Very interesting argument for skeptics and critical thinkers to consider

In a nutshell the argument states the mathematical odds of a random mutation in DNA resulting in a functional physical adaption is akin to finding one marked atom in 1 trillion galaxies and there is not enough time gone past in the history of the earth to run those "searches" required to account for all the variation in nature.

its a simple argument, the numbers don't add up to support pure material evolution.

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cammd said..
Very interesting argument for skeptics and critical thinkers to consider

In a nutshell the argument states the mathematical odds of a random mutation in DNA resulting in a functional physical adaption is akin to finding one atom in 1 trillion galaxies and there is not enough time gone past in the history of the earth to run those "searches" that can account for all the variation in nature.

Without watching the video; that's not how evolution works. You don't just get one random mutation that creates 'a functional physical adaption'. You get lots of tiny mutations that if beneficial enough end up dominant in the population. Repeat that a billion trillion times.

We are not talking about the start of 'human' evolution, we are talking about animal evolution where we all started from single cells, and at some point developed light sensitive cells which eventually became eyes, where we developed a pattern that was then used in all animals.

But I do agree. If we were created in 7 days, then clearly the argument falls down.

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FormulaNova said..

cammd said..
Very interesting argument for skeptics and critical thinkers to consider

In a nutshell the argument states the mathematical odds of a random mutation in DNA resulting in a functional physical adaption is akin to finding one atom in 1 trillion galaxies and there is not enough time gone past in the history of the earth to run those "searches" that can account for all the variation in nature.

Without watching the video; that's not how evolution works. You don't just get one random mutation that creates 'a functional physical adaption'. You get lots of tiny mutations that if beneficial enough end up dominant in the population. Repeat that a billion trillion times.

We are not talking about the start of 'human' evolution, we are talking about animal evolution where we all started from single cells, and at some point developed light sensitive cells which eventually became eyes, where we developed a pattern that was then used in all animals.

But I do agree. If we were created in 7 days, then clearly the argument falls down.

Watch the video, your not addressing the argument, I actually thought you out of everyone would find it interesting given your software coding background

ps: lots of tiny mutations repeated a billion trillion times support the argument given 4 billion years of time

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cammd said..

FormulaNova said..

cammd said..
Very interesting argument for skeptics and critical thinkers to consider

In a nutshell the argument states the mathematical odds of a random mutation in DNA resulting in a functional physical adaption is akin to finding one atom in 1 trillion galaxies and there is not enough time gone past in the history of the earth to run those "searches" that can account for all the variation in nature.

Without watching the video; that's not how evolution works. You don't just get one random mutation that creates 'a functional physical adaption'. You get lots of tiny mutations that if beneficial enough end up dominant in the population. Repeat that a billion trillion times.

We are not talking about the start of 'human' evolution, we are talking about animal evolution where we all started from single cells, and at some point developed light sensitive cells which eventually became eyes, where we developed a pattern that was then used in all animals.

But I do agree. If we were created in 7 days, then clearly the argument falls down.

Watch the video, your not addressing the argument, I actually thought you out of everyone would find it interesting given your software coding background

ps: lots of tiny mutations repeated a billion trillion times support the argument given 4 billion years of time

I watched it. Programming is a decent analogy.

It is not a billion monkeys at a billion typewriters, it is improvement by iteration.

You don't just have 3 million lines of random characters. People build up on what works and each change is incremental..

Good to see I understood where their flaw was going to be before I even watched it.

At the beginning I was thinking the guy was just trying to baffle us with bull ****. Then he just 'got it wrong'.

Ever think about why and how almost all animals share the same basic body plan?

Without checking the video, wouldn't the argument be heavily reliant on an assumed rate of transcription errors? The higher the error rate, the faster evolution can proceed. And we are told that cells also contain molecules that function to oppose changes in DNA.

Statistically unlikely does not mean impossible.

I probably won't watch it today, but I'll give it a try, especially as it has Mr Shapiro

I'd be interested to see someone with a lot more knowledge about genetics and heritability provide some commentary as to how and why genes mutate, evolve and appear.

And I'd be interested to see someone who knows about these things comment on the accuracy of the numbers?
Seems amazing that they can know such things with specificity.

I wonder how Ben spins this as an argument that his God exists?

Isn't the way viruses mutate to stay ahead of our vaccines, and indication of what's going on?

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FormulaNova said..

You don't just have 3 million lines of random characters. People build up on what works and each change is incremental..

That's the point of the argument isn't it, people use their mind and intelligence to build on what works to create incremental change in software. Random mutations in evolution are random, the statistical likely hood of random functional mutations are 1 over 10 to77th power, assuming their math is correct.

Given the number of mutations required to arrive at the current diversity in nature, the time required to produce functional random mutations exceeds the 4 billion year history of the earth.

Therefore a intelligent design is behind the process, or at the very least something other than random mutations

To heretical for you to consider as a possibility?

Nature magazine says the error rate is much higher than that
www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/dna-replication-and-causes-of-mutation-409/#:~:text=Scientists%20have%20reported%20mutation%20rates,et%20al.%2C%202000).

Mutation rates vary substantially among taxa, and even among different parts of the genome in a single organism. Scientists have reported mutation rates as low as 1 mistake per 100 million (10-8) to 1 billion (10-9) nucleotides, mostly in bacteria, and as high as 1 mistake per 100 (10-2) to 1,000 (10-3) nucleotides, the latter in a group of error-prone polymerase genes in humans (Johnson et al., 2000).Even mutation rates as low as 10-10 can accumulate quickly over time, particularly in rapidly reproducing organisms like bacteria. This is one reason why antibiotic resistance is such an important public health problem; after all, mutations that accumulate in a population of bacteria provide ample genetic variation with which to adapt (or respond) to the natural selection pressures imposed by antibacterial drugs (Smolinski et al., 2003). Take E. coli, for example. The genome of this common intestinal bacterium has about 4.2 million base pairs, or 8.4 million bases. Assuming a mutation rate of 10-9 (i.e., midway between reported estimates of 10-8 and 10-10), every time E. coli divides, each daughter cell will have, on average, 0.0084 new mutations. Or, another way to think about it is like this: Approximately 1% of bacterial cells will contain a new mutation

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cammd said..

FormulaNova said..

You don't just have 3 million lines of random characters. People build up on what works and each change is incremental..

That's the point of the argument isn't it, people use their mind and intelligence to build on what works to create incremental change in software. Random mutations in evolution are random, the statistical likely hood of random functional mutations are 1 over 10 to77th power, assuming their math is correct.

Given the number of mutations required to arrive at the current diversity in nature, the time required to produce functional random mutations exceeds the 4 billion year history of the earth.

Therefore a intelligent design is behind the process, or at the very least something other than random mutations

To(o) heretical for you to consider as a possibility?

The guy in the video is suggesting that if you have all these genes you have umpteen combinations of them and therefore it is unlikely to create a genuine useful feature. It's like he thinks we were created by throwing a lot of dice into a boggle game and waiting for the random combination to come up that just works. That is not how we got here. This is where his logic falls down. We are not just a random combination, we are a result of evolution. Sometimes people don't really understand what evolution really means.

But it is similar to programming in that you might start out with a simple program to add two numbers. You add a bit more code to it to multiply the result by 2. It fails because you are a crappy programmer. You try again and again until you get it right. The other versions that failed have effectively died off. The next iteration where you want to add a divide function is then based off the working version you got to. You don't just randomly write all new code from scratch, you base it off something else or functions that have been proven already.

There will be so many mutations in animals, beneficial or otherwise, that just don't add up to anything by themselves. As we generally have two copies of each, a lack of protein production by one may not be terminal. So there is plenty of potential for mutations but until they exist as two copies they may not have any effect, and depending on what they are, they may not make much difference anyway.

As an example, blue eyes are effectively a recessive gene because they are not producing pigment in the eye. A person has two copies of this gene, so if either of them produce pigment, the eye gets another colour. It is only if they have two copies of the 'blue eye' gene that they get blue eyes.

Imagine a population where someone ends up with a combination of mutations that gives them blue eyes. Sexual selection may then result in that combination becoming common in the local population even though it is a recessive gene. It is not random. Someone has seen blue eyes and thought 'wow, that it different' and more children from those people end up with a population with many more blue eye genes.

You would think that to produce blue eyes you would need a statistically improbably combination. But its not. It's just a random mutation that has created something interesting that has then resulted in more of that gene in the population.

There are examples of genetic errors that have resulted in tolerence to some diseases if you have one copy of a particular gene, but two copies of the gene can lead to major disease or short lifespans. This mutation could have existed in the population for a long long time, with no obvious effect, but just happen to provide protection against particular illnesses. They didn't necessarily get created when the virus/bacteria/parasite struck, but because they did exist some people survived and then subsequent populations had many more of those versions of those genes.

You could argue that 'intelligent design' exists, but not from a god, from animals choosing mates that have better survival value.

It is interesting to read up on the Russian experiment to create domesticated foxes. It shows that humans have almost without doubt created modern dogs from wild dogs or wolf predecessors by breeding them for characteristics that were beneficial. The fox experiment is where they created tame foxes from notoriously angry and aggressive arctic foxes.

I think the argument is that in the wild, mutations in wild dogs or wolves result in less survivability or reproduction. So these mutations are effectively worthless.

But you take these same mutations that lead to less agressive animals and breed them together over generations and you end up with animals that actually like humans and fit into our pack.

They got all sorts of mutations even though they were only filtering for aggression and fear of humans. They got different colour coats, they got floppy ears, they got waggy tails. They even got some sort of barking. All from just breeding foxes that had positive traits. All from mutations that would normally be selected out.

This resulted in these foxes showing tameness after only ten years. How's that for 'statistically unlikley'?

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cammd said..

FormulaNova said..

You don't just have 3 million lines of random characters. People build up on what works and each change is incremental..

That's the point of the argument isn't it, people use their mind and intelligence to build on what works to create incremental change in software. Random mutations in evolution are random, the statistical likely hood of random functional mutations are 1 over 10 to77th power, assuming their math is correct.

Given the number of mutations required to arrive at the current diversity in nature, the time required to produce functional random mutations exceeds the 4 billion year history of the earth.

Therefore a intelligent design is behind the process, or at the very least something other than random mutations

To heretical for you to consider as a possibility?

No, it doesn't. I very much doubt the model they used for their estimations is correct. The opportunities for genetic improvement are countless. Considering that before complex organisms emerged there were trillions upon trillions of single celled critters freely exchanging genes for about 3 billion years it's easy to accept that the features required for complexity would emerge over and over. All they needed from the environment was sufficient oxygen to take advantage of.

There were at least two occasions when oxygen levels were sufficient and we know that complex organisms emerged in both. In the first that we know of the complex life failed as the oxygen levels fell.

Once complex creatures persisted they continued to share genes freely until they developed primitive immune systems. Then the gene transfer must have been somewhat restricted, but even today complex creatures, particularly small ones with short generation periods generate countless mutations. Every human birth is accompanied by 60 to 70 mutations and we are susceptible to horizontal gene transfer by viruses too. Our evolution is relatively slow.

It doesn't help that ID proponents are engaged in motivated thinking. Their notions are born from a presumption that life was invented by a god. More pointedly they bathe in culture informed by guesswork.

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FormulaNova said..
It is interesting to read up on the Russian experiment to create domesticated foxes. It shows that humans have almost without doubt created modern dogs from wild dogs or wolf predecessors by breeding them for characteristics that were beneficial. The fox experiment is where they created tame foxes from notoriously angry and aggressive arctic foxes.

I think the argument is that in the wild, mutations in wild dogs or wolves result in less survivability or reproduction. So these mutations are effectively worthless.

But you take these same mutations that lead to less agressive animals and breed them together over generations and you end up with animals that actually like humans and fit into our pack.

They got all sorts of mutations even though they were only filtering for aggression and fear of humans. They got different colour coats, they got floppy ears, they got waggy tails. They even got some sort of barking. All from just breeding foxes that had positive traits. All from mutations that would normally be selected out.

This resulted in these foxes showing tameness after only ten years. How's that for 'statistically unlikley'?

What's you point here? you seem to be confirming intelligent deliberate selection results in useful variation. That's the the point of the argument in the video, it cannot be just random selection.

Yet another reply;

what would your idea of intelligent design make of genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis?

What creator would allow a disease like that? Surely if you can create a genetic code, you can create enough redundancy in it to prevent things like this.

I just googled it because I didn't know, but the suggestion is that maybe this gene combination may have lead to better resistance to cholera. I can see how that would happen. You have one copy and it confers 'something' but with two copies it creates a problem.

If it is just a random 'Boggle combination', cystic fibrosis wouldn't exist. It would have died out at the start.

Instead, it probably confers some benefit at some time through history, enough to make that gene combination common enough that it is a relatively common disease in modern society.

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cammd said..
What's you point here? you seem to be confirming intelligent deliberate selection results in useful variation. That's the the point of the argument in the video, it cannot be just random selection.

The point is in this case, the mutations in the foxes genes were already there and happening. 'We' just selected for them. Suggesting that mutations are such a common thing in nature and its only when they confer an advantage that they become more prevalent.

If mutations are so rare, how did this happen so quickly? The researchers didn't create mutations somehow, they just happen naturally. They didn't just randomly breed fox pairs together and hope for the best.

Human selection in this case is exactly the same as natural selection. Foxes were selected to breed when they had positive traits. In nature this also happens.

You said:
"
In a nutshell the argument states the mathematical odds of a random mutation in DNA resulting in a functional physical adaption is akin to finding one marked atom in 1 trillion galaxies and there is not enough time gone past in the history of the earth to run those "searches" required to account for all the variation in nature.
"

If foxes can have enough mutations in just ten years to affect tameness and enough in the next 70 years to add all sorts of features, doesn't that defeat the argument that you cannot get 'functional physical adaptation' in the history of the earth?

Again, 'we' selected them, but the mutations were already there and happening naturally.

I find it intriguing that it is likely that humans domesticated dogs probably because dogs are pack animals and found that we had so much valuable food in our garbage that they selected themselves to be more tame because the less fearful of humans they were the more likely they got good food in poor times.

Keep going for long enough and humans then kept the really tame dogs and bred them together to get even more tame dogs that liked being with humans. There is even an argument that dogs may have helped human evolution in enabling us to hunt more successfully with dogs than either of us could do alone.

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cammd said..
What's you point here? you seem to be confirming intelligent deliberate selection results in useful variation. That's the the point of the argument in the video, it cannot be just random selection.

Whoever said that evolution was "random" selection? Do they say this in the video? Evolution is not random by its very nature.

Clearly it is not random, but the mutations are.

Jumping the gun a bit?

They produce some numbers that make it seem like evolution cannot produce the diversity of life we see today.

And that's their proof of intelligent design?

The hubris of these people to come up with some numbers that contradict what we observe in the world around us, and confidently state that they have the true understanding of the world.

I like your line, Cammd. "assuming their math is correct".
You haven't checked?

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D3 said..
I like your line, Cammd. "assuming their math is correct".
You haven't checked?

I am assuming that they are talking about 1 combination of genes that creates a human.

There are around 3 billion base pairs in a human genome.

If there are 4 possibilities, does that give 12 billion combinations, i.e. 12 000 000 000 ?

This can't be what they were talking about as they were saying 1 in 10 to the 77th power. They are very different numbers, so they cannot be talking about that can they?

Who even knows if life began on earth? It's quite conceivable that it has originated somewhere else and been transported here as something very basic. I think it did originate here, but it doesn't really affect the discussion unless someone dropped off a few completed humans after the dinosaurs disappeared.

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FormulaNova said..

D3 said..
I like your line, Cammd. "assuming their math is correct".
You haven't checked?

I am assuming that they are talking about 1 combination of genes that creates a human.

There are around 3 billion base pairs in a human genome.

If there are 4 possibilities, does that give 12 billion combinations, i.e. 12 000 000 000 ?

This can't be what they were talking about as they were saying 1 in 10 to the 77th power. They are very different numbers, so they cannot be talking about that can they?

Who even knows if life began on earth? It's quite conceivable that it has originated somewhere else and been transported here as something very basic. I think it did, but it doesn't really affect the discussion unless someone dropped off a few completed humans after the dinosaurs disappeared.

They were talking about the statistical probability of the random mutations required to produce a simple protein with 150 amino acids, that being 1 over 10 to the 77th power or for context finding one marked atom in a trillion galaxies the size of the milky way. So to get 150 correct combinations (amino acids) of the 4 nucleotide bases in DNA to make one simple protein you need to run 1/10 to the 77 searches or trials of random combinations.

They argue there is not enough time in the history of the earth for the number of mutations required to produce enough functional adaptions required to create the vast diversity of life, not by a long shot.

Its a mathematical argument, its not challenging biology or genetics and its not proof of God, it just argues random mutations cannot be the driver that has produced the diversity of life.

I thought it was interesting but I have an open mind and I'm sick of Flat earth theory.

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D3 said..
Jumping the gun a bit?

They produce some numbers that make it seem like evolution cannot produce the diversity of life we see today.

And that's their proof of intelligent design?

The hubris of these people to come up with some numbers that contradict what we observe in the world around us, and confidently state that they have the true understanding of the world.

I like your line, Cammd. "assuming their math is correct".
You haven't checked?

The math, according to the video at 7.40, was quantified by molecular biologist Douglas Axe at Cambridge over 14 years of research, also has a PHD from Caltec

maybe the hubris being displayed is yours.

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cammd said..
Its a mathematical argument, its not challenging biology or genetics and its not proof of God, it just argues random mutations cannot be the driver that has produce the diversity of life.

I thought it was interesting but I have an open mind and I'm sick of Flat earth theory.

Don't worry about justifying the discussion. It is interesting to discuss, and as you seem to suggest, more interesting than the flat earth stuff.

I am happy to argue/discuss things without being too bothered by the outcome.

It sounds like this is an area where scientists still don't know how it happened, which makes sense when you think about it. What record would you have of simple life before things got bigger and more complex?

I realised that instead of me trying to think these things through, I could just google them. Before that I was pondering whether you needed to actually create a particular protein when you are starting out "life". It's not as if you need to have a particular protein created in a particular place in the gene do you? If you need a particular protein, and life is a very simple form, do you need many variations?

Either way, I am not an evolutiuonary biologist or whatever it is that you need to be to understand this stuff.

"Proteins are the workhorses of the cell and have been key players throughout the evolution of all organisms, from the origin of life to the present era. How might life have originated from the prebiotic chemistry of early Earth? This is one of the most intriguing unsolved questions in biology. Currently, however, it is generally accepted that amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, were abiotically available on primitive Earth, which would have made the formation of early peptides in a similar fashion possible. Peptides are likely to have coevolved with ancestral forms of RNA"

"Evolution of coding remains the most difficult step to explain. It is easiest to think of the evolution of translation as having begun with the synthesis of small peptides, possibly of random sequence. With short peptides containing a limited number of types of amino acids, useful amounts of peptides of defined sequence could be formed."

Sooooo their mathematical assessment of the probability of evolution being non-random is the most correct answer to whether there is intelligent design or not.

But it's not challenging biology or genetics?

I wonder if that's because they don't understand biology?

They say it's mathematically impossible!!

But a quick check in my first year biology text book says that human proteins are made up of a combination of 20 different amino acids.
Simple proteins may be as short as 50 amino acids in a specific sequence

Would that change their maths much?

Building shorter proteins from much smaller number of amino acids, buildin from peptides that already amino acids in sequences?

Since we're speculating wildly about something nobody here knows a lot about, let's throw some more numbers together. According to Wikipedia the amount of normal mass in the universe is 1.5 exp53 kg. If that was made up entirely from neutrons there would be 9 exp79
(6 exp26 per kg). The molecular weights of the 4 nucleotides range between 111 and 153, so divide by 130 to get 7 exp77 of them if all the matter in the universe was made of them without anything else, not even the phosphorylated sugars that form the backbone of the DNA.
We can confidently assert that the maximum number of mutations that could have occurred during the life of the universe is 7, which coincidentally is the luckiest number going.

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D3 said..
Sooooo their mathematical assessment of the probability of evolution being non-random is the most correct answer to whether there is intelligent design or not.

But it's not challenging biology or genetics?

I wonder if that's because they don't understand biology?

They say it's mathematically impossible!!

But a quick check in my first year biology text book says that human proteins are made up of a combination of 20 different amino acids.
Simple proteins may be as short as 50 amino acids in a specific sequence

Would that change their maths much?

Building shorter proteins from much smaller number of amino acids, buildin from peptides that already amino acids in sequences?

your probably right, what would a molecular biologist at Cambridge with a PHD from Caltec know about biology. If only he had access to your first year biology text book. On another subject, "D3" I assume that's a nickname based on the number of dicks one must have in order to put such an argument forward, no one could be that silly just playing with one.

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cammd said..

your probably right, what would a molecular biologist at Cambridge with a PHD from Caltec know about biology. If only he had access to your first year biology text book. On another subject, "D3" I assume that's a nickname based on the number of dicks one must have in order to put such an argument forward, no one could be that silly just playing with one.

That's the sort of dumb comment my father would make. Hardly conducive to a good argument.

But it's "you're" and "too". Forget about whether there is a god or not, get the spelling wright

Cammd, I must be pretty silly. You're going to have to explain this one for me. I don't see how my pseudonym has any relevance at all, so I guess you're trying to insinuate that my intelligence is related to my sexual preferences?

" On another subject, "D3" I assume that's a nickname based on the number of dicks one must have in order to put such an argument forward, no one could be that silly just playing with one."

But glad to see you're approaching an intelligent design discussion with such maturity

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D3 said..
Cammd, I must be pretty silly. You're going to have to explain this one for me. I don't see how my pseudonym has any relevance at all, so I guess you're trying to insinuate that my intelligence is related to my sexual preferences?

" On another subject, "D3" I assume that's a nickname based on the number of dicks one must have in order to put such an argument forward, no one could be that silly just playing with one."

But glad to see you're approaching an intelligent design discussion with such maturity

Fair comment

Back to the argument, challenging the 14 year research project of a published professor in molecular biology from a highly regarded institution with something you glanced in a first year text book did seem silly.

I don't know if the maths is right, I don't know if it is wrong. If it is right then it poses another problem for the theory of evolution.

The science isn't settled.

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cammd said..

Back to the argument, challenging the 14 year research project of a published professor in molecular biology from a highly regarded institution with something you glanced in a first year text book did seem silly.
.

Well, to be fair, you could take that argument even further and ask why would you talk about this on a windsurfing forum and bother with responses?

If the author of the book/article was/is correct, there is no latitude for discussion.

But I will argue starting with the premise 'there is no god' therefore it cannot be true. You cannot prove me wrong, and I cannot prove to you there isn't a god. But logic tells me that life is complex but also able to evolve. We are only able to discuss it because something evolved to create us. Everywhere else that life did not evolve on clearly cannot discuss this issue about how difficult it was to start....

In the video there was some discussion of a gap in fossil records. What does that really mean? Does that mean that earth was not at a stage where a lot of animals were fossilised? The animals didn't live in environments where fossils were possible? Other animals ate them?

Is this meant to imply something about an existence of god? How? Why? Did a god somehow create fossils? That seems a bit of a stretch?

We find fossils of dinosaurs. What happened to them? Were we walking the earth at the same time? The suggestion is that we were not and that the rise of the mammals gave rise to primates being able to prosper, and that's where we came from. If it were not for an asteroid impact, we probably wouldn't be here at all.

If we are talking about 'proof there is a god', are we talking about the god mentioned in the christian bible? Other texts? Greek mythology? An alien that created cells for life on earth?

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cammd said...
,,, you need to run 1/10 to the 77 searches or trials of random combinations.

Chance of throwing a six on a dice is one in six.

But you don't have to throw a dice six times to get a six.

Chance of throwing two sixes on two dice is 1 in 36. But if you throw once dice first and when you get a six put it to the side and then throw the other, the chance of getting two sixes is 1 in 12.

Does the 1/10 to 77 assume everything starts from scratch each time ? I think FN made this point excellently above in several posts in several different ways.

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FormulaNova said..

cammd said..

Back to the argument, challenging the 14 year research project of a published professor in molecular biology from a highly regarded institution with something you glanced in a first year text book did seem silly.
.

Well, to be fair, you could take that argument even further and ask why would you talk about this on a windsurfing forum and bother with responses?

If the author of the book/article was/is correct, there is no latitude for discussion.

But I will argue starting with the premise 'there is no god' therefore it cannot be true. You cannot prove me wrong, and I cannot prove to you there isn't a god. But logic tells me that life is complex but also able to evolve. We are only able to discuss it because something evolved to create us. Everywhere else that life did not evolve on clearly cannot discuss this issue about how difficult it was to start....

In the video there was some discussion of a gap in fossil records. What does that really mean? Does that mean that earth was not at a stage where a lot of animals were fossilised? The animals didn't live in environments where fossils were possible? Other animals ate them?

Is this meant to imply something about an existence of god? How? Why? Did a god somehow create fossils? That seems a bit of a stretch?

We find fossils of dinosaurs. What happened to them? Were we walking the earth at the same time? The suggestion is that we were not and that the rise of the mammals gave rise to primates being able to prosper, and that's where we came from. If it were not for an asteroid impact, we probably wouldn't be here at all.

If we are talking about 'proof there is a god', are we talking about the god mentioned in the christian bible? Other texts? Greek mythology? An alien that created cells for life on earth?

What does logic tell about how life started, we are all told it happened spontaneously in a primordial soup.

Why cannot that be replicated now, we can do all sorts of genetic engineering and splicing and manufacturing viruses in wet markets etc but we cannot replicate the moment life started.

Why not, if it happened in the mud a billion years ago why cant it happen now in a lab, what does your logic think about that.

Also the are plenty of single cells organisms and there and plenty of multicellular organisms but there are no two or three cell organisms, why not. If life started with a one cell organisms and they still exist surely they didn't just go straight to complex multicellular life. Surely they had to evolve into two and then three cells etc. Where are they now, why aren't single cell organisms still evolving into more complex two and three cell organisms. Logic tells you there should be multitudes of two cell life forms. Surely a logical mind would ask the question why not, where are they. It doesn't make sense in an evolutionary model of life does it.

Interested to hear your logic about those two evolutionary problems.

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Carantoc said..

cammd said...
,,, you need to run 1/10 to the 77 searches or trials of random combinations.

Chance of throwing a six on a dice is one in six.

But you don't have to throw a dice six times to get a six.

Chance of throwing two sixes on two dice is 1 in 36. But if you throw once dice first and when you get a six put it to the side and then throw the other, the chance of getting two sixes is 1 in 12.

Does the 1/10 to 77 assume everything starts from scratch each time ? I think FN made this point excellently above in several posts in several different ways.

To build a protein that results in a functional mutation requires that many rolls of the dice statistically. That was the probability the biologist came up with.

There was no suggestion all mutations had to happen at once. The maths was based on the evolutionary model where a mutation is preserved by natural selection and further mutations either disappear or remain based on their success.

So the argument is all those billions of mutations required to evolve from a single cell at the origin of life to all the diversity past and present requires more time than 4 billion years because each successful mutation took 1/10 to the 77 trials, statistically speaking.

So based on that an organism is far more likely to be degraded by mutation rather than enhanced because its far easier to go wrong when just randomly mixing DNA up to see what happens.

Therefore the author propose there is something other than random mutations driving the diversity of life. They propose intelligent designs.