All human beings from time immemorial have, based on reason and experience, operated under the principle that highly specified information (i.e. drawings on cave walls, inscriptions in stone, poetry, computer code, etc.), and functional complexity beyond a certain level (bicycle, tape recorder, computers, etc.), are always the result of intelligent purpose and intervention. This principle is not based on what we don’t know; it is based on what we do know and experience about the sources of specified information and functional complexity.
This is the reason why SETI scientists sit and wait for purposeful patterns of radio transmissions from outer space. If these scientists detected a radio transmission from the great spiral galaxy delineating in perfect Morse Code the exact chemical formula of the DNA of a fruit fly, there would only be one of two conclusions: A. We had made contact with ET, or B. Someone at NASA was playing a colossal joke on everyone. The one possibility that would not be considered, at least not by those with a reasonable grasp on reality, is that the transmission was the result of some naturalistic process guided solely by the laws of chemistry and physics that took place over a period of 300 million years, and which clothed the message in an “illusion of design and purpose.” (For those who are familiar with Dawkinspeak: Designoid transmissions)
Illya Prigogine, (Nobel Prize-Chemistry, 1977), once wrote that, “let us have no illusions…[we] are unable to grasp the extreme complexity of the simplest of organisms.” The DNA of a bacterium (the simplest type of living organism known to have existed) contains an encyclopedic amount of pure digitally encoded information that directs the highly sophisticated molecular machinery within the cell membrane.
“The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like…DNA characters are copied with an accuracy that rivals anything that modern engineers can do…DNA messages are pure digital code.” (Please forgive me for quoting the well known creationist and proponent of ID, Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden.) The obvious conclusion is that both the code and the sophisticated molecular machinery are the result of intelligent purpose and intervention. In other words, just as the highly specified hypothetical message discussed above is itself the evidence of its intelligent source, the highly specified genetic information and the extraordinarily high level of functional complexity of the bacterium, are themselves the evidence of its Intelligent Designer.
There is nothing even approaching conclusive evidence that any life form “simpler” than a bacterium ever existed. To get a range on the enormous challenges involved in bridging the gaping chasm between non-life and life, consider the following:
“The difference between a mixture of simple chemicals and a bacterium, is much more profound than the gulf between a bacterium and an elephant.” (Dr. Robert Shapiro, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, NYU)
and distinguished biologist, Dr. Lynn Margulis:
“To go from bacterium to people is less of a step than to go from a mixture of amino acids to a bacterium.”
If you wish to assert that this quantum leap was the result of some as yet unknown, undirected naturalistic process, then demonstrate it conclusively using empirical evidence like any other scientific hypothesis.
lamb to the slaughter 
