The missing link

[Pope Flick]

you are minimizing the staggering odds. in any other instance, you would likely call anything with these odds impossible. this contradicts your statement about the actuality of reality proving anything.

 

 

No it does not. The universe is staggeringly enormous, and when that is the topic at hand all earthbound notions of scale are out the window, including mathematical odds.

 

You say one in a trillion. Well, I know of 1 galaxy with 800 billion stars. There are millions of galaxies. So your "one in a trillion" runs up to multi-trillions of chances. And at that volume something is bound to stick.

 

And this 'debate' I'm assuming is taking place under the guise that you believe life is only formed on earth and that existence elsewhere proves what? That there is no God? I wouldn't say that, only that it would be proof that life can evolve elsewhere.

[tazinib1]

No it does not. The universe is staggeringly enormous, and when that is the topic at hand all earthbound notions of scale are out the window, including mathematical odds.

 

You say one in a trillion. Well, I know of 1 galaxy with 800 billion stars. There are millions of galaxies. So your "one in a trillion" runs up to multi-trillions of chances. And at that volume something is bound to stick.

 

And this 'debate' I'm assuming is taking place under the guise that you believe life is only formed on earth and that existence elsewhere proves what? That there is no God? I wouldn't say that, only that it would be proof that life can evolve elsewhere.

 

Don't forget also, that when we throw out numbers like "millions of galaxies", those are numbers based on VISIBLE evidence. We are looking at the horizon of the universe, there is INFINITE more universe. The numbers are mind boggling to say the least.

[tonorator]

Indeed, once we get to minor variations, a creationist invokes the "micro" evolution clause. Its really brilliant. "Macro" evolution can never be proven under these conditions.

 

i'll take issue with this one. there is no micro evolution "clause". there are only facts. the facts say that we do indeed evolve on smaller levels to adapt to our environment. these are inner-species changes that better suit the species to their surroundings. now, where these different species came from is another debate. the bible says that god put them here, for us to have dominion over them. since we didn't see that happen, one could also suppose that they were all deposited here by little green men.

 

macro evolution is indeed completely different as it says ultimately, we all came from the same species and over time, the lines between the species blurred. over millions of years of micro-evolution, you would expect quite a bit of blurring to be going on and quite a large fossil library to catalog things every step of the way. in fact, the "transitional" fossils that evolutionists claim exist are not truly transitional at all in most cases, transitional meaning that something turned into something which then turned into something else.

 

just read this as it does a better job than i can of explaining things from a creation science point of view ... interesting stuff.

[tonorator]

No it does not. The universe is staggeringly enormous, and when that is the topic at hand all earthbound notions of scale are out the window, including mathematical odds.

 

You say one in a trillion. Well, I know of 1 galaxy with 800 billion stars. There are millions of galaxies. So your "one in a trillion" runs up to multi-trillions of chances. And at that volume something is bound to stick.

 

And this 'debate' I'm assuming is taking place under the guise that you believe life is only formed on earth and that existence elsewhere proves what? That there is no God? I wouldn't say that, only that it would be proof that life can evolve elsewhere.

 

it isn't an earthbound notion of scale that i'm talking about, it's a universe notion of scale. per the example below, per our known science, the probability

of life happening randomly in the universe requires that the age of our universe be thousands and thousands (and probably millions) times more old than we think it is.

 

 

Consider an ordinary deck of playing 52 playing cards. Let's presume that if we could generate a certain sequence of cards accidentally, then we could also generate life accidentally. After all, a fundamental key to life is DNA, which is a long string of molecules strung together. The smallest known DNA string has over 490,000 nucleotides, each nucleotide being itself a very complicated structure. This is may be like comparing scaling Mount Everest to climbing a six-foot step-ladder. But let's see what happens.

 

So, for starters how many ways can we arrange a deck of cards? Start by selecting one card. Since there are 52 cards in the deck, you have 52 different ways of selecting the first card. Now, select another card. There are only 51 left. So for each of the 52 ways you could have selected the first card, there are 51 more ways of selecting a second card. For two cards, there are 52x51 or 2652 combinations. There are now 50 cards left for the third selection for a total of 50x2652 or 132,600 combinations. Repeating this pattern for all 52 cards gives the total number of combinations as 52x51x50x49x...x1. This pattern is called a factorial in mathematics. A spreadsheet program will compute this quite readily giving the result 8.06x1067 (give or take a few vigintillion).

 

Well what does that mean? Basically, it is 8 followed by 67 zeros. The problem with numbers this big is that it is hard to get an appreciation as to how enormous they really are. To get a glimpse of how hard it would be to get one specific series of cards out of all the possibilities we'll do a little thought experiment. Let every atom on planet Earth help us generate combinations of cards. Note that about 100 trillion iron atoms can fit on the top of a pin. That's a lot. But how many atoms are in the whole planet (which is much bigger than the head of a pin)?

 

This is not too hard to figure out (though you may want to skip to the next paragraph if math makes you queasy). The mass of the Earth is 6x1024kg and the Earth is made up of various elements in various proportions. From these two facts we can get the mass of each element. From a periodic table of elements, we can find the atomic mass of each element. Dividing the mass by the atomic mass gives the moles of each element (remember to convert the mass from kilograms to grams). Multiplying moles by Avogadro's number (6.02x1023 atoms/mole) gives the number of atoms of each element.

 

Well, if you survived that we can now get to the fun stuff. You see, there are about 1.3x1050 atoms on our planet. Let's give every atom on the planet a deck of cards and instruct each atom to shuffle those cards once per second. Now with the cooperation of every atom on the entire planet in our miniature life-generating experiment, how long do we have to wait to get our single string of cards? The answer is simple. Take the number of card combinations and divide by the number of atoms on the planet. 8.06x1067 / 1.3x1050 = 6.2x1017 seconds. Given 60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, 24 hours per day, 365.25 days per year. This experiment will take 19.65 billion years! Scientists give our universe only 14 billion years. We cannot get one series of a deck of cards within the age of the Universe. We cannot climb our step ladder, let alone scale Mount Everest.

 

We cannot get one series of a deck of cards within the age of the Universe.

 

There are several things that made our experiment much easier than the real-life situation. For example, we used every atom of the Earth, not just the small fraction of stuff on the surface. It is also important to note the explosion of improbability in our experiment. Just for laughs, let's add the jokers to the deck of cards (just two more cards for a total of 54). Now the experiment will take 2862 (i.e. 53x54) times longer, 5.6 trillion years, or about 4000 times the age of the Universe! Don't hold your breath.

 

Since this was so much fun, let's take it one step farther. We will add 21 more cards for a total of 75. Rather than comparing scaling Mount Everest to climbing a six-foot ladder we will use a nine-foot ladder.

 

Now to be fair to the atheists, we will make a "minor" concession. Rather than using every atom in the planet, let's use every proton and neutron in the Universe. Note that the Earth is an insignificant spec of dust in our Solar System, most of which is dominated by the Sun. The Solar System is lost among the 300 billion stellar systems of our galaxy, the Milky Way. And the Milky Way is but a tiny dot in the Universe. So you would not be surprised to find out that there are quite a number of protons and neutrons in the entire Universe. Counting them is actually very easy. An upper limit to the mass of the Universe is 1.6x1060kg. The mass of a proton or neutron is roughly 1.6x10-27kg (10-27 = 0.000000000000000000000000001). Dividing the mass of the universe by the mass of a proton gives 9.58x1086 protons and neutrons in the Universe. But before we set the Universe off to work on our experiment of generating one specific sequence of 75 cards, we will make one more concession. We will give each proton and neutron 1000 decks of cards.

 

Ready, set, GO! The Universe is shuffling away, 1000 times per second for every proton and neutron in the Universe, 9.58x1089 total shuffles per second. How long do we have to wait? It all depends on the number of combinations in 75 cards. Similar to our earlier computation, the answer is 75! (Not an exclamation, but rather the mathematical symbol for factorial). 75! = 2.5x10109. Whoa! (That is an exclamation). 2.5x10109 / 9.58x1089 = 2.6x1022 seconds or 820 trillion years, 58610 times the age of the Universe! (There's another exclamation) This gives new meaning to the term: Fat Chance.

 

Forming a single DNA strand is extremely more complex than lining up a few playing cards. And DNA itself is not life. It must exist within a living cell that has ribosomes, plasmids, cytoplasm and all sorts of other stuff. (Check out the picture on Wikipedia.) To expect all of this to have occurred on our humble planet within a mere few hundred million years requires a tremendous leap of faith most people would not prepared to make.

[Big Country]

the bible says that god put them here, for us to have dominion over them.

 

Nothing like the ego of the bible writers to prop us up in nature.

[Savage Beatings]

The awesome scale of the universe works both for and against the argument for a Creator. The sheer odds against life developing at all in the universe are near 0 (that works well for Christians). However, since there are so many galaxies and stars, and planets, etc., it could be argued that the accidental emergence of complex intelligent life in just one of the billions upon billions of circumstances might be statistically possible. The odds of life argument would be stronger for Christians if there was only one galaxy in the universe.

 

I guarantee that nobody is ever going to come up with an equation that proves or disproves the existance of God. There are signs for those who are willing to see them. For those who are not, there are a lot of coincidences that add up to nothing.

 

Personally, I find the most compelling arguemnts for God to be arguments from beauty. There are things that I have experienced that are so profoundly amazing that they drop me to my knees to worship. How can I possibly expect someone else to understand that if they haven't experienced the same?

[Azazello1313]

it isn't an earthbound notion of scale that i'm talking about, it's a universe notion of scale. per the example below, per our known science, the probability

of life happening randomly in the universe requires that the age of our universe be thousands and thousands (and probably millions) times more old than we think it is.

 

I have no idea how/where you came up with it, but that statement, according to most experts on "our known science", is wildly false. google "drake equation". in fact, the overwhelming probability is that life has also developed many OTHER places in the universe.

[TimC]

The problem with the Drake equation is God invented those other places as well. He only decided to make us though. See how it works?

[tonorator]

I have no idea how/where you came up with it, but that statement, according to most experts on "our known science", is wildly false. google "drake equation". in fact, the overwhelming probability is that life has also developed many OTHER places in the universe.

 

the dude arbitrarily assigned parameters to his equation based on what looks like best guesses. he's assuming that 2 planets per solar system are capable of supporting life. how did he come up with that number? this thing is basically meaningless ...

 

Criticism of the Drake equation follows mostly from the observation that several terms in the equation are largely or entirely based on conjecture. Thus the equation cannot be used to draw firm conclusions of any kind. As T.J. Watson states:

 

The Drake equation consists of a large number of probabilities multiplied together. Since each factor is guaranteed to be somewhere between 0 and 1, the result is also guaranteed to be a reasonable-looking number between 0 and 1. Unfortunately, all the probabilities are completely unknown, making the result worse than useless.

 

Likewise, in a 2003 lecture at Caltech, Michael Crichton, a science fiction author, stated:

 

The problem, of course, is that none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be estimated. The only way to work the equation is to fill in with guesses. As a result, the Drake equation can have any value from “billions and billions” to zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing. Speaking precisely, the Drake equation is literally meaningless…

 

surely you don't doubt a science fiction writer ...

[The Irish Doggy]

Yeah, when you come down to it, Drake's equation was a series of very educated guesses at the time. However, its incorrect to say every component of the equation cannot be verified. He and the others that helped have (so far) been more right than wrong on verifiable portions of the equation. As we discover more planets around stars in places never thought possible and organisms living in environments never thought possible, it is looking like they may have underestimated some factors in the equation. Isn't that wild?

 

The idea of habitable zones (not too hot, not too cold) that broke out about the same time have been expanded quite a bit by the discovery of extremeophile organisms.

 

Organisms feeding on chemical compounds from deep ocean volcanic vents. Sunlight never reaches them.

Creatures in permafrost. Slow metabolism in the deep cold.

Underground bacteria that harness energy from radioactivity.

 

Life as we know it is even more complex and adaptable than once suspected.

 

Still, I'm a skeptic on the equation. It seeks to tie a number on intelligent life that can communicate, and they came up with a large number where intelligent life is pretty common. That's the part that has me skeptical, but who really knows?

 

I'll tell ya though, it would not surprise me if someday a microorganism is found on another planet/satellite in this solar system.

Edited May 22, 2009 by The Irish Doggy

[Azazello1313]

the dude arbitrarily assigned parameters to his equation based on what looks like best guesses. he's assuming that 2 planets per solar system are capable of supporting life. how did he come up with that number? this thing is basically meaningless ...

 

 

 

surely you don't doubt a science fiction writer ...

 

but all that nonsense about decks of cards was totally convincing

 

it's not that drake himself nailed every aspect, he's just the one who defined all the variables that would enable us to come up with our best estimate. each value is essentially a guess based on the best info we have at the time (some are more concrete than others), but even with very conservative estimates across the board it is overwhelmingly likely that the conditions for life have developed elsewhere in the universe. however, even with very liberal estimates across the board, it is overwhelmingly UNlikely that intelligent life will have developed at the same time as us close enough in the universe that we could ever hope to communicate.

 

of course, it's all really just an interesting thought exercise. I only bring it up to show how blatantly wrong and unsupportable is your statement, "per our known science, the probability of life happening randomly in the universe requires that the age of our universe be thousands and thousands (and probably millions) times more old than we think it is." our known science suggests the exact opposite.

[tonorator]

of course, it's all really just an interesting thought exercise. I only bring it up to show how blatantly wrong and unsupportable is your statement, "per our known science, the probability of life happening randomly in the universe requires that the age of our universe be thousands and thousands (and probably millions) times more old than we think it is." our known science suggests the exact opposite.

 

but that answer is right there in the math. for DNA to have formed randomly, even the smallest form, you are talking about a half million nucleotides lining up in the right manner by pure chance. the deck of cards example showed that even if you had every atom on earth helping you shuffle a deck of cards one time per second, it would take longer than we estimate our universe to have existed to get an individual, defined series of cards. that's just for 52 cards, let alone a half million nucleotides, each havng a high degree of complexity all on its own. that's just to get the DNA!!! then you have to factor in the odds of all the conditions being right for the kind of natural selection that would generate the wide myriad of species that we see today.

 

so let alone the fact that we think the earth is just 60 million years old. our scientists date the universe at 14B years. just to get a series of 52 cards right is 20B years! explode that bad boy up to 500,000 and add in all other statistical improbabilities and it blows the mind.

 

any other occurence happening with these kind of odds would not be left to random chance by our scientific community, but they seem OK to do it in this case. why?

[Savage Beatings]

Your ruling out the possibility that even though the odds are against it, the nucleotides COULD have lined up properly within the first couple of random lineups. If the odds of something happneing are 6 bazillion to 1, that doesn't mean that the 1 is going to occur at the very end of those possible sequences.

 

The bottom line is this, even though we CAN'T know the exact age of the universe right now, the evidence clearly leans in favor of it being WAY older than just thousands of years. To purposely try to dismiss good evidence because it doesn't fit how you want it to fit is a sin of intellect. We are obligated to use our minds and the right reason that God has given us in the most honest way that we can.

[The Irish Doggy]

but that answer is right there in the math. for DNA to have formed randomly, even the smallest form, you are talking about a half million nucleotides lining up in the right manner by pure chance. the deck of cards example showed that even if you had every atom on earth helping you shuffle a deck of cards one time per second, it would take longer than we estimate our universe to have existed to get an individual, defined series of cards. that's just for 52 cards, let alone a half million nucleotides, each havng a high degree of complexity all on its own. that's just to get the DNA!!! then you have to factor in the odds of all the conditions being right for the kind of natural selection that would generate the wide myriad of species that we see today.

 

so let alone the fact that we think the earth is just 60 million years old. our scientists date the universe at 14B years. just to get a series of 52 cards right is 20B years! explode that bad boy up to 500,000 and add in all other statistical improbabilities and it blows the mind.

 

any other occurence happening with these kind of odds would not be left to random chance by our scientific community, but they seem OK to do it in this case. why?

 

 

I don't think I've ever heard of someone claiming DNA can just spring into existence spontaneously. So, that's no part of evolutionary theory that I am aware of. Research I've read looks at the conditions where the building blocks of DNA form and begin to replicate.

 

We know less complex molecules can behave like lifeforms without DNA. RNA-based viruses, prions - rogue proteins - that cause Mad Cow Disease and other ailments for example. So, DNA isn't the likely starting point.

 

Its kind of a silly argument anyway. DNA needs a cell around it to replicate and function properly. Even if it was possible to spontaneously form, I think it would just sit there and eventually decay. So, its even more complex than that.

Edited May 22, 2009 by The Irish Doggy

[Azazello1313]

but that answer is right there in the math. for DNA to have formed randomly, even the smallest form, you are talking about a half million nucleotides lining up in the right manner by pure chance. the deck of cards example showed that even if you had every atom on earth helping you shuffle a deck of cards one time per second, it would take longer than we estimate our universe to have existed to get an individual, defined series of cards. that's just for 52 cards, let alone a half million nucleotides, each havng a high degree of complexity all on its own. that's just to get the DNA!!! then you have to factor in the odds of all the conditions being right for the kind of natural selection that would generate the wide myriad of species that we see today.

 

so let alone the fact that we think the earth is just 60 million years old. our scientists date the universe at 14B years. just to get a series of 52 cards right is 20B years! explode that bad boy up to 500,000 and add in all other statistical improbabilities and it blows the mind.

 

any other occurence happening with these kind of odds would not be left to random chance by our scientific community, but they seem OK to do it in this case. why?

 

perhaps those statistics are accurate if you start from the presumption that the end result must be THIS exact sequence of human DNA. but who is to say life would take that exact course in another environment? it seems the odds of THAT are even more remote. I am sure there are other possible ways of carrying genetic information. maybe not even carbon based.

 

to illustrate what is wrong with your example, imagine the universe is a giant plinko board. you remember plinko from the price is right? you drop the chip at the top, and it is going to take a path down to the bottom. now the odds of it taking any particular path are one in eleventy billion, and the odds of later replicating that exact path are one in a hundred gazillion. but the chip is going to get to the bottom, and it has to take SOME path to get there.

[tonorator]

to illustrate what is wrong with your example, imagine the universe is a giant plinko board. you remember plinko from the price is right? you drop the chip at the top, and it is going to take a path down to the bottom. now the odds of it taking any particular path are one in eleventy billion, and the odds of later replicating that exact path are one in a hundred gazillion. but the chip is going to get to the bottom, and it has to take SOME path to get there.

 

[homer]mmmmmmmmmmmmm plinko[/homer]

 

i think plinko had to be one of my favorite price is right games. when they broke that out it seemed like anything was possible. ah good times.

 

yes it had to take some path to get here. given the path it has taken, however, and how utterly freakin' complex and unlikely that it is, shouldn't it be then very, very, very difficult to accept that the most likely answer is that it happened in a random manner. that this world, solar system, universe of immense precision, just happened to fall the right way down the plinko board. that is inconcievable to me. and the odds are so outrageous that it would seem like good science to me theorize a directed process of some sort. instead of doing that, our mainstream science community doesn't even want this possibility MENTIONED in a school science class. that's plum looney right there. for me for you dog, i find it quite pitchy.

[AtomicCEO]

yes it had to take some path to get here. given the path it has taken, however, and how utterly freakin' complex and unlikely that it is, shouldn't it be then very, very, very difficult to accept that the most likely answer is that it happened in a random manner

 

I guess the most likely answer is that it doesn't exist at all.

 

So it doesn't.

 

Poof.

[Miner]

[homer]mmmmmmmmmmmmm plinko[/homer]

 

i think plinko had to be one of my favorite price is right games. when they broke that out it seemed like anything was possible. ah good times.

 

yes it had to take some path to get here. given the path it has taken, however, and how utterly freakin' complex and unlikely that it is, shouldn't it be then very, very, very difficult to accept that the most likely answer is that it happened in a random manner. that this world, solar system, universe of immense precision, just happened to fall the right way down the plinko board. that is inconcievable to me. and the odds are so outrageous that it would seem like good science to me theorize a directed process of some sort. instead of doing that, our mainstream science community doesn't even want this possibility MENTIONED in a school science class. that's plum looney right there. for me for you dog, i find it quite pitchy.

 

On the topic of 'randomness', I'll let the expert speak:

link

 

Q: Another criticism often made is that all this couldn't just have happened by random chance.

 

Miller: One of the great mischaracterizations of evolution is that it's driven by random chance, that things just happen. People like to say, "I don't like to believe that I'm just an accident." Well, you're not. What evolution says is that the variation that crops up in a species is indeed unpredictable. We can't be sure what will happen next. But that doesn't mean it's random.

 

To me, the word "random" means anything can happen. But the reality is that evolutionary change is restricted. It's restricted by the laws of physics and chemistry. It's restricted by the nature of molecular biology. It's restricted by the constraints of developmental biology during development. Most importantly, evolutionary change is governed by natural selection, and natural selection is not a random process at all. Natural selection selects for successful phenotypes, for successful combinations of characteristics that actually work, and that's not random at all.

[Savage Beatings]

The odds of winning the Powerball Lottery are currently 195,249,054 to 1.

 

If I were to win that jackpot, I might think to myself, "It's a miracle... I can't believe that I beat those astronomical odds!" But at the same time, the lottery officials would be thinking, "Well we sold 190,000,000 tickets this week so it only makes sense that somebody somewhere ended up with a winning ticket."

[dmarc117]

saying god is responsible for everything is like writing a one word answer for an essay test question.

[tonorator]

To me, the word "random" means anything can happen. But the reality is that evolutionary change is restricted. It's restricted by the laws of physics and chemistry. It's restricted by the nature of molecular biology. It's restricted by the constraints of developmental biology during development.

 

laws and natures that just happen to be here ... by chance. where did those come from anyway?

[The Irish Doggy]

yes it had to take some path to get here. given the path it has taken, however, and how utterly freakin' complex and unlikely that it is, shouldn't it be then very, very, very difficult to accept that the most likely answer is that it happened in a random manner.

 

 

First, I reject the creationist argument that complexity must randomly start with complexity. There is no support for it. The creationist knows this and so tries to set up evolution. Ha, you can't explain the spontaneous formation of DNA, therefore evolution is junk. Gotcha!

 

Here is something to chew on regarding probability:

 

The fossil record clearly shows that simple organisms predate more complex organisms. It is known that simpler than DNA-based life-like forms exist. (Though it has DNA, another interesting life form to become acquainted with is the nucleus-less Archaea.) The seeds of biochemistry, namely carbon compounds, are quite common in the universe.

 

This is evidence that supports a simpler origin to modern life.

 

However, in the absence of further information, namely the specific environmental conditions that lead to life, its impossible to say what the real chances are. It could be the universe is set up to create life just as much it is set up to create stars.

 

Anyway, its really fascinating to watch the creationist movement proceed from a position with absolutely no evidence for any of its claims. I'm still waiting for one shred of proof that a being is periodically visiting the plant to make minor changes in life over the last billion years. Why is it that evolution is subject to scrutiny based on evidence but creationism is not? Oh yes, only because creationism once again holds evolution to a higher standard than it holds itself.

[tonorator]

It could be the universe is set up to create life just as much it is set up to create stars.

 

set up? ah yes, the conversion has started ...

 

[The Irish Doggy]

laws and natures that just happen to be here ... by chance. where did those come from anyway?

 

 

Good golly. Evolution does not seek to explain the origin of the universe. Fields of straw men....

 

You can't explain the origin of the laws of the universe, therefore evolution is junk. Gotcha!

[Azazello1313]

set up? ah yes, the conversion has started ...

 

see now you're on to something. that's why I find evolution so beautiful and mystifying. that there is this apparent urge inherent in the laws of the universe -- in its DNA, if you will -- to greater levels of organization and integration manifest in the phenomenon of "life". this place, so vast and yet finite in space and time, where these forces wage a constant battle against chaos and entropy. and us with our brains on the leading edge of that struggle. if thinking on that doesn't conjure some notion of the divine in you, nothing will.

Edited May 22, 2009 by Azazello1313