A simple calculation shows why evolution is impossible

Kylie

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So you are disputing the links I posted from greater minds than you or I who understand the odds say that any betting or lottery comparisons will not work because it is beyond those sort of comparisons.

No, I am saying that you are missing a basic point of logic.

OK we are going back and fourth on this now and getting no where. Lets just say that on the one hand we have the idea of a fine tuned universe for intelligent life and on the other hand to counter this we can have a multiverse or multi puddle scenario where there are many variations of universes or holes that make the fine tuned universe for intelligent life not so special.

No. You are poisoning the well. By saying that the universe was fine tuned, you are implying a tuner in order to show there was a tuner.

Apart from the fact that the only real scenario we can look at and test is our universe which shows it is fine tuned for intelligent life. All else is speculation.

Now you are speculating.

All we can conclude is that we live in a universe that has the required conditions for life. It does not follow that deliberate tuning was required to get those conditions. Again, you are poisoning the well.

The only reason I thought it could only exist in one form for verification purposes is because that is the only form we have (us) who happen to be intelligent life.

And you are going about it backwards.

If you take a lottery, and see that out of tickets numbered 1 to 1,000,000 that the winning ticket was 24,387, you might say that someone must have intentionally chosen this particular ticket, since the odds of it happening by itself were literally one in a million.

But this is ignoring the fact that SOME ticket was GUARANTEED to win. One of those million tickets was going to be drawn, it had to be one of them. And each one of them had that same one in a million chance. But it was absolutely guaranteed that one of those million tickets was going to be picked.

So we cannot conclude that a particular outcome MUST have been set up by some agency just because it had a low chance of happening by itself - no matter how low that chance was.

If we start using non-verified ideas then we are stepping outside science. It could say that all the other universes have God made intelligent beings in them as well. How would you dispute them directly. It is the same as how would you verify there are many other universes that have varying types of life. So it is really a thought experiment and nothing more.

But if we only had one universe and the conditions were not right for life how does it adapt to those conditions.

Obviously it doesn't.

Why do you think I'm saying that there MUST have been a universe capable of supporting life? I'm not.

I mean, obviously we know that there is such a universe, since we are in it. But that doesn't mean it was designed.

Yes what you keep forgetting when I say that life had to be a certain way is that in real terms the only thing we can talk about is the universe we live in (this one) which happens to be a certain way. Introducing multiverses for universe and potholes is a good idea and counter but it is just an idea, a though experiment and not scientifically verified. Sometimes I think I am the atheists debating a person who believes (has faith) in the great pot hole multiverse god. :sorry:

I never said that I think the multiverse idea is absolutely correct. I'm just saying that it's a possibility.

Oh OK, but not all scientists

All reputable scientists.

If the conditions were different where, on this planet and in our universe or in a multiverse.

Where?

Where the life was, obviously.

actually the odds they are talking about you would need more people that there possible is to sell enough tickets to meet the odds. In other words you would only sell a small fraction of the amount of tickets then run out of people by something like 10 to the power of 230. Which is a 10 with 230 zeros. A trillion only has 12 zeros so it is massively big odds beyond anything we could imagine and bet on.

Wow, you are missing the point.

If a million tickets go into a lottery, and I buy all the million tickets, then I am guaranteed to be the winner.
 
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Kylie

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I never said evolution is rand. I said blind natural selection acting on random mutations. Is has no purpose or direction. What can be regarded as beneficial for one generation for reproduction can become something that wipes out creatures in the next. Evolution has no way of knowing that and seeing ahead of time. So it can continue to produce creatures that end up sick and dying out as much as those who go on to reproduce. I also introduces deadly mutations into a finely tuned and already working genetic network that needed to maintain its current status. Despite selection being said to weed these out the damage can already be done and not all gets weeded out. So in that sense it is random because there is no direction for ensuring fitness.

Why do you think that evolution could be unable to weed out a variation that is deadly? Can you give an example of this?
 
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xianghua

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For starters, this 10^30 isn't even a real number since we've established that the ratio of the evolution of functional to non-functional proteins is far higher than that (e.g. in the 10^10 to 10^12) range.

not if we are talking about 3 proteins as a miniml bar. remember that.


You only came up with 10^30 by incorrectly multiplying the 10^10 ratios based on an arbitrary assumption of probability dependence and simultaneous occurrence. However, we don't even know if that's necessary or true in such cases.

actually we do. for instance:

A Shocking Fish Tale Surprises Evolutionary Biologists

"Maler notes that to create an electric organ, many genetic changes have to happen — and each one on its own wouldn’t seem to be advantageous for the fish. For example, a muscle that loses its ability to contract is a pretty lousy muscle.

“You have to simultaneously co-evolve genes that do very many different things in some kind of directed manner. It [can’t just] be random,” says Maler. “And that’s hard to understand. They’ve raised the problem beautifully in this paper.”


When taking into account how things really evolve (especially factoring selection into the mix) such a scenario is not appropriate.

selection will not help here. see above.


Second, as discussed given the relative size and generational time of populations of life on Earth even if something does have a 1 in 10^30 chance of occurring, there has been far more than enough time for such an outcome to potentially occur.

i dont think so. say that we are talking about evolution of the electric organ. say that we start with a huge population of a trillion individuals. since there are about 100 mutations per generation and assume that generation time for these fishes=1 year, we will get about 10^14 mutations per year. and to get 10^30 mutations we will need about 10^16 years. more than million times the age of the earth. and that is only for a single organ that suppose to evolve at least 6 times and only in these fishes.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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Despite selection being said to weed these out the damage can already be done and not all gets weeded out. So in that sense it is random because there is no direction for ensuring fitness.
This sounds like confused thinking (equivocation of 'direction'?). Natural selection is pressure towards fitness - the reproductively unfit lines die out. So it establishes a direction in fitness-space towards fitness. You could view it as a (leaky) filter - let's say the reproductively most fit pass through and the less fit are filtered out. The filter is a boundary between the less fit on one side and the more fit on the other, so the direction across or through the filter represents a direction of increasing fitness.

So there is a direction in the sense of an orientation or pointer in fitness space, just as gravity establishes an acceleration direction in spacetime. But this is not the same as a teleological direction, i.e. it's not an instruction or guideline. It's worth making a clear distinction between those two uses of the word in this context - a process can have, or establish, a direction without being directed.
 
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stevevw

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Because the process itself is, but that does not falsify purpose. The notion that a contingent process like evolution defeats or impairs divine providence is theologically insupportable.
That maybe the case as a general rule but when it comes to the way people have been shown how evolution works in that it cannot guarantee a particular outcome we would have to acknowledge that somewhere in the greater scheme if things God set the controls for intelligent humans that can have a relationship with him. I guess that would come back to the environment and that can come back to how the universe is fine tuned for intelligent life. So maybe God set those controls when he initially created the universe.

Still those who believe in the different versions of theistic evolution say that God intervened from creating the first universal living cell to additional interventions along the way. So one way or another God intervenes with some intention and purpose to ensure life comes about and evolves in a certain direction.

No, they do not dictate selection. Natural selection selects what works. The processes hypothesized by EES influence variation. What you think other people think about it seems not very accurately informed and in any case has no bearing on the discussion.
They dictate evolution in that only certain traits come about and they are well suited for a creature to adapt as opposed to any possible trait good or bad which we would expect from a chance process. Adaptive evolution throws up random mutations that could produce any trait which can be unsuitable for the environment. The EES processes can often produce the right sort of trait is produced because living things are connected and interact to their environments and other living things in that environment.

Unlike adaptive evolution which makes living things independent and requiring gene change to be acquired through a random mutations that need to be filtered out in a blind hit and miss process. Also creatures can change environments and create their own environments that are well suited and ensure survival rather than being altered to fit an environment. This bypasses natural selection altogether as the creature is controlling the environment. The EES makes evolution more of a constructive and holistic process where living things are affected by a number of influences which move back and forth between life and environments changing ecosystems.
 
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Speedwell

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That maybe the case as a general rule but when it comes to the way people have been shown how evolution works in that it cannot guarantee a particular outcome we would have to acknowledge that somewhere in the greater scheme if things God set the controls for intelligent humans that can have a relationship with him.
Why does it have to be humans?
I guess that would come back to the environment and that can come back to how the universe is fine tuned for intelligent life. So maybe God set those controls when he initially created the universe.
Which is not ID.

Still those who believe in the different versions of theistic evolution say that God intervened from creating the first universal living cell to additional interventions along the way. So one way or another God intervenes with some intention and purpose to ensure life comes about and evolves in a certain direction.
Yes, I am aware that some theistic evolutionists believe that. I don't see the point, myself.

They dictate evolution in that only certain traits come about and they are well suited for a creature to adapt as opposed to any possible trait good or bad which we would expect from a chance process. Adaptive evolution throws up random mutations that could produce any trait which can be unsuitable for the environment. The EES processes can often produce the right sort of trait is produced because living things are connected and interact to their environments and other living things in that environment.
Do you understand the difference between random mutation an random variation?

Unlike adaptive evolution which makes living things independent and requiring gene change to be acquired through a random mutations that need to be filtered out in a blind hit and miss process. Also creatures can change environments and create their own environments that are well suited and ensure survival rather than being altered to fit an environment. This bypasses natural selection altogether as the creature is controlling the environment. The EES makes evolution more of a constructive and holistic process where living things are affected by a number of influences which move back and forth between life and environments changing ecosystems.
And you find the divine tinkering you need in there exactly where?
 
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pitabread

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not if we are talking about 3 proteins as a miniml bar. remember that.

But you're just making that up. You're treating a ratio of functional/non-functional proteins as a probability and assuming arbitrary dependence for said probability.

There is no basis for this.

actually we do. for instance:

<snip>

This is just a soundbite from a news article. It's not a demonstrable scenario on how electric eels evolved.

Quite frankly it tells us nothing of real value.

selection will not help here. see above.

You don't know that. In fact, I've noticed any time probability arguments get brought up invariably those invoking them completely ignore selection effects.

i dont think so. say that we are talking about evolution of the electric organ. say that we start with a huge population of a trillion individuals. since there are about 100 mutations per generation and assume that generation time for these fishes=1 year, we will get about 10^14 mutations per year. and to get 10^30 mutations we will need about 10^16 years. more than million times the age of the earth. and that is only for a single organ that suppose to evolve at least 6 times and only in these fishes.

This is all just made up though.
  1. You're once again conflating ratios of functional/non-functional proteins with probability distribution with numbers of mutations. These are not the same things and using them interchangeably is not correct.
  2. As stated the 10^30 number has no basis in reality. It's a case of arbitrarily assuming a probability and/or number of mutations solely for the purpose of creating an artificially improbable scenario.
  3. You're completely ignoring selection and genetic recombination (the latter especially odd given we're talking about sexually reproducing diploid organisms).
  4. Trying to calculate the probability of a specific evolutionary scenario like the above is meaningless to begin with since: a) you don't have complete information to even calculate such a scenario; and b) after-the-fact probability calculations aren't relevant to begin with.
In the latter case, it goes back to the problem of calculating the probability of one's own birth. The probability of all the events in Earth's history leading up to your particular birth might make it a wholly improbable event. Yet it obviously occurred. Thus the after-the-fact probability is 1.

If you want to keep believing that evolution is impossible that's your prerogative. Creating fictitious probability scenarios isn't supporting your case. It's just a case of garbage-in, garbage-out.
 
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SLP

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I ask again:

Ok, so your creator god created electric organs only in some fish, in different groups of fish (again only some of them), by modifying genes involved in muscle function.
Explain how your creator did that.
Then explain how it created the muscle systems in the first place.
Then explain how this creator god came to be.

Where did you go, old buddy?
 
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Larniavc

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here's another one. looks like a mess but the protein has to be folded is a very precise way and so does every protein. This take a high level of specified and functional complexity.
roo.gif
What units are you measuring complexity in?
 
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stevevw

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This sounds like confused thinking (equivocation of 'direction'?). Natural selection is pressure towards fitness - the reproductively unfit lines die out. So it establishes a direction in fitness-space towards fitness. You could view it as a (leaky) filter - let's say the reproductively most fit pass through and the less fit are filtered out. The filter is a boundary between the less fit on one side and the more fit on the other, so the direction across or through the filter represents a direction of increasing fitness.

So there is a direction in the sense of an orientation or pointer in fitness space, just as gravity establishes an acceleration direction in spacetime. But this is not the same as a teleological direction, i.e. it's not an instruction or guideline. It's worth making a clear distinction between those two uses of the word in this context - a process can have, or establish, a direction without being directed.
Still despite this there when it comes to random mutations the majority have a negative affect and there are very rare if any beneficial ones. The question is is there enough benefit to have created the vast array of lif from simple to complex and if so in a time that neo Darwinism can account for. IMO I don't think so. That is why I say that there are other processes that help living things find the right sort of traits to adapt rather than through a hit and miss process that primarily introduces the wrong traits. Its like 10,000 steps backward to get may 1 dubious step forward. So if we were to say that there are other processes that make more sense in helping life adapt that do not involve random mutations and that mutations as a whole are really errors and don't play a big role in producing anything functional. What has been mistaken for creating fitness is more to do with other processes besides random mutations being sifted by selection.
 
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stevevw

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Why does it have to be humans?
Because humans are the only creature that can have relationship with God in a way that allows us to be redeemed. When God said He would make humans in His own image he needed to be sure that this was the case and it was not just about being an animal. It seems silly that he would gamble on a blind chance process to maybe or maybe not produce being in his own image. The very being that were produced are the ones he intended by the fact we can know him. We were known by God before we were created. But if we are to take evolution at its word it states that there is no guarantee that certain creatures will evolve. It is all subject to chance circumstances and environments. If the Dino's did not go extinct we may have ended with something completely different.
Which is not ID.
How is that not ID. If God set the controls for a certain outcome rather than any number of possible chance outcomes does not this point to some intelligent agent toying with the controls. As many scientists say with the fine-tuning argument, it seems that the many physical parameters are set to produce intelligent life by some agent. For example

A common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. Fred Hoyle, "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections

Yes, I am aware that some theistic evolutionists believe that. I don't see the point, myself.
If they did not refer to something like this then why even mention God has anything to do with the creation of anything. They may as well be atheists because no God is required. Everything can be explained by random chance processes.

Do you understand the difference between random mutation an random variation?
Random mutations are what vary genes and the random variation that is produced by random mutations is acted upon by natural selection.

And you find the divine tinkering you need in there exactly where?
This is what needs to be determined. This could be anything from the fine tuning of the universe for intelligent life. Fine tuning may also be seen in the genetic code for life in that proteins are the building blocks for producing living things and there are only very rare functional proteins compared to there being an infinite number of non-functional possibilities.
 
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stevevw

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Citation required.

Unexpectedly small effects of mutations in bacteria bring new perspectives - November 2010

Most mutations in the genes of the Salmonella bacterium have a surprisingly small negative impact on bacterial fitness. And this is the case regardless whether they lead to changes in the bacterial proteins or not
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-unexpectedly-small-effects-mutations-bacteria.html

Robustness–epistasis link shapes the fitness landscape of a randomly drifting protein
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7121/full/nature05385.html
Distribution of fitness effects caused by random insertion mutations in Escherichia coli
Excerpt: At least 80% of the mutations had a significant negative effect on fitness, whereas none of the mutations had a significant positive effect.
http://www.springerlink.com/co.....q5l0q3832/
Beyond A 'Speed Limit' On Mutations, Species Risk Extinction
Harvard University scientists have identified a virtual "speed limit" on the rate of molecular evolution in organisms, and the magic number appears to be 6 mutations per genome per generation -- a level beyond which species run the strong risk of extinction as their genomes lose stability.
Beyond A 'Speed Limit' On Mutations, Species Risk Extinction
Multiple Overlapping Genetic Codes Profoundly Reduce the Probability of Beneficial Mutation
It is almost universally acknowledged that beneficial mutations are rare compared to deleterious mutations [1–10].,, It appears that beneficial mutations may be too rare to actually allow the accurate measurement of how rare they are [11].
The growing evidence for a high degree of optimization in biological systems, and the growing evidence for multiple levels of poly-functionality within DNA, both suggest that mutations that are unambiguously beneficial must be especially rare.
The theoretical scarcity of beneficial mutations is compounded by the fact that most of the beneficial mutations that do arise should confer extremely small increments of improvement in terms of total biological function. This makes such mutations invisible to natural selection.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~gmontane/pdfs/montanez-binps-2013.pdf
There are plenty more if you need them.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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Still despite this there when it comes to random mutations the majority have a negative affect and there are very rare if any beneficial ones.
Current evidence suggests the majority are neutral, some are deleterious, and a few are beneficial. It's not a simple assessment as the status (neutral, deleterious, or beneficial) of many are contextual, and some can both deleterious and beneficial in different ways at the same time.

The question is is there enough benefit to have created the vast array of lif from simple to complex and if so in a time that neo Darwinism can account for. IMO I don't think so.
That is why I say that there are other processes that help living things find the right sort of traits to adapt rather than through a hit and miss process that primarily introduces the wrong traits.
So you're using an argument from incredulity to justify proposing unspecified 'other processes' for which you have no evidence. You should be able to see why we find your reasoning fallacious.

To make the sort of argument you're suggesting, you have to demonstrate that the current evolutionary synthesis is unable to account for the diversity of life, and supply evidence in favour of 'other processes' - or, at least, supply a testable hypothesis for those processes.
 
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Speedwell

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Because humans are the only creature that can have relationship with God in a way that allows us to be redeemed. When God said He would make humans in His own image he needed to be sure that this was the case and it was not just about being an animal. It seems silly that he would gamble on a blind chance process to maybe or maybe not produce being in his own image. The very being that were produced are the ones he intended by the fact we can know him. We were known by God before we were created. But if we are to take evolution at its word it states that there is no guarantee that certain creatures will evolve. It is all subject to chance circumstances and environments. If the Dino's did not go extinct we may have ended with something completely different.
The problem is that you don't know any of that, because we have only one example at hand of evolution producing a biosphere All that is required for us to be is to have a certain level of self-aware intelligence. We needn't be a primate or even a mammal. For all we know, evolution will always tend to produce some kind of creature with self-aware intelligence.
How is that not ID. If God set the controls for a certain outcome rather than any number of possible chance outcomes does not this point to some intelligent agent toying with the controls. As many scientists say with the fine-tuning argument, it seems that the many physical parameters are set to produce intelligent life by some agent.
Yes, but ID posits periodic acts of tinkering with molecular genetics by the "designer." Fine tuning of initial states with no mundane intervention subsequently is not ID.


If they did not refer to something like this then why even mention God has anything to do with the creation of anything. They may as well be atheists because no God is required. Everything can be explained by random chance processes.
Yes. And I think that is exactly what God intended. The existence of everything natural can be explained by natural forces. You are not going to be able to show using science that God exists.
 
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pitabread

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Still despite this there when it comes to random mutations the majority have a negative affect and there are very rare if any beneficial ones.

Majority of mutations are neutral.

That is why I say that there are other processes that help living things find the right sort of traits to adapt rather than through a hit and miss process that primarily introduces the wrong traits.

Which processes?
 
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stevevw

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Current evidence suggests the majority are neutral, some are deleterious, and a few are beneficial. It's not a simple assessment as the status (neutral, deleterious, or beneficial) of many are contextual, and some can both deleterious and beneficial in different ways at the same time.


So you're using an argument from incredulity to justify proposing unspecified 'other processes' for which you have no evidence. You should be able to see why we find your reasoning fallacious.

To make the sort of argument you're suggesting, you have to demonstrate that the current evolutionary synthesis is unable to account for the diversity of life, and supply evidence in favour of 'other processes' - or, at least, supply a testable hypothesis for those processes.
I thought I had already done that
 
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stevevw

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Majority of mutations are neutral.
Thats the prevailing view. But from the evidence I have seen many of the neutral mutations are actually slightly deleterious. Non-beneficial mutations can be tolerated and these may be mistakenly seen as neutral. ie
As observed in computational systems3,4,5, negative epistasis was tightly associated with higher tolerance to mutations (robustness). Thus, under a low selection pressure, a large fraction of mutations was initially tolerated (high robustness), but as mutations accumulated, their fitness toll increased, resulting in the observed negative epistasis. These findings, supported by FoldX stability computations of the mutational effects6, prompt a new model in which the mutational robustness (or neutrality) observed in proteins, and other biological systems, is due primarily to a stability margin, or threshold, that buffers the deleterious physico-chemical effects of mutations on fitness. Threshold robustness is inherently epistatic—once the stability threshold is exhausted, the deleterious effects of mutations become fully pronounced, thereby making proteins far less robust than generally assumed.
Robustness–epistasis link shapes the fitness landscape of a randomly drifting protein

Which processes?
Processes I have posted earlier associated with the EES such as developmental bias, plasticity, niche construction and extra genetic inheritance include epigenetics.
 
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