Some wise words from some wise scientists:
"A bacterium is far more complex than any inanimate system known to man. There is not a laboratory in the world which can compete with the biochemical activity of the smallest living organism."—Sir James Gray, chapter in Science Today (1961), p. 21 [professor of Zoology, Cambridge University].
"Now we know that the cell itself is far more complex than we had imagined. It includes thousands of functioning enzymes, each one of them a complex machine itself. Furthermore, each enzyme comes into being in response to a gene, a strand of DNA. The information content of the gene—its complexity—must be as great as that of the enzyme it controls." —*Frank B. Salisbury, "Doubts about the Modern Synthetic Theory of Evolution," in American Biology Teacher, September 1971, pp. 336-338.
"A living cell is a marvel of detailed and complex architecture. Seen through a microscope there is an appearance of almost frantic activity. On a deeper level it is known that molecules are being synthesized at an enormous rate. Almost any enzyme catalyzes the synthesis of more than 100 other molecules per second. In ten minutes, a sizeable fraction of total mass of a metabolizing bacterial cell has been synthesized. The information content of a simple cell had been estimated as around 1012 bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica."—*Carl Sagan, "Life" in Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropaedia (1974 ed.), pp. 893-894.
"Each of those 100 trillion cells functions like a walled city. Power plants generate the cell's energy. Factories produce proteins, vital units of chemical commerce. Complex transportation systems guide specific chemicals from point to point within the cell and beyond. Sentries at the barricades control the export and import markets, and monitor the outside world for signs of danger. Disciplined biological armies stand ready to grapple with invaders. A centralized genetic government maintains order."—Peter Gwynne, *Sharon Begley, and *Mary Hager, "The Secrets of the Human Cell," in Newsweek, August 20, 1979, p. 48.
http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/08dna05.htm
The curious thing about the SETI arguement is that he makest the point that the sign of intelligence is its artificiality. Artificiality being defined as a 1.)relatively simple, and 2.)out of context -- signal.
This pretty much describes the Garden of Eden.
The question from a decade or two ago went like this. "What evidence do we have of God in the Garden of Eden."
The answer is: The Garden.
The Garden of Eden is a relatively simple & out of context-- that is, artificial place.
Now of course the SETI people, the materialists and the atheists will say that the Garden of Eden is evidence for man--just as a simple -- out of context ie artificial signal from space might be.
Similiarly, ID people will say that that proposition ie that the Garden is Evidence for man -- is what the snake said. (And that's what got everyone into trouble.)
The old joke on skitzophrenia went like this: what do you think of skitzophrenia: Answer: I'm of two minds about it.
But its better to be single minded.
So maybe the SETI people are looking for snakes in space.
That still begs the question of origins. Because even if you have a complex organism ie a snake in space creating simple out of context signals in space--just like humans here on earth...you still have the question of where did the complexity of the space snake come from--just as the question here on earth remains--where did the immense complexity of the human organism --not to mention all the other critters here on earth--come from.
At this point we're talking about everything outside of the garden of eden that is the wilderness or in modern terms -- the space through which the space snake's artificial signal contends--- as also being evidence for God. Not to mention the biological complexity of the dna of man and woman. And then of course there's that snake.
On the matter of origins science has given us two breaks in the history of the cosmos which map over very well onto the book of genesis--and require leaps of faith. The first is the creation of the elements in the big bang. The second is the creation of complex organisms out of simple elements.
ug...this is too much for me before my morning coffee.