane that allowed nutrients in and waste products out. The cluster had become a living cell. It was, of course, not as complex as the ones the Designers describe because cells, like all living systems, evolve over time. If this was not true, specialization would not occur and we wouldn’t have skin cells, heart cells, kidney cells, brain cells, and so forth. Well, you get the point.

If you would like to know what a DNA molecule (chromosome) is and how it, and it alone, makes it possible for all living things to reproduce and form new species of living things read my book, Settled Science.