As usual Turell is simply passing on material endorsed by his friends at Uncommon Descent. - http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/we-have-no-excuse-a-scientific-case-f... - Note the 69 comments, many of which are critical. - The quote by Monod is from "Chance and Necessity" 1971 (originally in French 1970). It is also cited here: - http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2008/07/good-science-writers-jacques-monod.html - One of the errors in the reasoning seems to me to be in the statement: - "As implied by Monod's statement, physical and chemical necessity are not tools used to order the symbol sequences that make life." - In this extract from the same book he discusses the difficulty of distinguishing between "natural" and "artificial" (i.e. undesigned and designed) - http://creativetechnology.salford.ac.uk/fuchs/theory/authors/jacques_monod.htm - "This apparatus is entirely logical, wonderfully rational, and perfectly adapted to its purpose: to preserve and reproduce the structural norm. And it achieves this, [b]not by departing from physical laws, but by exploiting them[/b] to the exclusive advantage of its personal idiosyncrasy." [my emphasis]