No slave race: no evolution

[Nathan45]

Model a cell as a computer, and model the DNA in the cell as an operating system in a computer. Model "chemistry" as the process by which 1s and Os are entered into a keyboard, and the process by which the computer runs the operating system.

which is a complete joke and a terrible model. what are you trying to accomplish?

 

[Bombila]

True Blue, you keep assuming people are avoiding your odd questions because they are hiding something or cannot back up what they are saying. What they are saying, and you are doing a poor job of comprehending, is that your analogies are not relevant. It is as if Thaumaturgy told you that for an airplane to be possible at all, the rivets and screws would have to self-propel themselves into the aircraft and bond naturally to the skin, as otherwise they weren't displaying the properties of chemistry.

Also, go read that Pete Harcoff link before you write another word about the 'uselessness' of evolution theory.

 

[Nathan45]

When I estimated the cost of aircraft, I didn't go out and build an aircraft and add up the expenses. I made a bunch of assumptions and fed the assumptions into a mathematical model and calculated the result.

Specifically, what assumptions did you make?
What would there be to do besides estimate ( if you don't already know ) what parts will be needed, estimate labor costs, add it all together, and that's how much it costs to make the airplane? What does this have to do with computer modeling? ( this isn't a jab really, i'm curious for more information on your aircraft price modeling exercise. If you went over it in a different post, please link that here ).

The same thing must be done to determine the probability of abiogenesis.

The probability of Abiogenesis doesn't actually matter, anyway.

The probability of abiogenesis only matters if you can calculate the probability of God and the probability that he created life, then you'd have something to compare it too. Or if you find some other theory for the creation of life that somehow ( i'm stretching my brain here ) doesn't involve either a supreme being of some kind or abiogenesis.

As of now, abiogenesis is the only explanation for the existence of life that can--in theory if not in practice--even have it's probability calculated.


You can't calculate the odds of God creating life, so there's nothing to compare the odds of abiogenesis with even if you ever succeed in calculating it. When you find another explanation for the origin of life as we know it, and calculate it's probability, then we can compare that probability to the probability of abiogenesis.

What we do know is that life exists, if life didn't exist, we wouldn't be around to discuss it, would we? The probability is 100% that life got here by some mechanism or another, and abiogenesis is the only game in town.

If God created the first cell through a miracle, it would be impossible to prove or provide evidence for. Which means that someone making that statement could never know whether it was true or false. There would be no research to do and no experiments to run, and no investigation possible.

Abiogenesis on the other hand, is testable in theory, scientists are still looking for a plausible chain of chemical reactions that would lead life. So the scientists are searching for a plausible chain of chemical reactions (in context of early earth, or meteorites possibly ) that could lead to life.

This is why abiogenesis has not been proven but most scientists assume it's correct, because if abiogenesis isn't correct there isn't anything else to research. It's also why you saying it's impossible based on your mind-numbingly stupidly designed computer models which have nothing, NOTHING, NOTHING at all to do with chemistry, is so ridiculous.

This is another reason that you fundies do have nothing at all to offer this science, you don't make testable predictions, and are willing to accept untestable hypotheses.

Yet you sit back and point fingers at scientists, who are doing work that you clearly do not understand, and pretend like you have all the answers, even though you could never know whether you were right or wrong.

For reasons that are obvious, evolutionists are opposed to the very idea of running the numbers.

There are no numbers to run, it's extremely complicated to calculate the probability of life forming spontaneously. You can't just make up random stuff ( like you're doing with your computer and operating system ) and call it a probability.

What you need to understand is that modeling the probability of abiogenesis is considerably more difficult than discovering one plausible complete chain of chemical reactions that would lead to abiogenesis.

Before you can discovered the probability of abiogenesis you would need to have at least one plausible chemical reaction chain that leads to abiogenesis. Since there are no known complete comprehensive chemical chain reactions that lead to life, the probability of even one possible mechanism for abiogenesis cannot be calculated at this time, let alone the sum probabilities of ALL kinds of abiogenesis (there could be more than one chemical route from non-life to life).

To model discover the probability of abiogenesis, you would first essentially need a complete database of all possible simple life forms... i don't mean a database of all existing life forms, i mean a database of all POSSIBLE lifeforms. You would need an exhaustive list of any molecule that could be considered alive*. You would need an exhaustive list of all chemical compounds* and all chemical reactions.

*note that you could set an upper limit to the complexity of these compounds and the model would still work, but you'd still need a prohibitively large amount of information.

So it's far easier to discover and reproduce abiogenesis than to discover the probability of it. Which is why any scientist worth his salt would balk at the idea of attempting to assign a proability to abiogenesis.

...

You also seem to have a fixation with DNA and Cells. The first life did not have DNA, most likely, and most likely looked nothing like a cell. I don't know what i'm talking about, but i would assume that DNA came in later to add supplemental traits to already existing reproductive cycles of less complicated molecules. Furthermore, not all of the processes or structures in modern cells would be essential to our hypothetical first organism.

 

[Split Rock]

For reasons that are obvious, evolutionists are opposed to the very idea of running the numbers.

If it is so obvious, why is it you are so wrong?

They have to be opposed, otherwise they would not be evolutionists.

This makes no sense whatsoever, but I assume it is a thinly veiled insult. How Christian of you!

That's why I'm not the least bit surprised that no one wants to give me quantified assumptions about chemistry as applied to abiogenesis.

You have been given a number of hypotheses about such steps, but you apparently don't like them. In any case, no one can give you all such "assumptions," since we do not fully understand the details. As others have explained, it does little good to try and figure out the probabilities untiul we understand more, which is why scientists studying abiogenesis do not bother trying.

Let me give you a scenario. I start driving my car in Madison, WI and get on I-90 heading north. I then make random turns at major road intersections for 20 hours. At the end of this time period, I find myself in downtown Rice Lake. I tell you how I got to Rice Lake, and you set out to test whether I am telling you the truth by doing a probability assessment. What is the probability of getting to Rice Lake from Madison by making random left and right turns for 20 hours? Pretty low. You then tell me the probability of getting to Rice Lake by driving making random turns is too low and that I am either a liar or insane. What is wrong with your conclusions?

 

[Nathan45]

True_Blue, i want you to quiz you with one (or three) simple question(s) ( you were doing the same to me earlier with you 99% ^ 50,000 argument):

Let us say, hypothetically in the future, 1000 years from now that scientists create a working model of abiogenesis, are able to crunch ALL the numbers, the numbers are checked and accurate, and discover that the probability of abiogenesis occuring on the early earth is 1 in 5000.


Based on the knowledge that the probability of abiogenesis occuring on earth was 1 in 5000, what is the probability that God created the first cell?

what if ... the figure is 1 in 10,000?

or 1 in 10^(100^(100^100)) ?

Statistical question for you, since you apparently like to quiz people.

 

[True_Blue]

True_Blue, i want you to quiz you with one (or three) simple question(s) ( you were doing the same to me earlier with you 99% ^ 50,000 argument):

Let us say, hypothetically in the future, 1000 years from now that scientists create a working model of abiogenesis, are able to crunch ALL the numbers, the numbers are checked and accurate, and discover that the probability of abiogenesis occuring on the early earth is 1 in 5000.


Based on the knowledge that the probability of abiogenesis occuring on earth was 1 in 5000, what is the probability that God created the first cell?

what if ... the figure is 1 in 10,000?

or 1 in 10^(100^(100^100)) ?

Statistical question for you, since you apparently like to quiz people.

I didn't mean to insult you by quizzing you, so I apologize. I did show my math in the post I linked to.

If the probability were reduced that low (1/5000), then the abiogenesis hurdle in the long chain of requirements to get to the human brain from the Big Bang would be "solved," since some astronomers believe there might be 5000 Earth-like planets in our universe. I have read some atheist astronomers who maintain that Earth and its place in this galaxy is very fortuitous.

Also, we have to narrow down the reasonable possibilities of the origin of life. In my view, UFOs are not a reasonable possibility because then you'd have to explain the origin of those UFOs. Even string theorists have not conceived of enough universes to allow abiogenesis to occur in any of them in a trillion trillion years. The next possibility is that life simply sprang into being from nothing. This is actually very close to what Creationists believe, since Creationists have no explanation for the origin of God. God himself just says, I AM. That's unsatisfactory, but what other answer can there be? And if one then admits that God created life, the next question is to figure out which of the many religions is the most reasonable. This is not an easy task, and it takes a lot of work. I've only been able to come up with three explanations for life: abiogenesis, God, and UFOs. Scratching UFOs, you're left with abiogenesis and God. If you can come up with a probability for abiogenesis, then you can derive the probability of God by simple subtraction. You're right that the probability of God cannot be estimated directly. Fortunately, abiogenesis can be estimated probabilistically, making the exercise useful.

But you don't have 1000 years to wait. We need to make the best decisions with the data we have. At 1/5000, you would need to design a life form made up of only 711 parts, assuming a 99% success rate at combining them. If life were that simple, people would have no problem creating life. Life itself is ineffable and hasn't even been adequately defined, at least in my view. If we can't even define life, how are we supposed to manufacture it? And if thinking, creative human beings can't create life, how is inanimate nature supposed to do so? I always come back to God as the most reasonable answer.

 

[Nathan45]

I didn't mean to insult you by quizzing you, so I apologize.

You did not insult me by quizzing me, so no need to apologize.

If the probability were reduced that low (1/5000), then the abiogenesis hurdle in the long chain of requirements to get to the human brain from the Big Bang would be "solved," since some astronomers believe there might be 5000 Earth-like planets in our universe. I have read some atheist astronomers who maintain that Earth and its place in this galaxy is very fortuitous.

True, but it really doesn't matter how many earth-like planets there are in the visible universe. The visible universe is just what we can see, for all we know the universe is infinite. Furthermore, even if it isn't infinite, there is still a non-zero probability that abiogenesis occurred in the finite universe.

Also, we have to narrow down the reasonable possibilities of the origin of life. In my view, UFOs are not a reasonable possibility because then you'd have to explain the origin of those UFOs.

I didn't account for this, the "UFOs" would have to be created by abiogenesis. (more realisitcally, the UFOS would actually be seeds, see panspermia on wikipedia).

Even string theorists have not conceived of enough universes to allow abiogenesis to occur in any of them in a trillion trillion years.

Now you're posting complete nonsense. "theorists" are perfectly capable of conceiving of infinite universes of infinite size, furthermore even if the odds say it would take a trillion trillion years on average for abiogenesis to occur--that doesn't rule out the possibility that it has already occurred.

The next possibility is that life simply sprang into being from nothing.

How would you test for this possibility? You can't test for this possibility.

This is actually very close to what Creationists believe, since Creationists have no explanation for the origin of God. God himself just says, I AM. That's unsatisfactory, but what other answer can there be?

Nothing comes to mind.

And if one then admits that God created life,

by admits, you mean, assumes.

the next question is to figure out which of the many religions is the most reasonable. This is not an easy task, and it takes a lot of work.

None of the religions on earth that I've seen are reasonable. They all posit things for which there are no evidence, and holy books are easily dismissed as chain letters, an already known mechanism. God having anything to do with any religion is entirely superfluous. Furthermore, god having anything to do with the evolution of life is superfluous because it's already been demonstrated that life evolves through random mutations acted on by natural selection. When you can prove that e. coli evolves and show it evolving in the laboratory, and show fossils of various stages of life, which corresponds perfectly to genetic evidence. it's not a huge leap to suggest that all life evolves.

This is of course a very different question than abiogenesis, because there is no fossil evidence of abiogenesis ( you wouldn't expect there to be ) and abiogenesis has not yet been reproduced in the laboratory. That being said, abiogenesis is still the only scientific ( read: testable) hypothesis concerning the origin of life.

But you don't have 1000 years to wait. We need to make the best decisions with the data we have. At 1/5000, you would need to design a life form made up of only 711 parts, assuming a 99% success rate at combining them.

Ok. Now you're spewing nonsense again.

If life were that simple, people would have no problem creating life. Life itself is ineffable and hasn't even been adequately defined, at least in my view.

You seem to have no trouble pulling numbers out of your ass related to life if you can't even define it.

If we can't even define life, how are we supposed to manufacture it?

there are several definitions of life which are not universally agreed on, this is a semantic controversy not the same as not understanding life.

And if thinking, creative human beings can't create life, how is inanimate nature supposed to do so?

Through abiogenesis, evolution and a lot of time.

I always come back to God as the most reasonable answer.

And here your thinking ends because your hypothesis is completely and utterly untestable, he even says so specifically in his chain letter.

 

[True_Blue]

Specifically, what assumptions did you make?
What would there be to do besides estimate ( if you don't already know ) what parts will be needed, estimate labor costs, add it all together, and that's how much it costs to make the airplane? What does this have to do with computer modeling? ( this isn't a jab really, i'm curious for more information on your aircraft price modeling exercise. If you went over it in a different post, please link that here ).

The probability of Abiogenesis doesn't actually matter, anyway.

The probability of abiogenesis only matters if you can calculate the probability of God and the probability that he created life, then you'd have something to compare it too. Or if you find some other theory for the creation of life that somehow ( i'm stretching my brain here ) doesn't involve either a supreme being of some kind or abiogenesis.

As of now, abiogenesis is the only explanation for the existence of life that can--in theory if not in practice--even have it's probability calculated.


You can't calculate the odds of God creating life, so there's nothing to compare the odds of abiogenesis with even if you ever succeed in calculating it. When you find another explanation for the origin of life as we know it, and calculate it's probability, then we can compare that probability to the probability of abiogenesis.

What we do know is that life exists, if life didn't exist, we wouldn't be around to discuss it, would we? The probability is 100% that life got here by some mechanism or another, and abiogenesis is the only game in town.

If God created the first cell through a miracle, it would be impossible to prove or provide evidence for. Which means that someone making that statement could never know whether it was true or false. There would be no research to do and no experiments to run, and no investigation possible.

Abiogenesis on the other hand, is testable in theory, scientists are still looking for a plausible chain of chemical reactions that would lead life. So the scientists are searching for a plausible chain of chemical reactions (in context of early earth, or meteorites possibly ) that could lead to life.

This is why abiogenesis has not been proven but most scientists assume it's correct, because if abiogenesis isn't correct there isn't anything else to research. It's also why you saying it's impossible based on your mind-numbingly stupidly designed computer models which have nothing, NOTHING, NOTHING at all to do with chemistry, is so ridiculous.

This is another reason that you fundies do have nothing at all to offer this science, you don't make testable predictions, and are willing to accept untestable hypotheses.

Yet you sit back and point fingers at scientists, who are doing work that you clearly do not understand, and pretend like you have all the answers, even though you could never know whether you were right or wrong.

There are no numbers to run, it's extremely complicated to calculate the probability of life forming spontaneously. You can't just make up random stuff ( like you're doing with your computer and operating system ) and call it a probability.

What you need to understand is that modeling the probability of abiogenesis is considerably more difficult than discovering one plausible complete chain of chemical reactions that would lead to abiogenesis.

Before you can discovered the probability of abiogenesis you would need to have at least one plausible chemical reaction chain that leads to abiogenesis. Since there are no known complete comprehensive chemical chain reactions that lead to life, the probability of even one possible mechanism for abiogenesis cannot be calculated at this time, let alone the sum probabilities of ALL kinds of abiogenesis (there could be more than one chemical route from non-life to life).

To model discover the probability of abiogenesis, you would first essentially need a complete database of all possible simple life forms... i don't mean a database of all existing life forms, i mean a database of all POSSIBLE lifeforms. You would need an exhaustive list of any molecule that could be considered alive*. You would need an exhaustive list of all chemical compounds* and all chemical reactions.

*note that you could set an upper limit to the complexity of these compounds and the model would still work, but you'd still need a prohibitively large amount of information.

So it's far easier to discover and reproduce abiogenesis than to discover the probability of it. Which is why any scientist worth his salt would balk at the idea of attempting to assign a proability to abiogenesis.

...

You also seem to have a fixation with DNA and Cells. The first life did not have DNA, most likely, and most likely looked nothing like a cell. I don't know what i'm talking about, but i would assume that DNA came in later to add supplemental traits to already existing reproductive cycles of less complicated molecules. Furthermore, not all of the processes or structures in modern cells would be essential to our hypothetical first organism.

You’re right that if abiogenesis isn’t right, there would be nothing left to research with regards to abiogenesis. I think there are more useful problems for scientists to solve.

I use the 99% assumption as a proxy for all possible life forms. If two chemicals are arbitrarily given a 99% probability of making a combination conducive to life, you’re accounting for an extremely large number of different effective designs of a simple life form.

You’re also right that we need a prohibitively large amount of information to make a truly accurate estimate on the probability of abiogenesis. The more complicated the model and the more accurate the assumptions, the worse the result is for abiogenesis. I think that if you sat down and tried to put numbers on concepts, this would become apparent. I found that when I got my hands dirty and started applying numbers to weapon systems, I found that I could understand the weapon system much better than by reading about it. The same is true with abiogenesis—you’ll understand it better if you open up your spreadsheet and model it with arithmetic.

The other difficulty is one of different skill sets and different mentalities. Some of the engineers I worked with in the Air Force simply couldn't comprehend the idea that you can make assumptions about things to generate a cost estimate. The very idea of assumptions is anathema to the engineering mind. But people are different and have different skill sets. Engineers can't go to work designing aircraft unless the people with the checkbooks have some idea of what it will cost. You don't need exact data, just reasonable assumptions. By the same token, don't bother believing abiogenesis unless you have an idea of the probability involved.

The truly probability is so unfathomably low that all the computers in the world could not crank out enough zeros to name the result. And even then, the result would be a dead cell, not a live cell, and the dead cell could not come to life by zapping it with electricity a la Frankenstein’s Monster. The Bible’s ancient description of the “breath of life” is still the best way to describe it.

 

[Chalnoth]

You’re right that if abiogenesis isn’t right, there would be nothing left to research with regards to abiogenesis. I think there are more useful problems for scientists to solve.

I use the 99% assumption as a proxy for all possible life forms. If two chemicals are arbitrarily given a 99% probability of making a combination conducive to life, you’re accounting for an extremely large number of different effective designs of a simple life form.

You’re also right that we need a prohibitively large amount of information to make a truly accurate estimate on the probability of abiogenesis. The more complicated the model and the more accurate the assumptions, the worse the result is for abiogenesis. I think that if you sat down and tried to put numbers on concepts, this would become apparent. I found that when I got my hands dirty and started applying numbers to weapon systems, I found that I could understand the weapon system much better than by reading about it. The same is true with abiogenesis—you’ll understand it better if you open up your spreadsheet and model it with arithmetic.

The other difficulty is one of different skill sets and different mentalities. Some of the engineers I worked with in the Air Force simply couldn't comprehend the idea that you can make assumptions about things to generate a cost estimate. The very idea of assumptions is anathema to the engineering mind. But people are different and have different skill sets. Engineers can't go to work designing aircraft unless the people with the checkbooks have some idea of what it will cost. You don't need exact data, just reasonable assumptions. By the same token, don't bother believing abiogenesis unless you have an idea of the probability involved.

The truly probability is so unfathomably low that all the computers in the world could not crank out enough zeros to name the result. And even then, the result would be a dead cell, not a live cell, and the dead cell could not come to life by zapping it with electricity a la Frankenstein’s Monster. The Bible’s ancient description of the “breath of life” is still the best way to describe it.

So, all this gesticulating without an ounce of an argument, and you "conclude" that the probability of abiogenesis is low? Come on. Read up on what the scientists are actually saying is likely. The probability is far from low: in fact, it's absolutely inevitable given the right conditions.

 

[Nathan45]

You’re right that if abiogenesis isn’t right, there would be nothing left to research with regards to abiogenesis. I think there are more useful problems for scientists to solve.

You think that we already know the answer to this question. You think God did it, and we're wasting our time, and we should move on to something else.

I use the 99% assumption as a proxy for all possible life forms. If two chemicals are arbitrarily given a 99% probability of making a combination conducive to life, you’re accounting for an extremely large number of different effective designs of a simple life form.

So you're ignoring any and all chemistry, natural selection, or geology, ignoring energy sources, metabolism, chemical cycles, etc, and pulling numbers out of your ass that correspond to your pre-held prejudice that abiogenesis is nearly impossible.

You’re also right that we need a prohibitively large amount of information to make a truly accurate estimate on the probability of abiogenesis.

I'm glad you agree

The more complicated the model and the more accurate the assumptions, the worse the result is for abiogenesis.

You know this because you assume that abiogenesis is false.

I think that if you sat down and tried to put numbers on concepts, this would become apparent. I found that when I got my hands dirty and started applying numbers to weapon systems, I found that I could understand the weapon system much better than by reading about it.

You have an incredible ego.

The same is true with abiogenesis—you’ll understand it better if you open up your spreadsheet and model it with arithmetic.

If you post nonsense in a spreadsheet while knowing nothing, absolutely nothing at all about either chemistry or common sense, you're going to understand abiogenesis? or just make up numbers and call it a "probability"?

The other difficulty is one of different skill sets and different mentalities. Some of the engineers I worked with in the Air Force simply couldn't comprehend the idea that you can make assumptions about things to generate a cost estimate. The very idea of assumptions is anathema to the engineering mind. But people are different and have different skill sets. Engineers can't go to work designing aircraft unless the people with the checkbooks have some idea of what it will cost.

True, which means there's a huge demand for people like you to pull numbers out of your ass to estimate the cost of a plane that hasn't been engineered yet. Your estimate could be wrong or right, close or far, it's not an exact science... your job is to give a figure and make it credible and make it bold faced for the money men, so that the people making the money decisions can cite you as a way to cover their asses. The money men demand numbers because they need numbers to make decisions and you provide them numbers with some "credibility" which is needed for accounting purposes. If the number you give them turns out to be wrong years down the road, they blame you, their ass is covered.

You, who quite obviously know absolutely nothing about anything, are blissfully capable of answering any question through badly designed computer models full of bad assumptions, and just hope that the assumptions cancel eachother out and you end up with a good ball-park estimate. You should also try to tweak the model to conform to your pre-existing prejudices/experiences about what an airplane with x extra features should cost, because if whatever your "computer model" spits out doesn't look reasonable you're not going to get anywhere.

You don't need exact data, just reasonable assumptions. By the same token, don't bother believing abiogenesis unless you have an idea of the probability involved.

I don't see why anyone would need to know or care about the probability of abiogenesis before researching it. Unlike your planes, no immediate financial decisions need to be made, there's no need for you to pull a computer generated cost estimate out of your rectum concerning abiogenesis.

edit: i just re-read what i wrote above and it didn't make any sense so i'm going to try again.
you're right, scientists would still need to budget themselves as to what to spend money researching, but the probability of abiogenesis isn't really relevent since the probability of abiogenesis has little or nothing to do with whether or not abiogenesis happened--read up on the anthropic principle. Furthermore abiogenesis is the only scientific explanation for the origin of life so it should be investigated. In addition, research towards attempting abiogenesis could produce breakthroughs in chemical science and organic chemistry which could be useful in other fields completely unrelated to evolution. There's no need for a probability estimate.

The truly probability is so unfathomably low that all the computers in the world could not crank out enough zeros to name the result.

This is what you assume because if this isn't the case then it casts into doubt your favorite chain letter religion.

And even then, the result would be a dead cell, not a live cell, and the dead cell could not come to life by zapping it with electricity a la Frankenstein’s Monster.

Now you're just talking nonsense.

The Bible’s ancient description of the “breath of life” is still the best way to describe it.

And the description is completely useless for scientific research, so how is that a good way to describe it?

 

[Servant of Jesus]

So one important point in this debate is how you define "evolution".

Evolution is just change and it is irrefutably that living organisms change- like, were Adam and Eve white people, colored people, chinese; you get my drift.

The question is then how much change has occurred in living organisms since God created them. Or even more profound- if evolution without creation is credible, then how did the first cell obtain the breathe of life and- at exactly the same instant of time- the ability to reproduce itself.

 

[Pete Harcoff]

The question is then how much change has occurred in living organisms since God created them. Or even more profound- if evolution without creation is credible, then how did the first cell obtain the breathe of life and- at exactly the same instant of time- the ability to reproduce itself.

Replicators would have predated "life", at least as how we define it. Heck, there's even debate over whether or not viruses are technically "alive". Yet, they obviously reproduce (using living cells mind you).

 

[Vene]

(I'm sorry, Vene, drops of grease do not a life form make.)

And yet, life is essentially drops of grease (cell membrane) with a strand of nucleic acid. Both of which existed on early Earth. Proteins aren't even essential. But, until you actually show you have an understanding of either biochemistry or organic chemistry, I just don't care what you say. You don't have the necessary knowledge to make sound judgment calls.

And I bet it doesn't even matter that this stuff has occurred in a laboratory setting (link). Feel free to deny it, or make a [un]witty quip, I don't give a damn.

 

[Nathan45]

So one important point in this debate is how you define "evolution".

Evolution is just change and it is irrefutably that living organisms change- like, were Adam and Eve white people, colored people, chinese; you get my drift.

Evolution is the process of a change in an organism according to random mutations and natural selection.

Whenever the organism is reproduced, it is altered randomly, in ways which may be positive, negative or neutral. This may be heritable. Natural selection means that the positive aspects that are heritable, however rare these mutations are, are more likely to be passed on to the next generation.

The question is then how much change has occurred in living organisms since God created them.

Fossil evidence from the past billion years suggests they have changed considerably. The fossil and DNA evidence proves that all known life descended from a common ancestor, because they all fit into a nested heirarchy, both the DNA and the fossils.

Or even more profound- if evolution without creation is credible, then
how did the first cell obtain the breathe of life and- at exactly the same instant of time- the ability to reproduce itself.

The ability to reproduce itself is "the breath of life".
that's all that's required under the basic definition of living. It doesn't need to be sentient anymore than a plant is sentient.

Also the first organism would have been simpler than a cell, presumably it later evolved into a cell.

as for the answer to your question, nobody knows yet, they're still researching it. Abiogenesis is a lot harder to research than evolution because it involves one extremely microscopic creature from 4 billion years ago, that is to say there is no physical evidence for abiogenesis and never will be, the only thing you can do is try to reproduce the process chemically. Call back in a couple decades and scientists may have a viable model of chemical processes leading to abiogenesis.

 

[True_Blue]

So you're ignoring any and all chemistry, natural selection, or geology, ignoring energy sources, metabolism, chemical cycles, etc, and pulling numbers out of your ass that correspond to your pre-held prejudice that abiogenesis is nearly impossible.

My calculations are a WAG, which is a technical term of art in the cost estimating world meaning a “wild ass guess.” No denying that. But it’s better than nothing, which is what you get if you wait until the end of time for data which does not exist.

I don't really care if think my estimate sucks, Nathan45. Maybe you're smarter and more knowledgeable than me. If so, run your own numbers with your own estimates. Just don't be tempted into thinking that P=1.

I don't recommend waiting for all the data to come in, such that it might be. You don't have eternity, Nathan45. If you're 24 years old, you have a 0.142% chance of dying this year. Religion and origins are the most important topics there are. I wouldn't settle for anything less than 100% certainty when it comes to the certainty of your religious convictions. I have 100% confidence that faith in Christ brings eternal life.

 

[True_Blue]

Replicators would have predated "life", at least as how we define it. Heck, there's even debate over whether or not viruses are technically "alive". Yet, they obviously reproduce (using living cells mind you).

Replicators don't solve the problem of abiogenesis, given that the replicators are hypothetical and themselves very complex, and given the vast gulf in complexity between replicators and super-simple bacteria.

 

[True_Blue]

as for the answer to your question, nobody knows yet, they're still researching it. Abiogenesis is a lot harder to research than evolution because it involves one extremely microscopic creature from 4 billion years ago, that is to say there is no physical evidence for abiogenesis and never will be, the only thing you can do is try to reproduce the process chemically. Call back in a couple decades and scientists may have a viable model of chemical processes leading to abiogenesis.

Nathan45, I've been at this debate for about 15 years already. People have been chasing this pot of gold at the end of the rainbow a long time. The passage of time reveals more complexity in microbes, not less. People first proposed abiogenesis before they properly knew about the existence of organelles. When organelles were discovered, that should have been the death knell of abiogenesis and the overall paradigm of evolution. But like a zombie, the theory just keeps living on long past its time. In 20 years, abiogenesis will be more impossible, not less.

Edit: Oh yeah, and the discovery of DNA and RNA REALLY should have killed off abiogenesis, and yet here we are. Abiogenesis was scarcely believable when people thought cells were just lumps of goo. How much less so when we open them up and glimpse the stupendous complexity. I can only give glory to God when I read about such marvelous machinery.

 

[Nathan45]

I use the 99% assumption as a proxy for all possible life forms. If two chemicals are arbitrarily given a 99% probability of making a combination conducive to life, you’re accounting for an extremely large number of different effective designs of a simple life form.

anyway, i'm going to jump on this one point because i think it is at the heart of the argument that you think you are making.

You make the following assumptions:

1) Assume that there are a certain fixed number of combinations of molecules which compose something that could be considered an organism.
(correct assumption)

2) Assume that any viable organism must be randomly generated out of whole cloth with no intermediate steps by things which would not be considered an organism.
(Incorrect assumption)

3) Assign an arbitrary probability (99%) to molecules randomly combining together to form an organism of arbitrary complexity.

Now, 2 is where your problem is.

We don't know how simple the simplest organism is, we don't know what it looks like, what it's shaped like, what environment it's in, etc. We don't know what molecules it's made up of. You've modeled this in 1, which is a good assumption.

But the problem is that we also do not know what chemical precursors would lead to that organism. That is to say, we don't know if there are any "low hanging fruit"-- so to speak-- chemical reactions that would lead to something alive. The chemical precursors to the organism could be extremely simple, something that would form spontaneously. The actual organism could be very complex, but could form spontaneously from the hypothetical precursors.

I don't know enough about chemistry to really talk, but if you read the abiogenesis stuff, they will talk about spontaneously forming polymers, etc... Do long carbon chains ever form spontaneously in any environment? What kind of chemical processes would form long polymer chains? If they do, you could use these long carbon chains as a precursor to life.

Basically, everyone else here is talking about intermediate steps to form life from precursors, you're talking about randomly assembling life from scratch molecules, assigning a 99% probability per "part" and making the organism compose itself of an arbitrary number of parts. There's a huge difference.

What i'm saying is that if abiogenesis is correct there most likely exists a surprisingly simple chemical reaction chain which leads from non-life to life.
(simple is a relative term here, it would still be ridiculously complicated, but simply enough to be likely to have happened)


Your model assigning probabilities to "parts" of an organism spontaneously assembling itself cannot account for this, you'd need to actually learn chemistry to try to discover the chemical reaction chain that leads to abiogenesis, if it exists.

 

[Vene]

My calculations are a WAG, which is a technical term of art in the cost estimating world meaning a “wild ass guess.” No denying that. But it’s better than nothing, which is what you get if you wait until the end of time for data which does not exist.

Not in science. You can't just make up numbers. If you don't have them, you don't have them. This alone is grounds to dismiss your entire model.

 

[Nathan45]

If so, run your own numbers with your own estimates. Just don't be tempted into thinking that P=1.

I think you are completely ignoring my posts because i've told you repeatedly that P is an irrelevant figure which does not matter.

It could be 1 or it could be 1 in 100^100^100 and it wouldn't matter the least bit. Life exists, therefore it got here somehow. Anthropic principle, read up on it. If something that occured had a 1 in a bazillion chance of occuring in one way, but there is no alternative explanation, that thing happened, QED.

It's like a bridge hand, you have a 1 in 630 billion chance of picking up any particular hand, so should you be surprised everytime you're dealt any hand at all? No. Something had to happen. Unlikely things happen all the time. If you didn't get dealt a hand you wouldn't be playing bridge, if life didn't form somehow you wouldn't be here to debate how it formed.

If life did not get here somehow we would not be here to talk about it, the statistical sample is biased and the probability of abiogenesis occuring is completely irrelevent to anything at all.

I don't recommend waiting for all the data to come in, such that it might be. You don't have eternity, Nathan45. If you're 24 years old, you have a 0.142% chance of dying this year.

and then go to hell where i will be tortured in the presense of holy angels forever and ever, amen. Yes, yes, i've heard this all before. At least if you believe "without evidence the ones who speak without knowledge of things unparalleled".

Religion and origins are the most important topics there are.

"If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing." -- 1 cor 13:2 Read the whole chapter, for good measure.

I wouldn't settle for anything less than 100% certainty when it comes to the certainty of your religious convictions. I have 100% confidence that faith in Christ brings eternal life.

This is similar to the money men who pay you to provide cost estimates. They need an estimate, they have to have one. You provide it. "Wild ass guess" as you call it.

You, also, with your mindset, wouldn't settle for anything less than 100% certainty as far as religion goes.

100% certainty does not exist, but you demand it.

So a certain chain letter religion is perfectly willing to trick you by pretending that they provide it. I don't demand absolute certainty so i have no need for a chain letter religion purporting to provide it.