All very interesting. Especially noting the absence of the usual creationist-evolutionist wrangling. Why? Because the author has set forth the classic unassailable argument: that complexity (or as she puts it “intelligence”) does not arise spontaneously from chaos.
This, I suggest, is a more powerful line of argument to pursue than arguing over missing links & other “details” of evolution. As others on this thread have pointed out, the understanding that design requires a designer is so deeply and profoundly written within each of us that a child intuitively grasps it.
I cannot resist responding to the individual who suggested that evolution on the atomic level is much different (and much more plausible) than the illustration given of finding a calculator on Mars. This argument claims that evolution actually involved a incomprehensibly large number of miniscule developmental steps over an incomprehensibly long period of time. Viewing evolutionary development as lots of very tiny changes supposedly makes it eminently rational and probable.
But this is based on a false assumption, for two reasons. First, “breaking up” the enormity of the “task” into a near-infinite number of individual changes that in themselves may appear to be more likely does not reduce the overall probability that the entire sequence of necessarily-linked events actually took place. You simply cannot theorize about any single developmental change and assert that you have now demonstrated how the entire magnificant and supremely-complex edifice that is the hallmark of all Creation - beginning with the DNA code - came into being.
Secondly, evolutionary probablility theory ignores the truth that only a very limited level of “complexity” can occur through blind chance - and that does not change by simply adding more time and more matter. The classic illustration is that of a roomful of monkeys tapping away at keyboards. The necessary evolutionary assumption is that, given enough monkeys and enough time, eventually they will type out the Encyclopedia Brittanica.
In fact, eons of time will not produce anything of the sort. I would be surprised if the entire collection of monkeys could produce even a comprehensible sentence. This is because a roomful of monkeys is composed of individual monkeys, each of which will unfailingly be unable to produce a significant level of complexity. As one poster put it, no matter how much direct energy in the form of lightning is applied, oceans of “dirty water” cannot spontaneously produce intelligence and living organisms.
Since early childhood, I need only look up into the nighttime sky to realize there is a Creator. Why is this not the case for a scientist? Look at a garden or the woods or lake, river or ocean ... how does one not marvel at the amazing 'universe' and recognize the existence of God!?
One thing I have noticed is that ardent evolutionists have not investigated their own philosophy.
Let's take a much simpler approach. Say a silver chain was found on mars that was only 3 links long. It's obvious that it didn't come there by "natural causes", but an evolutionist would tell you that a living bacterium (significantly different from Earth bacteria) a million times more complex is obviously there by natural causes. The reason is because the chain must go through the steps of purification, molding, and linking to come about, which are human actions, but to the evolutionist, the natural process of organic chemistry is enough to produce a bacteria. Of course it is, because unlike the chain, the bacteria is capable of reproduction.
In this case, perpetuation of a population is a natural process, but bringing about the population in the first place? Well, even an evolutionist will say that you're not talking about evolution anymore. So then they have it both ways, evolution explains the origins of all modern life while sweeping the pesky details of ultimate origins under the abiogenesis rug. In fact, whatever was the initial "chain" of life for their creation story is no longer in existence and therefore can be speculated to be anything with an infinite number of improbable happenings creating it. So even if we have a theory of engineered origins that precisely separates the natural from the engineered, you have nothing to compare it against, because an evolutionist will argue that anything that can reproduce using organic chemistry could have ultimately been created by a natural chemical process.
Evolution is truly the enemy of scientific inquiry because it hides in unknowns. The less known about life and origins, the better for evolution. As more DNA is found to be necessary for an organism, as more discoveries are made about how complex the simplest reproducing life form must be, and as we find the limits of genetic algorithms in software, the closer we come to realizing that evolution and materialism is impossible.