Chance and evolution

How far back would you like to go, michali? When you talk about microorganisms and replication, the number of generations is staggering. And taking an average gestational time for small mammals, that is a lot of furry critters.
My brain hurts when I think of the number of organisms and mutations.

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Jesus said, "If a blind person leads a blind person, both of them will fall into a hole." Thomas 34

"On blind faith they place reliance, what they need more of is science"- MC Hawking

I don't believe the gestational period would have anything to do with your lineage. The amount of times they have babies is irrelevant in this manner. Nor the amount in the litter. It always takes two to tango. Only one will have the first speck of the beneficial mutation, which will be passed on with its children.

I know that there has to be billions upon billions of my "grandfathers". I mean, life's been around for 3 billion years or something. But, what i was wondering is, suppose that every other hundred of my "grandparents" were born with a beneficial mutation. Wouldn't the number of my ancestors be far greater than the amount of mutations that had to occur to make me? Is the number of mutations countable or dectectable by looking at my DNA or something? Imagine the complexity of the brain, the eye, the stomach, I just think that we are either lucky or guided to be this way. And I don't believe we are giving that much credit to the incredible chances.

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I have heard (from somewhere) that we are made of things so complicatedly rare that it is as taking a watch completely apart, putting the peices in a bag, shaking the bag, and all the peices would come together perfectly with the correct telling of the time. I can't quite remember where I heard this.

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Probabbly off of a YEC site, I think there is another saying that has to do with a tornado in a junkyard making a 777.

To put it bluntly, both are ill informed metaphors that have little to do with evolution. It presents evolution as a random process which it is not. Sure it has some randomness in it but it is still an ordered process guided by natural selection. Another fallacy is that it goes straight from nothing to a complicated structure. In evolution this would be a jump like going from dirt and water to a fully functional human in one step. It's as much of a misrepresentation as saying a cat can turn into a whale. haha, I'm still laughing about that one!

A better representation of evolution would be to have a person (representing natural selection) trying to make watch parts into a working machine, it doesn't necesarilly have to be a watch. He doesn't know where he's going or what the end product will be but he's going to keep working. It could be as simple as a gear train and still be a succesful creation since it is good at what it does. There is actually a book by Dawkin's that is like this called "The blind watchmaker".

Just to be nitpicky, it should be mentioned that what is evolutionarily important are substitutions, not mutations. There are lots and lots of mutations that don't get incorporated into our genome because they are deleterious-- tons of people in Hiroshima developed mutations, but are for most part irrelevant in terms of evolution since they were fatal. And, if you accept the Neutral Theory, as Data mentions, the vast majority of the substitutions that occur are not reflected in our phenotype in any way that makes a selective difference.

I'll leave it to the other posters to explain the rest of the problems you're having.

~AA

there will be alot more individuals than beneficial mutations, yes, however gene exchange and sexual reproduction means there doesn't have to be more generations

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MSci MSc ARCS DIC PhD..... yes, I am bragging.

Right Milk Man (what makes you malevolent, anyway?), the watch and 747 analogies are looking at it backwards. With hindsight, you might say. Yes, the odds of a *particular* complex organism being the end result of an evolutionary process is astronomical. But the process of evolution is impersonal, it is not seeking to create a *particular* organism, it is just taking it one step at a time, and whatever complex organism results, well, results. This brings the odds from astronomical down to zero. We know the process takes place, and we know that there is no barrier to the process creating complex structures, or even a combination of complex structures. Given enough time and the right pressures, all is possible.

Now, as Christians, we can believe that God had particular organisms as His goal, and structured the evolutionary process to reach those goals (which *would* be bucking the odds, but He is God, after all), OR we can believe that God simply let the process go forward according to its own rules (albeit *knowing* what would happen) until He chose to deal with Man.

Or, of course, we can believe in some sort of special creation superimposed on the evolutionary process, etc, but that gets us outside this thread.

I believe the truth may lie in a blend of these two ideas. In other words, to some extent evolution is governed by the laws of physics and chemistry, but at the same time God has the authority to jump in and give things a little niggle here or a push there. Its clear from quantum theory that even elementary particles have indeterminate fates...in other words, God has granted the universe with the authority to write its own story on some level...right down to the smallest bits of matter and force particles. Without this element, we would not have any authority to self-determine. Once again, God can enter in and exert His authority over everything...not as a means of removing the free nature of creation, but as a good father might do to help a child reach maturity.

I love mean jokes. Not stupid stuff like "You're fat" but... well, I guess I'll give you an example. In lab my partner is a girl. I'll occasionally say something like "Go fetch me a microscope slide, and make sure to clean it right this time. Once you're done with that go make me a sandwich... well don't just stand there staring at me, CHOP CHOP!" Then dismiss her with a wave of the hand and go back to work like everything is Ok. It's fun to be senial sometimes >=D It's ok though, she gets me back eventually. Hard to be malevolent when you scream like a little girl everytime a bug gets within 1 foot of you >_<

Also check out http://www.redmeat.com/redmeat/meatl...ilkmandan.html I always used a milk man screen name for the internet and I found out about milk man dan a few years ago. He's my idol now.

edit: stupid quote >_<

Ah, that explains it!

And Flynn, I think very much like you do on that point.