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//__Project Team One:__ Questions 1 & 2//
Eboni Walker Felecia Hollloway LaTonya Russell

= **__//To start off by summarizing the structure and function of DNA.//__** =

Many origin-of-life researchers now regard the origin of biological information as the central problem facing origin-of-life research. Yet, the term ‘information’ can __designate__ several theoretically distinct concepts. By distinguishing between specified and unspecified information, In particular, this essay challenges the causal adequacy of naturalistic chemical evolutionary explanations for the origin of specified biological information, whether based upon “chance,” “necessity,” or the combination. Instead, it argues that our present knowledge of causal powers suggests intelligent design or agent causation as a better, more causally adequate, explanation for the origin of specified biological information.

= __//**The author Stephen C. Meyer says the need for a designer is to show and explain....**//__ =

>
 * to summarize the history of origin of life studied
 * show the approach ID theorists use is the inference to __best__ explanation
 * you can evaluate all explanations, non-intelligent causes and intelligent causes
 * we know that minds are capable of producing information just like the information we find in DNA
 * the issue is the origin of life – where did the first living cell come from?
 * you cannot appeal to the operations that a living cell can perform to explain the origin of the first living cell
 * there was no first living cell operating before the first living cell
 * there was no replication, mutation or selection before the first living cell
 * in fact, in my book I show that there is no known naturalistic mechanism that is able to produce the information needed for the first living cell
 * //nothing can create itself, that is self-contradictory//



 DNA and its building blocks
 

__Project Team Two:__ Questions 4 & 5
Yoronda Mayes James Ratliff Kevin Smith


 * __Question 5 Can natural selection or self-organexplain the orgin of DNA?__**

Evolutionary biologists (there's no such thing as an "evolutionist", as "evolution" isn't a religion, but an observable phenomenon) hypothesize that the first things on earth that could be called "living" probably did not have DNA as the genetic blueprint. Rather, the first genetic code was probably carried on DNA's more architecturally simple "cousin," RNA.

As you suggest, natural selection and self-replication might have had their origin simultaneously. The first organism capable of self-replication would obviously have had a distinct, adaptive advantage over other cell-like structures that could not replication themselves. This is the very basis of evolution by means of natural selection. The moment a living thing came into existence that *could* self-replicate, natural selection could have been set into motion.

[|orgin of DNA]

__**Question 5 How does the existence of information have a bearing on the need for a desinger ?**__

Signature in the cell include component="backlinks" page="home" limit="10"

 [|Cosmic Fingerprints]
 * Origin of Life Video |

Additional Resources
Language, DNA and Intelligent Desig =The following discussion demonstrates what information theory does tell us about the Designer of DNA:=
 * [|Chance vs Design in DNA]
 * Summary of main points:**
 * 1) The very existence of information cannot be explained by the laws of physics alone, and nothing remotely resembling the code in DNA exists in the non-living world.
 * 2) The conclusion that DNA is designed is arrived at inductively: Because all codes we know the origin of are designed, DNA is designed. This is the same type of reasoning that leads us to formulate the laws of thermodynamics, for example.
 * 3) Alternative explanations to God include: Humans traveling backward in time and creating life (but there is no evidence of time travel, and time travel creates unresolvable paradoxes) or aliens creating DNA (which only pushes the problem back further).
 * 4) If there is a naturalistic explanation, nobody has ever found it. In fact origin of life research has made very little tangible progress in the last 100 years. The atheists in this forum are quite reluctant to acknowledge this though.
 * 5) My proof of intelligent design can be easily overturned, just by providing //one// example of a code and encoding/decoding system that does not come from a mind.
 * 6) All that we currently know about information and codes implies that God is (a) vastly more sophisticated than us, (b) vastly more intelligent than us, (c) vastly more complex than us, (d) conscious, and (e) willful. And as I say in my talk //If you can read this I can prove God exists// it’s no small coincidence that Genesis 1 says “And God Said…” and that John 1 says “In the beginning was the WORD” – that words and language are the basis of all creative acts, that God Himself is expressed and only understood though WORD.


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Romans 1:20 - 21 (The New King James): " For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, beinging understood by the things that are not made, even His eternal power and godhead, so that they are without excuse" 21 "because although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, norwere thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their follish hearts were darkened.
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