[NeedKarma]

That's correct Box, neither side can answer the question 'Where does everything come from?'. I don't know we keep going around in circles on the subject.

[Starman]

Statistics is the study of odds. I didn't know that you didnt understand this. I apologise. Let me put it this way: so far, for all the stages of life-from-molecules that have been studied, the probability is effectively 1.

Starman's calculations are based on many false premises. THey are not scientific. I do not give much credit to them at all.

They are not MY calculations.

Some of the sources used are the following


DNA and Other Designs - by Stephen C. Meyer, Ph.D.

The RNA World: A Critique - by Dean Kenyon, Ph.D. - biology

LIFE: AN EVIDENCE FOR CREATION - by George T. Javor, Ph.D.

DNA, Design, and the Origin of Life - by Charles B. Thaxton, Ph.D.

The Origin of Life and the Death of Materialism - by Stephen C. Meyer, Ph.D.

Why Evolutionary Algorithms Cannot Generate Specified Complexity - by William A. Dembski, Ph.D.

What Do Ribozyme Engineering Experiments Tell Us About the Origin of Life? - by Dean Kenyon, Ph.D.

Given Enough Time Anything is Possible - Even Evolution - by Dr. David N. Menton

Access Research Network - A premier site on Intelligent Design (ID) science. Excellent current research and academic intelligent design articles --& analysis of evolution-- from Doctors: M. Behe, W. Dembski, P. Johnson, & M. Wells.

Origin of Life: The Left-Handed Problem - by Dr. Jonathan Sarfati


I'm afraid that not all highly-educated individuals agree with you on this.

BTW

I don't base my rejection of abiogenesis on mere calculations although I see absolutely no reason why I should doubt the judgement of these scientists and accept your opinion instead.

[Starman]

Agree Capuchin:

To an unbeliever , Christianity is not "provable" and requires faith.

To me, a Christian and scientifically trained, evolution is NOT "provable" as the explanation for life and therefore believing evolution as such also takes "faith."




Grace and Peace

Below is an explanation on why belief in abiogenetic evolution is considered by some to be tantamnount to blind faith.


Given Enought Time Anything is Possible - Even Evolution
By David N. Menton


This myth is the ultimate argument of those who attempt to "explain" the origin of the Cosmos and all life by CHANCE and the natural properties of matter and energy. Evolutionists hope that by invoking immense amounts of time, highly improbable events can somehow be made probable. But with this type of argument it is possible to "explain" ANYTHING. We've all heard it said, for example, that "given enough monkeys and enough typewriters, EVENTUALLY one of them is bound to type the sonnets of Shakespeare error free." But this outrageous myth violates the statistical foundation on which all modern science rests.

Statistically controlled experiments are useless if we do not assume that highly improbable events simply do not occur. The probability of any event which has a known number of possible outcomes can be calculated quite easily. The probability of rolling a particular number on a die, for example, is one chance out of six (the total number of possible sides) or 1/6. The probability of getting TWO particular numbers on two successive rolls of the die is 1/6 x 1/6 or 1/36, which is to say you would expect to succeed once in 36 rolls. What then is the probability of randomly selecting the appropriate letters and spaces from a Scrabble set to spell "THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION"? There are 26 different letters and a space in the alphabet (total 27) and there is a total of 23 of these letters and spaces in our sentence. The probability of spelling this sentence without error by blindly drawing and replacing letters from our 27 character set is calculated by multiplying 1/27 x 1/27 x 1/27... 23 times. The answer reveals that we would expect to spell this simple sentence correctly by CHANCE approximately ONCE IN 8 HUNDRED MILLION, TRILLION, TRILLION draws! If we drew and replaced letters at the rate of a billion a second we would expect to succeed once in 26 THOUSAND, TRILLION YEARS!


Now the simplest living organism is so vastly more complex than our simple sentence, that we have no way of really calculating its probability. If, however, we consider just one one particular protein of average size (say 500 amino acids) from among the thousands of proteins in a living organism, we can easily calculate the probability of forming it by CHANCE. Proteins are made of a tightly linked chain of amino acids. There are only 20 different amino acids used in the proteins of ALL living organisms and they are arranged in a linear sequence much like the letters of a long paragraph. Assuming an inexhaustible supply of each of the 20 different amino acids, the probability calculation would be 1/20 x 1/20 x 1/20... 500 times. The number of possible combinations of the amino acids in this protein is 1 with over 600 zeros after it! Even if we were to begin with the proper mixture of 500 amino acids to make our particular protein, we could never get the correct sequence for them by CHANCE.


Even if the entire universe were packed tight with computers the size of electrons, each trying a billion combinations of our 500 amino acids a second, we could sample only an infinitesimally small fraction of all of the possible combinations in 300 billion years! Even if every medium sized protein molecule that ever existed on earth were ALL DIFFERENT, our vast "fleet" of busy computers could not be expected to come up with the combination of amino acids in ANY ONE OF THEM in a mere 300 billion years! What all this means is that if the whole of evolution were reduced to the question of the probability of forming ANY ONE biologically useful protein of average size, we could safely conclude that evolution would be a VIRTUAL IMPOSSIBILITY by reason of the fact that there would be INSUFFICIENT TIME AND MATTER IN THE UNIVERSE!! Now calculate how much faith it takes to believe in evolution.

Given Enough Time Anything is Possible - Even Evolution

The Myth of Abiogenesis

BTW

Appeal to infinite time is unscientific since our universe had a beginning.
Estimated age is 13 to 15 billion years.

[NeedKarma]

LIFE: AN EVIDENCE FOR CREATION - by George T. Javor, Ph.D.

George T. Javor, biochemistry
"I am a practicing scientist and a believer in a six-day creation."

DNA, Design, and the Origin of Life - by Charles B. Thaxton, Ph.D.

Charles B. Thaxton (biographical info) -Creation SuperLibrary
"Creationist"

I just checked two of them and they are author sthat fit your agenda. I think either side can do that equally.

[Capuchin]

Okay, once again, biochemistry is decidedly NOT chance. Assigning odds is meaningless. But let's play your game anyway.

I don't know why it is assumed that you need 500 amino acid chain. Modern abiogenetic theory supposes that the first proteins were something like 30-40 units long. These would then begin working together, and eventually form into simple organisms.
It can be supposed that the first living things would be similar to the Ghadiri group of self-replicating peptides, or a self replicating hexanucleotide.
Another view is the first self-replicators were groups of catalysts, either protein enzymes or RNA ribozymes, that regenerated themselves as a catalytic cycle. An example is the SunY three subunit self-replicator. These catalytic cycles could be limited in a small pond or lagoon, or be a catalytic complex adsorbed to either clay or lipid material on clay. Given that there are many catalytic sequences in a group of random peptides or polynucleotides it's not unlikely that a small catalytic complex could be formed.

These are not mutually exclusive. Both could have happened.

Lets' assume the Ghadiri group, these self-replicating proteins are 32 amino-acid long chains. Nothing like the 500 units long. This would, by the maths your source has proposed, Starman, have a 1 in 4.29 x 10^40 chance of forming randomly. This is hugely lower than the 1 in 10^600 that your source would have us believe.

Still, that's a HUGE number, and probably quite unlikely. Well let's look at the Ocean size of the Early Earth. This is commonly estimated to be about 10^24 liters. Let's say the concentration of amino acids in this ocean is 10^-6M (moderately dilute on the spectrum of values that it is expected to be). This means we have 10^50 starting chains. This means that we would have 10^31 proteins in under a year. Now, given a million years, there is a good chance that one of these proteins (that are still being made through more time) will be the self replicating one that we are looking for.

But of course, there is more. There are a huge number of other simple proteins that are self replicating that could have started life. We have to take these into account. These increase the odds even more.

As you can see, life is certainly feasible given the size and properties of the early Earth, even using the pessimistic numbers that I have used here.

I can add some scientifically peer reviewed sources for numbers and things, if you would like.

[Capuchin]

NK, You missed out Dr. Behe. He makes me laugh whenevr someone uses him as a source. He purposefully avoids publishing peer-reviewed work now that he's come to believe in ID, instead aiming at the public (like most creationism is).

[cal823]

[b]Even if the entire universe were packed tight with computers the size of electrons, each trying a billion combinations of our 500 amino acids a second,

Depends, how big exactly is the universe? Does it go on forever? Or does it just suddenly end somewhere and you just step out of it into absolute nothingness?

[Capuchin]

Wow, Cal, I didn't notice that. Good call! We don't know how big the universe is. How could he possibly make that remark.

Good work my little friend!

[cal823]

:) thanks
I don't think man will ever know the size of the universe, I think that we will never reach its edge, its expanding constantly (if it isn't infinite, which makes me wonder, can an infinite thing expand? Is there room for something infinite to expand? Is it possible for that "is there room thing" to be valid, mnaybe you cannot contain an infinite objectt... and anyway, what does the edge of the universe look like, if it constantly expanding, the edge of it must look pretty amazing, would there be energy released by the universe expanding its borders? Does it have borders?

[Capuchin]

Current scientific thinking is that the universe is unbounded. It has no boundaries. There is no consensus on whether it is finite or not.

An infinite thing can expand. A fascinating thing about space is the expansion. There is one fascinating observation:

Whichever way you look, the majority of galaxies are moving away from Earth.
This gives us 2 possible conclusions.

1) The Earth is at the center of the universe and is exactly at the point of the Big Bang.
2) The universe is expanding from every point within itself.

1 is easily ruled out because we assume, in science, that space is homogeneous, it is the same at all points (on the biggest scales). We also assume that humans hold no special place in the universe.

The universe expanding from every point within itself is very interesting, there is a lot more evidence to back it up. An infinite thing can expand like this, as can a finite thing.

The classic way to imagine it is this:

Imagine you have a balloon and you draw dots on it. When you blow up the balloon, the dots get further apart. The dots don't get any bigger, but the space between them does. Now the 2d surface of the balloon is also finite and unbounded. There's no edge to it. In a way the 2d surface of the balloon is like the 3d space that we live in.
There are some flaws to this model but it's enough to give you an idea of what our universe is kind of like.

[NeedKarma]

NK, You missed out Dr. Behe. He makes me laugh whenevr someone uses him as a source. He purposefully avoids publishing peer-reviewed work now that he's come to believe in ID, instead aiming at the public (like most creationism is).

Actually there are all here: Who's Who in Creation/Evolution - CreationSuperLibrary.com

It's good that they list the 94 doctorate scientists who believe in creation and put them on one list, that way you can get your required sources instead of wading through the thousands and thousands of doctorate scientists who do not believe in creation.

[Capuchin]

Have you heard of project steve? It's a list of scientists who believe in evolution who's first name is Steve (or equivalent e.g. Stephanie). The list is currently longer (and more importantly, includes more biologists) than any creationist list of scientists who support creationism (with no name restrictions).

Who says scientists don't have a sense of humour?

[Capuchin]

NK, Stephen Hawking is on the list of "Leading Evolutionists"??

As far as I know he has not published a single paper on Evolution.

[NeedKarma]

Don't question theses things - have faith.

[speechlesstx]

As you can see, life is certainly feasible given the size and properties of the early Earth, even using the pessimistic numbers that I have used here.

Capuchin, I don't believe I ever said 'life' wasn't feasible given the right conditions, I have repeatedly and specifically asked what are the chances it would eventually become a human? How did man allegedly arise from this primordial soup? How did these simple organisms program themselves to eventually develop a human? Was man predestined to be?

[Capuchin]

Of course not, it depends on the environment presented to life and which mutations are profitable for the organisms along the whole evolutionary change.

Sorry, I had been misunderstanding your question for this entire thread.

[excon]

How did these simple organisms program themselves to eventually develop a human? Was man predestined to be?

Hello its:

I can answer that. You can call me excon, the science mon (if you wanted).

Well, you got your little simple organism with a lot of DNA. When the simple organism makes another simple organism, he does the dirty deed with a lady simple organism, and voilà, his DNA unfurls and hooks up with the mommie DNA. Sometimes, one of the rungs on the DNA makes a mistake and hooks up with the wrong mommie DNA rung.

The result is an offspring that's new and different and NOT predestined. If the difference was a GOOD difference, then the offspring is a little better equipped to deal with life, and he'll have a better chance at passing his DNA on. If the difference wasn't good, then that offspring doesn't have that same chance.

Now, if you can imagine that little teensy weensy change in the DNA of that simple organism, repeated zillions and zillions of times over 5 or so BILLION years of time, you get a man.

excon
The science mon

PS> Now, I know this doesn't sit well with Christians….. Sorry, Dude.

[Capuchin]

Speechless, you have to realise that every time you deal your game of bridge you get a hand that has very small small chance of ever happening.

If it wasn't you sitting there going "yeah but what are the ODDS of a human forming?" it would be a romulan sitting there going "yeah but what are the ODDS of a romulan forming" or a mouse sitting there going "squeak squeak I want some cheese".

The dice have to land somewhere. Why not here?

[speechlesstx]

speechless, you have to realise that everytime you deal your game of bridge you get a hand that has very small small chance of ever happening.

If it wasnt you sitting there going "yeah but what are the ODDS of a human forming?" it would be a romulan sitting there going "yeah but what are the ODDS of a romulan forming" or a mouse sitting there going "squeak squeak I want some cheese".

The dice have to land somewhere. Why not here?

And to think you ridiculed the notion of my golf ball landing on a specific blade of grass when I was actually aiming for it... :D

[excon]

excon the science mon, lol, I like that. I think I could actually leave my faith out of this and still find the odds would be astronomical.

Hello its:

We absolutely agree there. And, that's the problem. These numbers ARE astronomical! It's really, really hard to imagine what those big numbers mean. So, it's understandable that people would make up stuff (religion) to fill in their gaps in knowledge.

But, the Universe is really, really big, and really, really old. In fact, these numbers are SO big, that few people CAN grasp them.

I'm a pretty smart guy, but I have trouble believing that there are more stars in our galaxy than there are grains of sand on every beach on this planet. But it's true. Even harder to believe is that there are more galaxies in the Universe than there are grains of sand on every beach on this planet. But that's true too.

That is a pretty big number. But, if you can grasp the size and age of the Universe, then evolution becomes a piece of cake.

Excon
The science mon