Proof against abiogenesis/evolution -- affirmative proof of God

[TheGnome]

This is a good article you provided, and I recommend the rest of you guys read it. It does a nice job illustrating the problem. Here are the list of assumptions they make, along with a few made in the course of this thread:

snip

As someone else mentioned, the assumptions aren't just randomly pulled out of thin air, they're based on the evidence. Some assumptions are better than others, like those based on reasonable premises. Not only that, but apparently amino acids can form under a number of conditions. The point here is that scientists are trying to look for reasonable explanations of events. It's very difficult to provide evidence of a creator, and you can't do so based on probabilities. The chemists aren't making up the conditions of the early earth and then setting up the scenario in the lab. You need to find a better strategy for providing evidence of the existence of a god, more specifically, the kind of god you believe in. You can't use the absence of evidence of life arising spontaneously as evidence of a creator, that's intellectual suicide.

 

[Naraoia]

TalkOrigins copped out and set P=1.

They didn't. Did you only read one paragraph?

Oh. It seems you haven't even read that one paragraph properly. I've just looked through the article again to refresh my memory. The only paragraph that actually mentions p=1 is this one:

At the moment, since we have no idea how probable life is, it's virtually impossible to assign any meaningful probabilities to any of the steps to life except the first two (monomers to polymers p=1.0, formation of catalytic polymers p=1.0). For the replicating polymers to hypercycle transition, the probability may well be 1.0 if Kauffman is right about catalytic closure and his phase transition models, but this requires real chemistry and more detailed modelling to confirm. For the hypercycle->protobiont transition, the probability here is dependent on theoretical concepts still being developed, and is unknown.

Where is this purported cop-out again?

When liquid water has energy removed, the resulting arrangement of the molecules is not more "complex" that the arrangement of the liquid water molecules. Similar to looking for faces in clouds. When you look at the top of a hurricane, the spiral shape of the clouds is not a "complex" pattern.

What do you mean by complexity? I think it's time to clarify another definition (especially because I don't think complexity has a single one. So it would be doubly important for all of us to use the same definition)

 

[Naraoia]

With respect to the number of combinations that could form life, I touched on it briefly in Post #1. We could assume a trillion trillion viable combinations. Or if you prefer, we could assume a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion combinations. However, just think for a moment how many discrete possibilities of a self-replicating life form there are with only 50,000 pieces of something.

Assume a miniribozyme of, say, 50 nucleotides and make the units the four nucleotides found in RNA. 4[sup]50[/sup] is still big but probably nowhere near that number (which is what? How many different units can go to each of those 50 000 places?)

If you take the simplest bacterial DNA and start knocking out pieces, how many knocks can you make before the bacteria dies? How many combinations? Even an absurdly high number of combinations of viability will barely dent the vast probabilities required to create that life form (^4000000+ using reasonable assumptions, instead of the unreasonable assumptions I made).

Again, the first life form most likely wasn't anywhere near as complex as a bacterium.

Creative, intelligent people can't even model the behavior of a flagellum on a computer.

A hundred years ago, creative, intelligent people couldn't even model Mercury's orbit. Human knowledge advances. Ain't that cool.

How are we supposed to create a bacteria from scratch with our lab equipment and genius?

We aren't supposed to create "a bacteria" since a single one of them is called a bacterium. That aside, I think I've answered this point (gosh, the number of points I've responded to in this thread... it's starting to wear me out )

How is chance supposed to succeed where we fail?

See that earlier reply about falling from trees

 

[Naraoia]

The greater the temperature difference between two objects, the faster the rate of heat transfer between the two. Thus, the rate of heat transfer between the sun and space should diminish over time at a decreasing rate, being extremely fast initially but slowing down over time. The heat transfer is the luminosity of the sun. The space into which the energy enters will contain less usable energy than the sun.

Space is big and empty. I'd think it's rather efficient at taking the sun's heat away.

Besides, the sun isn't simply an object with a temperature. It also has an internal energy source that compensates for heat loss.

A pot of hot water left in a room will equilibrate with the room very near room temperature (this would be a sun that just had an initial temperature and radiated it off into space). A pot of hot water on the gas cooker will not approach room temperature so long as the cooker is turned on (that is, so long as the sun's fuel lasts).

The pace at which the fuel within the sun "detonates" will also diminish on a decaying curve over time. We see this with earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, the earth's magnetic field, and every other process under the sun.

A hint: that's not what most scienists think we see with the magnetic field. Another hint: zero order reactions exist.

A complex molecule is essentially "fuel." The fuel "wants" to detonate, and the underlying complexity of the molecule "wants" to be destroyed.

Tell that to the plastic bags lying around in forests. I'd be the happiest if they just destroyed themselves but they seem to be quite reluctant.

That's the malevolence that I described earlier. Everything about nature destroys complexity, and present life is inevitably destroyed. It's completely against nature to tolerate life, and abiogenesis works precisely in the wrong direction.

Haven't you been shown incorrect on these points?

The Bible is in perfect conformity with the 2nd Law. In the early days, mankind lived 900+ years, and that age has decayed in perfect conformity with the second law, asymptotically approaching zero.

Except life expectancy has... doubled? tripled? since ancient times.

Check out the attached thumbnail. From the fossil record, we can infer that animals lived an extremely long time as well, given the giantism we see in many extinct fossils, especially reptiles.

Animals still grow huge and still live long (and blue whales are the largest known animals, living or extinct). AFAIK there's also evidence that young dinosaurs grew fast (while trying to find said evidence, it seems I stumbled upon a gold mine. This paper appears to have data and analysis on all sizes of dinosaurs. If you can't access the full article, graphs are reproduced here.)

I love the Bible because science, excellently performed, is conformity. To accept the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is to accept the Bible.

Interesting. I accept the former but don't think the latter is any "truer" than any other collection of myths. Your equation is proven false by counter-example

 

[True_Blue]

They didn't. Did you only read one paragraph?

Oh. It seems you haven't even read that one paragraph properly. I've just looked through the article again to refresh my memory. The only paragraph that actually mentions p=1 is this one: Where is this purported cop-out again?

What do you mean by complexity? I think it's time to clarify another definition (especially because I don't think complexity has a single one. So it would be doubly important for all of us to use the same definition)

Hehe! It's a cop-out because they said it's either P=1, or that they simply won't give an answer. Until I see an atheist/evolutionist give me a number [that's not P=1], I'm calling it a cop-out.

Tragically, "complexity" is like pornography. In the words of US Supreme Court Justice Stewart, "I know it when I see it." It takes wisdom and discernment to know the different between simplicity, disorganized complexity, and organized complexity.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Hehe! It's a cop-out because they said it's either P=1, or that they simply won't give an answer. Until I see an atheist/evolutionist give me a number [that's not P=1], I'm calling it a cop-out.

Tragically, "complexity" is like pornography. In the words of US Supreme Court Justice Stewart, "I know it when I see it." It takes wisdom and discernment to know the different between simplicity, disorganized complexity, and organized complexity.

Oh, science recognises complexity. Buildings, be they man-made or termite-made, are complex. Galaxies are complex. The weather is complex. Organisms are complex. The point is whether that complexity arose because of an Intelligent Complicator, or whether it arose spontaneously (albeit possibly via a long process). In the case of buildings, the evidence points unanimously to the former. In the case of galaxies, the weather, and biological organisms, the evidence points unanimously to the latter.

Disproof of ID: crystals. Design without a designer. Simplicity spontaneously becoming complex. The same is true for biological organisms: relatively simple chemistry leads inexorably to replicaters, which, via long-term evolution by natural selection, leads inexorably to complex biology.

 

[True_Blue]

As someone else mentioned, the assumptions aren't just randomly pulled out of thin air, they're based on the evidence. Some assumptions are better than others, like those based on reasonable premises. Not only that, but apparently amino acids can form under a number of conditions. The point here is that scientists are trying to look for reasonable explanations of events. It's very difficult to provide evidence of a creator, and you can't do so based on probabilities. The chemists aren't making up the conditions of the early earth and then setting up the scenario in the lab. You need to find a better strategy for providing evidence of the existence of a god, more specifically, the kind of god you believe in. You can't use the absence of evidence of life arising spontaneously as evidence of a creator, that's intellectual suicide.

I hear what you're saying. However, since no scientist was around more than 10,000 years ago, we have no data. All we got is assumptions. So come up with some good assumptions that you are comfortable with and post some back-of-the-envelope calculations. You can show PROOF OF CONCEPT without a computer model that could only be run on a Sandia supercomputer. I'm really looking for alternative calculations here. If someone wants to show me, in terms of chemistry, that getting a single, marginally functional DNA strand has a better chance than one over ten to the however-many thousanth or millionth power, we can lay this thread to rest. Without that, you guys are still stuck on 17th century spontaneous generation.

When I look at the sequence of events between Miller and the search for evidence of an anoxic atmosphere, it bears all the hallmarks of a conclusion looking for justification.

During the next year or so, I will be starting threads on many other critical stages of evolution and keep showing you guys from as many angles as I can just how empty atheism really is from the standpoint of science. All of these threads will feature my own independent thought, not a regurgitation of other's research, just as with this thread.

 

[True_Blue]

Your way of thinking about scientific problems - or what I understand of it - doesn't impress this particular wannabe scientist. Models out of thin air, convictions based on ignorance of the field and simply letting evidence against your ideas slip past you unnoticed.
It didn't seem to have that great implications during earth history (how would we have come out of the last Ice Age, just to stay close to your timescale?) Incidentally, I have the same expectation. I'm not sure whether any trend going on for the past 4-5 billion years would be large enough to be detectable among background noise on a 100-year timescale (and probably even smaller than that, as I'm sure our instruments for measuring such stuff have got immensely more precise in the past 100 years)

The key point here is: if you turn it off. The sun's very far from turned off. It's a fusion reactor. And which reasons would that be?

Simply isn't? That's what happens in every single cell cycle. The tiny organic compounds are nucleoside triphosphates - which are themselves synthesised de novo from even tinier components - and the energy comes from hydrolysing off two of the phosphate groups (basic biochemistry, really. They teach ATP in high school, at least where I come from). As I've said, enzymes may increase the rate of spontaneous reactions vastly (even by factors of 10[sup]18[/sup] IIRC) but they can't make otherwise impossible things happen. If DNA synthesis violated any law of physics it wouldn't occur in a cell.

I'll keep saying this as many times as I have to--how could ATP be synthesized in the absence of a scientific lab or a living organism?

People I have encountered and had scientific conversations with tend to intuitively grasp the 2nd Law. But as soon as I explicate the 2nd Law in the context of origins and the context of creation/evolution and Christianity/atheism, that intuition goes straight out the window.

 

[TheGnome]

I don't know what it is about creationists and their misunderstanding about the second law of thermodynamics. I'll try to explain it in a way where it has helped me to understand it.

The second law of thermodynamics states that in a closed system, there will be an increase in entropy. Entropy is commonly defined as disorder, and that leads to a lot of confusion. Disorder and order are subjective terms, and you could technically call entropy order, because the disorder that resulted is really atoms falling into their happy places. Heat and light drive reactions, and those reactions then drive other reactions, and so on and so forth. Given an influx of light, heat, and matter, an open system, an "ordered" system can be set up for awhile until those sources are no longer giving the necessary input. Reactions would still take place, but eventually you'll find nothing but stable molecules with the complete lack of light, heat, and energy that is necessary to make those stable molecules reactive. We get plenty of input of energy from the sun, and we've received plenty of matter from space, to drive reactions for about as long as the sun can output energy. There is more than enough energy coming from the sun to not only sustain life, but to help create life and evolve life.

 

[Vene]

Why does this argument over the second law of thermodynamics seem so familiar? Oh yeah, now I remember.

One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn't possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it.

link

See, it's that giant outside source suppling Earth with energy that allows reactions to decrease in entropy (even though the net entropy of the universe still increases).

 

[True_Blue]

I am not a biochemist, however I believe the biochemistry literature is replete with such estimations, but with a twist as I will discuss further on down. Just a brief flip through the 20 year old biochem textbook that I have at home establishes quite a few potential reactions.

I honestly don't know what it is you want here. I guess what you want is someone to produce a statistical probability for life to have occurred. I can tell you precisely what that statistical probability would NOT look like. You can see it here.

What you seem intent on doing in this thread is demanding that the chemistry be ignored. So far you've run up against a geochemist (me), a polymer/organic chemist (Maneki) and a couple of biochem students on this board who tell you your simplifications are so oversimplified that your model fails at the start.

That's what we've been trying to tell you all along. We are looking at a system that is complex but whose individual parts are not statistically impossible. The reactions described have been done. The Miller Urey experiment actually produced important organic precursors to life and the Oro experiment produced an actual biologically important nitrogenous base. One that we find in DNA and RNA.

Let me outline for you the real favorable assumptions you left out of your model:

1. Early earth with a reducing atmosphere. You have so far only found some discussion of a later atmosphere that was, at worst, possibly "neutral" but still capable of sustaining some of these reactions. But life, as has been pointed out, left evidence it was around before this "neutral atmosphere" was in play.

2. Available energy sources (lightning, possibly UV, geothermal heat)

3. Available water

4. Potential catalytic surfaces (silicates, sulfides, etc.)

NOW, when you run the "statistics" you need to:

A. Actually model the reactions necessary. That means establish the reaction kinetics, and then the thermodynamics to determine what reactions are more likely and what reactions are limited by speed.

B. Factor in the catalytic mineral surfaces' role in removing some kinetic barriers to some of these reactions.

C. Assess the YIELDS of these reactions.

THEN run your statistical model.

I am not even going to begin to place numbers on these factors, but I am sure the biochemical literature is quite full of them.

To your knowledge. Which I think we've established as extremely limited in terms of chemistry and biochemistry.

Well, to be fair, the fact that we are all here means life had a 100% chance of occuring in the past. Our differences seem to lie in exactly how that happened.

You seem to be of the impression that the reactions could not have occurred without God's direct intervention, correct? While science assumes that if all the pieces of the reaction are possible then the overall reaction is far more likely to be possible.

Right now we have all the pieces coming together, but it's a young science.

Think of it this way: You guys have had about 1 million years to "prove" one particular God exists. You in the Judeo-Christian Community have had approximately 5000 years to do your work. So far you are not successful in convincing everyone everywhere that Yahweh is THE God.

Science has had only about 50 years since Miller-Urey to put the system together. Cut us some slack.

No, but you most assuredly need to understand the system you are working with. Your simplification is so oversimplified it ignores the actual system.

Imagine if you will that I wish to estimate the cost of Air Force Aircraft by the following assumptions:

1. Airplanes cost a lot.
2. 1 trillion is a lot.
3. The Air force has a lot of airplanes

Result: The Airforce has 1 trillion airplanes at 1 trillion dollars a piece which means the total cost of the U.S. airforce airplanes is $1X10[sup]24[/sup].

Do you see the error here? I have failed to constrain one of the important variables.

I have oversimplified the assumptions and made a fatal flaw. In the case of your assumptions you made a gross oversimplification that ignores all the details:

In reaction rate kinetics there's an expression called the Arrhenius equation that describes the very thing you have oversimplified here.

The A in the equation, the "pre-exponential" factor is often called the "Frequency Factor" and tell us something about the frequency of collisions and their orientation, because sometimes orientation (how the molecules are arranged and facing each other) factors into the "success" of a reaction.

In addition the little E[sub]a[/sub] term tells us how energetically the collision must be to be successful.

A and Ea are set by the reaction which means that in order to actually model the countless reactions involved would mean that you have to know which reactions you are talking about. Not just randomly decree that you give it all a 50% chance of occuring.

This is also where catalytic surfaces like mineral surfaces come into play. A catalyst won't make a thermodynamically disfavorable reaction occur, but what it will do is LOWER the E[sub]a[/sub] of the reaction rate and make it more kinetically favorable to occur.

This is why it is important to not take your oversimplified systems too far. You cannot assess a random "chance" factor like a coinflip to these analyses.

"Estimates" of the kind you seem to want are probably available assuming certain reaction pathways. I think the actual facts on the ground are that we are still gathering the reaction pathways.

This is really good work, and you're about half way to the answer I'm looking for. Now all I'm looking for is for you to plug in some answers based on assumptions, which can either be simple or complex, depending on your personal preferenes, and reduce it to a single number.

When I estimated the cost of Air Force weapon systems, engineers always appreciated the work I did because I was willing to take their data, make assumptions, generate a range of probable costs, and defend the numbers before a large group of people. That takes courage. It's always true that an estimate will be wrong. That's a given, and I'm completely used to it. That's why I'm not at all bothered by the vociferousness of your objections. There's never enough data, and there are always going to be uncertainties. That's life. So take the data that you have, the intelligence you have, and the math skills you have, and stick a stake into the ground. That's what I've done, and I hope you will as well. Punting the question for 50 years down the road doesn't cut it.

 

[True_Blue]

If you are considering abiogenesis, I'm curious why are you starting your thought process with a living thing, and working backwards? Reverse engineering works on engineering problems. I suspect your pre-supposition that life is designed is what makes you insist on applying engineering principles, here. There is a sort of 'reverse engineering' that you can apply to chemicals, called retrosynthetic analysis, but it does not follow the same guidelines as reverse engineering.
.

Atomweaver, I don't have time to address all your points, but would you like to elaborate on the principles of retrosynthetic analysis? How would you apply this concept to model abiogenesis?

By the way, wouldn't it be cool if you guys collaborated to develop a wicked abiogenesis model? Rather than arguing back and forth and talking past each other, we could actually accomplish something productive. I'd be happy to help.

 

[Vene]

Atomweaver, I don't have time to address all your points, but would you like to elaborate on the principles of retrosynthetic analysis? How would you apply this concept to model abiogenesis?

By the way, wouldn't it be cool if you guys collaborated to develop a wicked abiogenesis model? Rather than arguing back and forth and talking past each other, we could actually accomplish something productive. I'd be happy to help.

And when we finish that we can figure out a way to cure cancer! Actually, I think that curing cancer may be easier than making a concise model for abiogenesis.

 

[True_Blue]

And when we finish that we can figure out a way to cure cancer! Actually, I think that curing cancer may be easier than making a concise model for abiogenesis.

A cure for cancer has to be precise, but a mathematical model of abiogenesis does not. It only has to use reasonable assumptions and reasonably relate to the subject matter.

 

[TheManeki]

I'll keep saying this as many times as I have to--how could ATP be synthesized in the absence of a scientific lab or a living organism?

Labs can simulate conditions that scientific research tells us naturally existed millions of years ago. To put it in a nutshell, if the conditions are right and the raw materials are present, the reaction proceeds.

People I have encountered and had scientific conversations with tend to intuitively grasp the 2nd Law. But as soon as I explicate the 2nd Law in the context of origins and the context of creation/evolution and Christianity/atheism, that intuition goes straight out the window.

If your explications of the second law of thermodynamics have been like the ones in the thread, the only thing you may have explicated was that you do not understand the second law.

 

[TheManeki]

.

 

[TeddyKGB]

Hehe! It's a cop-out because they said it's either P=1, or that they simply won't give an answer. Until I see an atheist/evolutionist give me a number [that's not P=1], I'm calling it a cop-out.

If certain conditions make a value incalculable, demanding an answer won't magically make one available. And claiming victory thereby is just childish.

Tragically, "complexity" is like pornography. In the words of US Supreme Court Justice Stewart, "I know it when I see it." It takes wisdom and discernment to know the different between simplicity, disorganized complexity, and organized complexity.

Potter Stewart's infamous comment is not well-remembered because it's a brilliant jurisprudential insight.

 

[TheGnome]

I hear what you're saying. However, since no scientist was around more than 10,000 years ago, we have no data. All we got is assumptions. So come up with some good assumptions that you are comfortable with and post some back-of-the-envelope calculations. You can show PROOF OF CONCEPT without a computer model that could only be run on a Sandia supercomputer. I'm really looking for alternative calculations here. If someone wants to show me, in terms of chemistry, that getting a single, marginally functional DNA strand has a better chance than one over ten to the however-many thousanth or millionth power, we can lay this thread to rest. Without that, you guys are still stuck on 17th century spontaneous generation.

When I look at the sequence of events between Miller and the search for evidence of an anoxic atmosphere, it bears all the hallmarks of a conclusion looking for justification.

During the next year or so, I will be starting threads on many other critical stages of evolution and keep showing you guys from as many angles as I can just how empty atheism really is from the standpoint of science. All of these threads will feature my own independent thought, not a regurgitation of other's research, just as with this thread.

You don't need to directly observe something to know that it has happened. Most of science, especially biology, is based on indirect evidence--even your most hardcore. An example is in molecular genetics. I took a graduate level course in molecular genetics and I was required to present a research article in front of the class. The article I presented was DNA Helicase Srs2 Disrupts the Rad51 Presynaptic Filament. They never observed Srs2 actually disrupting the presynaptic filament, but designed a series of experiments to observe its effects. The amount of indirect evidence allows for the creation of a model that is supposed to be representative of what really happens. This is the same with anything science, at least when the science is trying to answer the neat questions.

Indirect evidence produces results that can be used in the applied sciences. While protein-protein interacts are generally discovered indirectly, the information gathered is useful in designing medical treatments. I'm currently working on a project involving house sparrows, Passer domesticus, and right now we're testing some primers on house sparrow microsatellites as the beginning of the project. The cool thing about microsatellites is that you can use them to determine populations, and then determine migration patterns among populations and such. They're an indirect way of measuring populations, but incredibly useful and accurate. The value of the data lies in its utility. It would be nice to observe everything directly, but that isn't possible for most things. That doesn't mean that all things determined indirectly are of equal value. The evidence is what is important.

What you want to do is come up with a probability model on something that cannot be measured like that. I highly recommend looking into the scientific literature concerning abiogenesis starting with the experiments mentioned in the article I linked you. From there, also look into their cited literature to figure out how they determined the early earth's conditions. Look up everything you don't understand, and pay close attention to the methods. Make sure to check out a few textbooks on general chemistry, organic chemistry, and biochemistry while you're at it. You're not going to get an any better understanding than that. If necessary, take some courses on the subject--maybe even get a chemistry degree. There are so many variables in chemical reactions that are important that could make any kind of probability calculation unwieldly. How do you assign a probability value to Van der Waals interactins? Hydrophobic vs hydrophilic interactions? Steric hindrance? Electronegativity? The octet rule for second row elements? The influence of heat and light?

What's so strange is that after all of this science, you then add atheism to the mix. Atheism and science do get linked quite a bit, and that's because many atheists, such as myself, are drawn to science to answer questions that people with religion already think they've answered. Atheism isn't science, and science may not necessarily promote atheism--that's including abiogenesis and evolution. Atheism and science are caused by one underlying factor: skepticism. Not all scientists are skeptics, and not all atheists are skeptics either. If you're an atheist and a scientist, or really into science, chances are you're a skeptic--digging for as much of the truth as is possible to acquire. In this age of reason, I don't know how you can justify believing in a god.

 

[True_Blue]

You don't need to directly observe something to know that it has happened. Most of science, especially biology, is based on indirect evidence--even your most hardcore. An example is in molecular genetics. I took a graduate level course in molecular genetics and I was required to present a research article in front of the class. The article I presented was DNA Helicase Srs2 Disrupts the Rad51 Presynaptic Filament. They never observed Srs2 actually disrupting the presynaptic filament, but designed a series of experiments to observe its effects. The amount of indirect evidence allows for the creation of a model that is supposed to be representative of what really happens. This is the same with anything science, at least when the science is trying to answer the neat questions.

Indirect evidence produces results that can be used in the applied sciences. While protein-protein interacts are generally discovered indirectly, the information gathered is useful in designing medical treatments. I'm currently working on a project involving house sparrows, Passer domesticus, and right now we're testing some primers on house sparrow microsatellites as the beginning of the project. The cool thing about microsatellites is that you can use them to determine populations, and then determine migration patterns among populations and such. They're an indirect way of measuring populations, but incredibly useful and accurate. The value of the data lies in its utility. It would be nice to observe everything directly, but that isn't possible for most things. That doesn't mean that all things determined indirectly are of equal value. The evidence is what is important.

What you want to do is come up with a probability model on something that cannot be measured like that. I highly recommend looking into the scientific literature concerning abiogenesis starting with the experiments mentioned in the article I linked you. From there, also look into their cited literature to figure out how they determined the early earth's conditions. Look up everything you don't understand, and pay close attention to the methods. Make sure to check out a few textbooks on general chemistry, organic chemistry, and biochemistry while you're at it. You're not going to get an any better understanding than that. If necessary, take some courses on the subject--maybe even get a chemistry degree. There are so many variables in chemical reactions that are important that could make any kind of probability calculation unwieldly. How do you assign a probability value to Van der Waals interactins? Hydrophobic vs hydrophilic interactions? Steric hindrance? Electronegativity? The octet rule for second row elements? The influence of heat and light?

What's so strange is that after all of this science, you then add atheism to the mix. Atheism and science do get linked quite a bit, and that's because many atheists, such as myself, are drawn to science to answer questions that people with religion already think they've answered. Atheism isn't science, and science may not necessarily promote atheism--that's including abiogenesis and evolution. Atheism and science are caused by one underlying factor: skepticism. Not all scientists are skeptics, and not all atheists are skeptics either. If you're an atheist and a scientist, or really into science, chances are you're a skeptic--digging for as much of the truth as is possible to acquire. In this age of reason, I don't know how you can justify believing in a god.

You guys are scientists and engineers, not financial estimators. I've had a fair bit of science and engineering, but not specialized to the extent as my financial work. It's really not particularly difficult to come up with a cogent estimate on probabilities for biochemistry. You gotta start with the number discrete combinations that molecules containing H, O, and N form with various reactions with each other (you can assume which simple compounds are present in the fantasy primordial goo), and compare that to the number of discrete combinations of H, O, and N in adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. You can always make it more complicated and more sophisticated than that if you'd like. Without even running the numbers, I can tell that the probability of even a couple base pairs forming from chance is gonna be stupendously small. Please no rebuttals to this point unless you give me a number. Show me the money.

 

[EnemyPartyII]