Chemical Origins of Life: Why Life is Not Analogous to your Computer Introduction Arguments about the complexity of life

and the intelligent designer o Life analogous to the mouse trap, mechanical watch, computer? W. Paleys argument o Biochemistry seems to be designed, Michael Behe o Beginning of Life is an improbable event Structures of life o Why does life look complex? o Review of basic structures of biomolecules and function

Body What is Life? Paleys Watchmaker Argument is a false analogy Operational approaches o Scale of complexity towards the origin of life o Self-replication o Self-organization o Autopoiesis o Compartmentalization o Emergence o homochirality Free energy that drove anabolic metabolism, Hadean-Archaean Era Different models o RNA world o Lipid world o Clay world o Iron-sulfur world Murchison meteorite and Dr. Deamers experiments Conways Game of Life

When I was in high school, I was taught that the existence of God is proven in several ways including the argument of Intelligent Design (ID) which assumes that certain features of the universe and living things are best explained by an intelligent cause. I would like to emphasize the idea of this argument that life is created by an intelligent designer, which is God, and I would often encounter arguments in support of intelligent design like the following: Life being a complex system is analogous to a watch that is certainly designed by a watchmaker; therefore, some intelligent being had designed it and that being is God. (William Paleys Watchmaker Analogy) The beginning of life is a highly improbable event to occur by chance (Borels Law and Hoyles Fallacy) Certain biological systems are irreducibly complex, meaning that they are composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning; therefore, some intelligent being had them designed, and that being is God. (Michael Behes argument of Irreducible Complexity) I took up biochemistry when I was in college. I was acquainted with the chemical principles of life processes and the assumption in science that life had emerged from inanimate matter so I started asking some questions. Are the proponents for the argument of intelligent design committing the godof-the-gaps fallacy? Is the asserted improbability of life based on wrong assumptions? Since life can be reduced into special chemical structures called biomolecules, I became interested in the detailed answers to the question how did life begin? I cannot remove the fact that the structure of the cell, the basic unit of life, and notice how it is highly complex and organized. The cell can be likened to a chocolate factory where everything is wellorganized. Before I begin to list down some scientific details about the origin of life, I would like to answer the most important question, what is life? Is life really analogous to a pocket watch or a computer? One of the properties of cells is that they are self-organizing.