Since “functional organization” is a pattern of matter, your claim is self-refuting. If energy flow can in fact move matter around, it logically follows it can in principle generate patterns that would correspond to “functional organization.”
At best what you could say, as you appear to have said in other posts, is that it would be unlikely for that particular pattern to form. But of course that assumes we already know all there is to know about the patterns into which “energy flows” are likely to arrange matter. Which would be a bold claim indeed.
If all there was at work in nature were explosions, that point would mean something.
You’ve already conceded that such evidence exists since it was you who wrote that “Energy flow can move matter around.”
But if us not presently having evidence for how X arose means it didn’t, then guess where that leaves your preferred supernatural explanation?
Having now dealt conclusively with that underlying non-sequitur, let us move on to the actual point of my response:
Since we don’t know how the first genetic polymers arose or replicated, I won’t bother speculating on that.
But it’s also irrelevant to your statement that I corrected. You claimed above, which I have highlighted in bold, that “there is no empirical or theoretical corollary by which energy flow alone can create or preserve functional information. In fact, all evidence indicates the opposite.”
This is what I was responding to, because that claim is empirically demonstrated to be untrue. We know, here actually by direct observation, that functional information can evolve, and since evolution as it occurs to populations of living organisms is only possible because organisms on Earth exist in a physical and chemical disequilibrium, it is in fact the case that “energy flow” can create functional information.
Ahh I see you got confused by my statement and thought I meant life’s mere existence is evidence for how it originated. No, I mean there’s actual evidence from the physical sciences that indicate that life originated by a physical-chemical process. You can click that link to get a short description of it.
If us not presently knowing or being able to demonstrate X means we should conclude X couldn’t happen, guess where that leaves the supernatural designer hypothesis?
Remember: All known designers are the product of evolution. So if what we only presently know or can demonstrate is the sword upon which we must throw ourselves, you’re in some deep water too I’m sorry to say.
Well I guess the same must be true of your preferred invisible designer acting in the ancient unobserved past then. “If you can’t demonstrate it it remains an unevidenced assertion.”
Of course, the idea that we have to demonstrate something to support it is itself a silly idea. One can of course conclude something by inferring it from a number of scattered clues. Direct demonstrations are often unnecessary.
You, as someone who believes something to be true we find in an old book, none of which you can repeat, observe, or demonstrate, you presumably still believe there are good reasons to believe what the book says. Right? You infer, from these reasons, that the events and so on described in the book really happened, despite not having observed or demonstrated any of them. As such you must agree that we can have other reasons than direct observation, or demonstrations, for believing something to be true.
Maybe you should think about this principle a bit more.
The issue is the word “only” in that sentence. Obviously no amount of examples of intelligence producing codes* would constitute evidence that only intelligence can produce codes.
*(Not that anyone who thinks life originated naturally would dispute that designers can also produce codes.)