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I never figured you for intellectual prejudice within your own field. I would have expected you to explore Yockey's work before condemning it as based on thin assumptions. Yockey is very well respected in many disciplines.

I have now taken the trouble to examine a couple of Yockey's offerings, and I think this is a reasonably fair reprise in his own words on this subject:

Even the simplest forms of life, with their store of DNA, are characterized by specified complexity. Therefore life itself is prima facie evidence that some form of intelligence was in existence at the time of its origin.

Or, I'll try to paraphrase, DNA is like language, and nothing as complicated as language occurs in non-biological nature.

Your contention that this is not the same store Behe and Dembski shop at is, not, in my mind borne out.

There are events you can interpret as primative signals in non-biological nature, anywhere you find an energy conserving cycle maintained by negative feedback. (Or, in fact, where any dynamic equilibrium is maintained) A bubble in a pile of bubbles comes to mind. When a given bubble thins out, it "signals" the surrounding bubbles at their interface to send in more long-chain hydrophobic/philic re-enforcements.

It is not presently my opinion that the argument from "specified complexity" differs in a significant way from Behe and Dempski's arguments from astonishment.

Life could have arisen from enduring collections of sulpher bubbles, or charged clay lattices, or anything else that's sufficiently adhesive, and can sustain dynamic equalibrium without the aid of DNA until quite late in the story, and without DNA to kick around, Yockey's story falls apart for me. His attempt to defend against this problem--by claiming that whatever preceeds DNA must be of DNA's "specified complexity" is, well, undemonstrated.

If prokariotes can give rise to social ants, it is not necessary to show that prokariotes somehow swarmed and ceded genetic priveledges to a queen. A thing can be more informationally complex than it's product; a database can be more complex than the language you programmed it in, or the computer it runs on.

Thank you for sharing your views!

You have more intellectual commitment to abiogenesis than the people offering the prize:

"The Origin-of-Life Prize" ® (hereafter called "the Prize") consists of $1.35 Million (USD) paid directly to the winner(s). The Prize will be awarded for proposing a highly plausible mechanism for the spontaneous rise of genetic instructions in nature sufficient to give rise to life. To win, the explanation must be consistent with empirical biochemical and thermodynamic concepts as further delineated herein, and be published in a well-respected, peer-reviewed science journal(s). They are putting money on the line for a plausible mechanism that you are already completely sure exists. Interesting.

Thanks for the discussion!