Abstract:

This article appears in the peer-reviewed* volume Darwinism, Design, and Public Education published with Michigan State University Press. In “DNA and the Origin of Life,” I argue that intelligent design provides a better explanation than competing chemical evolutionary models for the origin of the information present in large biomacromolecules such as DNA, RNA, and proteins. I show that the term information as applied to DNA connotes not only improbability or complexity but also specificity of function and then explain that neither chance nor necessity, nor the combination of the two, can explain the origin of information starting from purely physical-chemical antecedents. Instead, I contend that our knowledge of the causal powers of both natural entities and intelligent agency suggests intelligent design as the best explanation for the origin of the information necessary to build a cell in the first place.

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*Darwinism, Design, and Public Education is an interdisciplinary volume that was peer-reviewed by a professor of biological sciences, a professor of philosophy of science and a professor of rhetoric of science.