The Truth about Evolution

[rocker]

Dear Cariad, great post.  Sir Fred Hoyle, and astronomer/mathematician who weighed in on the issue of origins which is in line with your post, as well as Rocker's shows that math involved.  Take a look at one of their papers on this issue:

Evolution of Life: A Cosmic Perspective
N. Chandra Wickramasinghe and Fred Hoyle
An ActionBioscience.org original paper

12. Improbability of life’s origins: cosmic evolution

Our hypothesis is that viable bacteria are of cosmic origin. They were present already in the material from which the solar system condensed and their number was then topped up substantially by replication in cometary material. Thus the impacts of cometary material would have brought them to Earth. The interiors of large enough impactors are known to remain cool and relatively undisturbed in such impacts. The wiping out of resident cultures was then of no overall consequence because the destroyed cultures were replaced by new arrivals.

This is the panspermia hypothesis.  Is this supposed to be an argument against abiogenesis?

The hypothesis questions the viability of chemical processes in a warm little pond. Would these processes yield the molecular arrangements of such observed biological structures as DNA and RNA, or at the enzymes for which such structures code? A typical enzyme is a chain with about 300 links; each link being an amino acid of which there are 20 different types used in biology. Detailed work on a number of particular enzymes has shown that about a third of the links must have an explicit amino acid from the 20 possibilities, while the remaining 200 links can have any amino acid taken from a subset of about four possibilities from the bag of 20. This means that with a supply of all the amino acids supposedly given, the probability of a random linking of 300 of them yielding a particular enzyme is as little as


The bacteria present on Earth in its early days required about 2000 such enzymes, and the chance that a random shuffling of already-available amino acids happens to combine so as to yield all the required 2000 enzymes is

2000! [10-250]2000
which works out at odds of one part in about 10500,000 , with the factorial hardly making any difference, large as it might seem.

This is a post hoc fallacy.

The problem with this hypothesis is that it assumes that only those exact 2000 enzymes is the arrangement that would yield a living organism.

Let's see if I can make a usable parallel, without the actual math involved (I do not want to go find my Stats book, ugh).  I take a bag of 100....sticky things.  All are different colors.  I throw them up in the air.  When they land, I find one clump of 30.  The odds against those exact 30 coming down together are astronomical (and yet, it happened).  I could repeat that experiment thousands of times and never get that exact arrangement.  However, the odds that I will get some clump of 30 in each toss may be, for example, one in three.

To make this math useful, they would pretty much have to reproduce every other possible arrangement of enzymes and show that no other arrangement is viable.

In other words, lots of things formed.  Some of them were viable.  The viable ones survived.  What were the odds against that particular collection?  Pretty high.  What were the odds that one of the millions of collections would be viable?  Not addressed.

A probability as small as this cannot be contemplated. So to a believer in the paradigm of the warm little pond there has to be a mistake in the argument.

Indeed there is.

So although it is known that the bacteria present on Earth, almost from the beginning, were ordinary bacteria, everyday bacteria as one might say, it is argued that the first organisms managed to be viable with considerably fewer than 2000 enzymes31.

"almost" from the beginning.

The number has been reduced from 2000 to 256

Wow, so those odds calculated above just got a whole lot different, didn't they?

(an amazing but illusory degree of accuracy).

"illusory"?  How was the number determined?  Experimentally?  Are you saying someone just made it up?  What is the evidence for that?

Additionally one can reduce the lengths of required chains of amino acids. Suppose, for example, one reduces the length as much as tenfold, to only 30 links. Then the chance of obtaining such a severely sawndown enzyme is

256! [10-25]276.

Wow, those odds keep dropping and dropping.

Neglecting the effect of the factorial, this amounts only to one part in 106900, still not a bet one would advise a friend to take.

Love the cute folksy bit, but there is information missing.  The odds may be 1:106900, but the critical question is - how many tries do you get?  If you get one try, pretty bad odds.  Ten tries, still hang on to the mortgage.  But if that is out of tens of billions of tries - bet the farm, baby!

For comparison, there are about 1079 atoms in the whole visible universe, in all the galaxies visible in the largest telescopes. This comparison shows in our opinion that life must be a cosmological phenomenon, not at all something which originated in a warm little terrestrial pond.

This is arguing that life has arisen everywhere, an assumption which remains to be investigated.

With the genetic components of life distributed widely throughout the universe, it is a matter for each local environment to pick out arrangements that best fit the particular circumstances. In a case like Earth, a complicated fitting together of the components occurred over the last several hundred million years, by a process which biologists refer to as evolution32.

They are expanding their assumption that life is everywhere in the universe.  I don't know where "several hundred million years" comes from, unless the paper is extremely old.  The earliest life on earth is dated to about 3.5 billion years.

On this view of the origin of life there would be little variation in the forms to which the process gives rise, at least so far as basic genes are concerned, over the whole of our galaxy. Or indeed, over all nearby galaxies. The rest of the story concerns the many ways in which the same basic genes can combine to produce rich varieties of living forms from one environment to another, always remembering that because of the large numbers involved — large numbers of stars, large numbers of planets and large numbers of galaxies, the system can afford many failures.

However, I am now quite confused.  You have thrown in the panspermia theory.  This is an argument against aboigenesis occurring...on Earth.  It assumes that abiogenesis happened somewhere.  What point are you trying to make?

[monrein]

I have neither the brain power nor the inclination to debate the details and intricacies of evolutionary processes (any more than I could be bothered trying to prove the existence of God) although I do try to follow along as best I can.

In my feeble attempts to follow along however,  I find myself repeatedly thinking.....wow and whoa, any "improbability" arguments against evolution (which I understand as a scientific theory, still discovering new things, and adding to as well as refining some earlier understandings thereby building an as yet incomplete body of knowledge) certainly pale in comparison to the improbability of the biblical explanation, provided in Genesis, about how the world and life upon it came about. 



Now, I think I'll go have some supper, and dream that I had the clout to convince either A. C. Grayling (I wish he'd leave his wife and marry me...I do so love the man's mind) or Richard Dawkins, or maybe both of them to get over to this thread AND the "other" one in order to really debate this stuff.

Since I probably won't be able to get them to drop in, anyone still interested in these ideas can look them up (thanks to the scientific advances of technology) via the internet and even watch them debate a variety of people on issues such as these.

[willowtreewren]

OMG, Monrien! This sounds like great fun!

[Chris]

OMG, Monrien! This sounds like great fun!

That's because your ooggling the guys, for their minds 

[rocker]

OMG, Monrien! This sounds like great fun!

That's because your ooggling the guys, for their minds 

I do love a big, throbbing...IQ.

Or was that fistula?

I always confuse those.

  - rocker

[Wallyz]

I am shocked that no one has expressed the truth, tht the world was created by the FLYING Spaghetti Monster for the inscrutable purposes of th e Flying Spaghetti Monster.. All hail the FSM!

[Hanify]

The answer is obvious - number 42

[Chris]

The answer is obvious - number 42

From which book? Kitkatz 1000 ways to please a man or the book you read about ties versus rope? 

[Hanify]

ha ha - neither - from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe!
In the first novel and radio series, a group of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings demand to learn the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything from the supercomputer, Deep Thought, specially built for this purpose. It takes Deep Thought 7½ million years to compute and check the answer, which turns out to be 42. Unfortunately, The Ultimate Question itself is unknown.

[Chris]

 

and I don't need to quote what tat's for 

[Hemodoc]

Dear Rocker, you are the one that answered my query on where does evolution start with the RNA world which is a concept from abiogenesis.  Really does not matter to me if you separate or group the two together.  If you do not have abiogenesis, then you have no starting point for evolution currently defined as changes in gene frequencies.  You made a very interesting statement to the effect that with or without abiogenesis it does not effect evolution.  Please clarify that.  If you don't have a place to start, there is nothing for evolution to work with allegedly.  That sounds like magical thinking to me.

You now state that I am confused about the complexity of the cell, and my answer is not at all.  You state that you have cleared up the issue, and I must have missed that.  Are you continuing to state like Darwin that the cell is not complex?  Please clarify again if you would.  I must confess that I am astounded by how simple the process appears to be in your mindset.  Once again, you have not really clarified when evolution did begin.  What is your starting point?

As far as the steady state and panspermia, I obviously disagree with both from the biblical perspective, but you are missing the point of why Sir Fred Hoyle's calculations are still relevant.  He supported the steady state due to his calculations that there is not enough matter in the known universe nor enough time for life to have developed on earth.  Nothing at all wrong with his calculations.  His solutions to this problem are quite imaginative, but I do not support them.  His probabilities do remain.

[Hemodoc]

]"Some people say we evolved from apes, well they can bite my ass."[/b]

Yes, that is what I think.  I think your attitude, your perceived superioity, you refusal to listen to other people, your need for two threads to ruin, your contant and obscessive cut and paste all combine to irritate people and they want to shut you up.  I made an extra effort to talk to you but you consider yourself so far above me that you continue to bully people when you have a few folks in this discussion who are far more intelligent than you are.  Yep.  That's what I think.

So come on now Peter.

Dear Dan, I am sorry that you feel that way, but in reality, you have been about the only one here to bully people.  When I decided to stop posting you even sent me a pm asking me to continue.  All I have done is talk of the issues and the data in a quite patient manner.  Dan, I don't back down to bullies, so it really matters little what insults you or anyone else points my way.  Doesn't bother me a bit.  There are many that I am sure would enjoy this thread more but for folks such as yourself that ridicule the beliefs held by a majority of people in this nation.  So, I will continue to present facts and data and pretty much ignore the mocking, constant laughing symbols and all of the other ways that you try to shut down my right to express my views.  Just who is being intolerant?  And by the way, the owner of IHD holds many of my own views and is tolerating all of the anti-christian views you folks put forth as did Epoman before despite his belief in creation and the God of the Bible.  You may want to actually consider that for a minute or two at least.

[dwcrawford]

I am so sorry.  I didn't realize you had a relationship with the owners of the site.  I don't even know who the owners are.  I should have known there was something special about you though, as no one else has ever been given to much leeway to rant and insult the rest of the posters.  I'm backing off, not by choice, but out of fear!  You are scaring me know with your veiled threat of involving the owner. 

I had pmed you because I saw a value to your message and wanted you to express it in such a way that it wouldn't turn people off.  I mean, you say you are a Christian.  The devil comes in many disguises, yes?  You choose to continue to bully and now with the threat of you knowing the owner, I'm afraid of you because I don't really want to get kicked out.

HEY!  But this is the thread I wanted you to post Evolution ideas in anyway!  Thank you. 

[Hemodoc]

I am so sorry.  I didn't realize you had a relationship with the owners of the site.  I don't even know who the owners are.  I should have known there was something special about you though, as no one else has ever been given to much leeway to rant and insult the rest of the posters.  I'm backing off, not by choice, but out of fear!  You are scaring me know with your veiled threat of involving the owner. 

I had pmed you because I saw a value to your message and wanted you to express it in such a way that it wouldn't turn people off.  I mean, you say you are a Christian.  The devil comes in many disguises, yes?  You choose to continue to bully and now with the threat of you knowing the owner, I'm afraid of you because I don't really want to get kicked out.

Once again Dan, you have missed the point.  I have no special relationship with the owner of IHD. It is simply a truth that they put have put up with your freedom to speak out against Christianity even though what you are stating is antithetical to their beliefs, yet you and others don't want to hear those beliefs proclaimed and are looking for anyway you can to keep me from speaking up.  That is hypocrisy.

Lastly, speaking the truth is not insults, it is simply what it is, telling the truth about the Bible, about evolution theory and God.

[dwcrawford]

Once again peter, you have missed the point (for weeks now).  I am not speaking out against Christianity.  I am speaking out against a mortal being telling me there's is the truth and the only truth.  That my friend, is hypocrisy in the highest form.

But as I said, this is the place I thought you should post about Evolution.  I haven't kept up with the arguments you and not Christians are presenting through links and pasting.  As I've said many time, I'm far more interested in where I'm going to be in my reincarnation life than in where I came from.  Maybe I evolved from an amphibian or an ape or even a bigot.  I don't really care but I do care about where I am now.

May God Bless You (pick the one of your choise),
Dan

[Hemodoc]

Once again peter, you have missed the point (for weeks now).  I am not speaking out against Christianity.  I am speaking out against a mortal being telling me there's is the truth and the only truth.  That my friend, is hypocrisy in the highest form.

But as I said, this is the place I thought you should post about Evolution.  I haven't kept up with the arguments you and not Christians are presenting through links and pasting.  As I've said many time, I'm far more interested in where I'm going to be in my reincarnation life than in where I came from.  Maybe I evolved from an amphibian or an ape or even a bigot.  I don't really care but I do care about where I am now.

May God Bless You (pick the one of your choise),
Dan

Dan, you are speaking out against Christianity.  Jesus is the one that states that there is only one way:

John 14:    1: Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.
2: In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
3: And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.
4: And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.
5: Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?
6: Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

Paul tells us the same thing in a different manner dealing with the creation:

Romans 1:16: For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
17: For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.
18: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
19: Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
20: For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

So, the Bible tells us not only do we know God through His creation, but it also testifies of the God of the Bible and the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost by the things that He has made.  I puzzled over that statement for a long time, but indeed the Godhead is spoken of by the things that He has made.  It is positively true.

So Dan,  I have gone no further than showing the evidence of God by His own word, and by His own wonders of creation.  Evolution is the greatest lie ever propagated about God's creation.  So, yes Dan, you are speaking out against Christianity just as denying the truth of creation by this so called theory of evolution speaks against God.  They are diametrically opposite views despite the many pleas stating that they are not opposed.  If you really believe that they are compatible, then you must not understand either what the Bible states or what the theory of evolution states.  In six days God created all things and then He rested.  Despite many who contend they can find long periods of time in Genesis one, the Hebrew word for day is speaking of a 24 hour day.

So what is the evidence for both views?  That is the nature of this discussion if anyone ever wants to actually discuss it on this thread or the other thread.  We have so far only looked on the surface of problems with the theory of evolution.

Rocker stated that all views are welcome.  Sorry, but that is not true at all as you and others demonstrate all the time.

[fc2821]

  I will no longer post in this thread.

[willowtreewren]

I am shocked that no one has expressed the truth, tht the world was created by the FLYING Spaghetti Monster for the inscrutable purposes of th e Flying Spaghetti Monster.. All hail the FSM!

Wallyz, I was severely chastised for bring the FSM into the discussion on the God thread. I hope you avoid a similar fate! 

Sorry to see your voice quieted, Rob. And everyone needs to remember to play nice. Please.

Aleta

[dwcrawford]

Would anyone posting here please tell me when and how I spoke out against Christianity?  I'm for it.  I'm for all forms of it barring the cults and charletons.  And I dearly love us Jews.  I did speak out against bigotry.  But not sorry about that.

I mean, anybody but Hemo.  I know his opinion.  He expresses it well and often.  All view are welcome ... as long as they are approved by hemo.

The bible said that Jonah was swallowed by a whale (according to the interpretation by sport n life).  What a case of indigestion that must have brought on.

[glitter]

It seems to me- an atheist most days, an agnostic on other days- that you are disrespecting Hemodocs right to have a different view then others ,  I do not agree with his views, but I do not have to, just respect his right to have them, and express them. There are a lot of Christains who think if your not saved your going to hell and THAT IS THEIR BELEIF- they believe their is only ONE way to salvation- and I must respect that as a fundamental part of their belief system.

I find all the information being posted to be very interesting, I am not educated enough to really participate, and I am not reading it as an argument, but as a chance to learn someone else's opinions. I wish it would stop veering off into personal attacks, & snide remarks- the purpose of which I do not understand.

Please, tell us more about the theories that are trying to disprove evolution, and the proof of God as a designer.....I am totally open to reading all of your opinions on evolution and such...

[dwcrawford]

but please don't accuse me of speaking against Christianity when you do.  That is an outright lie untruth.

[-Lady Noir-]

Rocker stated that all views are welcome

He also stated to .. "Please debate only facts".

Has anybody read Richard Dawkins The Greatest Show On Earth?

[Hemodoc]

It seems to me- an atheist most days, an agnostic on other days- that you are disrespecting Hemodocs right to have a different view then others ,  I do not agree with his views, but I do not have to, just respect his right to have them, and express them. There are a lot of Christains who think if your not saved your going to hell and THAT IS THEIR BELEIF- they believe their is only ONE way to salvation- and I must respect that as a fundamental part of their belief system.

I find all the information being posted to be very interesting, I am not educated enough to really participate, and I am not reading it as an argument, but as a chance to learn someone else's opinions. I wish it would stop veering off into personal attacks, & snide remarks- the purpose of which I do not understand.

Please, tell us more about the theories that are trying to disprove evolution, and the proof of God as a designer.....I am totally open to reading all of your opinions on evolution and such...

Dear Glitter, what a great post. I am more than happy to speak of my views on evolution and the Bible as it is my favorite source of study.  Just wondering if there is any specific aspect of the Bible or evolutionary theory you are interested in.

God bless,

Peter

[Hemodoc]

Rocker stated that all views are welcome

He also stated to .. "Please debate only facts".

Has anybody read Richard Dawkins The Greatest Show On Earth?

Actually, I have not read that book, although I have read much of his other work.  I would like to hear what Richard Dawkins has to say.

Thank you for the great post,

Peter

[rocker]

Dear Rocker, you are the one that answered my query on where does evolution start with the RNA world which is a concept from abiogenesis. 

This reminds me of the opening of Cosmos.  Carl Sagan wanders out of an orchard, looks at the camera, and intones

"To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first....

create the universe."

Where does evolution "begin"?  Well, the evolution of life begins with...life.  The evolution of the universe begins, it is currently believed, the Big Bang.  But if an alternative theory to the Big Bang arises, that says nothing about whether life evolved, even though the Big Bang is currently part of the story.  So yes, evolution begins with the Big Bang.

Really does not matter to me if you separate or group the two together. 

It seems to matter a great deal to you, given how often you bring up abiogenesis while discussing evolution.  Is your problem with evolution, or abiogenesis?

If you do not have abiogenesis, then you have no starting point for evolution currently defined as changes in gene frequencies.

Without a Big Bang, you'll never make that apple pie from scratch.  That doesn't mean that the Big Bang is critical to evolution.

You made a very interesting statement to the effect that with or without abiogenesis it does not effect evolution.  Please clarify that.

I will explain again.  Evolutionary science is the study of change in populations over time.  You can certainly argue that without organisms, the study of their evolution is moot.  But we clearly have organisms...so that line of reasoning doesn't seem to get us very far.

  If you don't have a place to start, there is nothing for evolution to work with allegedly.

Correct.  So if you can prove that there is no life on Earth, then the study of the evolution of that life would become much less interesting.

That sounds like magical thinking to me.

Reminds me of a quote from another comedian: "Popcorn is magic if you don't understand it."

You now state that I am confused about the complexity of the cell,

I don't recall stating that.  And I cannot imagine that I would state that, given that I know nothing of your education level re. cells.

I do recall your stating that the cell is so complex, it could not have suddenly appeared from the primordial soup.  I have met no one who disagrees with that statement.

and my answer is not at all.  You state that you have cleared up the issue, and I must have missed that.  Are you continuing to state like Darwin that the cell is not complex?  Please clarify again if you would.  I must confess that I am astounded by how simple the process appears to be in your mindset.  Once again, you have not really clarified when evolution did begin.  What is your starting point?

The beginning of life.

As far as the steady state and panspermia, I obviously disagree with both from the biblical perspective, but you are missing the point of why Sir Fred Hoyle's calculations are still relevant.  He supported the steady state due to his calculations that there is not enough matter in the known universe nor enough time for life to have developed on earth.

Calculations are meaningless if they are based on incorrect or incomplete data.

  Nothing at all wrong with his calculations. 

But there does appear to be serious omissions in the data upon which they are based.

His solutions to this problem are quite imaginative, but I do not support them.  His probabilities do remain.

So you have quoted extensively from a theory that you do not agree with, because you feel it bolsters your argument.  Evolution is an integral part of the theory of panspermia.

If I may ask again, what about his evolution-dependent argument do you believe disproves evolution?

  - rocker