Abiogenisis by the Numbers

Whoops, sorry, I put the horse before the cart......what I meant to say was, Behe asserts that it's much much more difficult to get RNA to self-assemble than proteins.

That's just it.......he didn't even calculate the odds for the replicator forming.......just a single viable protein molecule. One in a google, according to him.

I'm actually not very familiar with his work.....I read that number quoted in a rebuttle to ID.

But you're still willing to make it the centerpoint of your argument? That's....er.....brave.

The rest of my post backed up my claim. (If you noticed, I actually provided some calculations...) An assertion is nothing without evidence. What conditions does he base this claim upon? I'm interested in what specifically you are basing this statement upon. Under some conditions, RNA formation is more favorable than protein assembly, likewise under other conditions, the opposite is true. RNA strands can form under strictly chemical conditions. How much "less likely" is this than a protein assembling? Say it's ten or even a hundred times less likely - multiply by 100 the RNA strand probabilities from my message above and see if they even approach the high improbability of the protein forming. NO! They were NOT "intelligently designed" in the lab! That is the best part - the way labs look for RNAs with enzymatic activity is by making a few million random RNA strands by chemical processes, and then looking for strands that have activity. In this way the lab experiments are similar to what may have happened at the moment of abiogenesis - from a pool of random RNA synthesis, an active sequence arose.Truthfully, we were not "intelligent" enough to know what RNA sequence would have activity, so there was no way to "design" catalytic RNAs. Thus, scientists had to utilize the random production and selection strategy. That all depends on your definition. If your definition of "life" is a thing that utilizes enzymatic activity to reproduce based on a genetic template, then yes, it is life. Actually it basically is a "sure thing" - that is a really low probability when you are talking about millions and billions of reactions per second. You started a thread on probabilities and you don't see that?

It has already been pointed out to you that the question of whether or not abiogenesis occurred is not in question...at some point it happened.Assigning numbers based on one's level of incredulity does not make it a fact or you an expert. It certainly does not mean that it didn't happen.As for the scientific stuff I think you've got your hands full. Try not to regurgitate too much stuff you've swallowed without looking.

It isn't like I have the expertise to know whether or not his numbers are accurate anyway.......the only way I can figure that out is by listening to arguments against his math, which range from weak (the rebuttle I quoted in the first post) to non-existant.

Have you posted his math yet?Until you offer it up as evidence I don't see where the rebuttal would be.

"The big problem is that each nucleotide 'building block' is itself built up from several components, and the processes which form the components are chemically incompatible. Although a chemist can easily make nucleotides in a laboratory by synthesizing the components seperately, purifying them, and then recombining the components to react with each other, undirect chemical reactions overwhelmingly produce undesired products and shapeless goop at the bottom of test tubes."It is for this reason that the RNA world hypothesis, from what I gather, is looked at with much skepticism in the scientific community. Well, there are a number of different theories concerning abiogenesis, and the RNA world accounts for one of them...... So, you admit that RNA self-assembling is much less likely than protein self-assembling? That surely sounds like intelligent design to me........Behe refers to such experimental "proof" of replicating RNA self-assembling as flying a thousand ground hogs to the last lane of a thousand lane highway and placing them between the 999th and 1000th lane. Upon noticing that a few actually make it to the side of the road safely, you now conclude that this is proof that a groundhog can make it across the 1000 lane highway unharmed....... Can evolution act upon it? Can it survive on its own? But you said it took a few million strands of RNA (a single strand of which is harder to form than the one in a google protein) to get one replicating RNA, right? So, that would make the OPTIMISTIC odds of getting a replicating RNA to self-assemble a few million TIMES 65536..........correct?This message has been edited by RisenLord, 11-14-2004 02:57 PM

I was hoping you guys would either be familiar with his work or familiar to REBUTTLES to his work.........if not, the very lack of rebuttles would seem to suggest the accuracy of his numbers, wouldn't it?

This is a silly argument that materialists make too often. Assigning numbers to the odds of me winning the lottery, nailing Halle Berry and getting strike by lightning all by day's end doesn't mean it won't happen either.......but I'm not gonna start scratching lottery tickers, wearing rubber suits or stock up on condoms, either..........

I'm reasonably familiar with Behe's and Dembski's claims and I've not heaed about this one.The fact that you've provided absolutely no referenes at all suggests that even you don't know where the claims are found. If the claims are that obscure the lack of rebuttals can't be considered significant. Certainly it is no more significant than the lack of publicity - the DI would hardly sit on a real "killer" argument, if they had one.

My apologies, then. That last part is an admission that, upon conception, relativity had no proof to back it.......besides, I said SPECIAL relativity, which I don't believe had anything to do with Mercury. I'd expect it to look like "as you can see, first life could have been much simpler than previously thought" or "look at the strong chemical affinities between these crucial amino acids and nucleotides." The fact that man is made from naturally occuring Earth-stuff was known by the ancient Greeks and Hebrews........it is no discovery. I'm not familiar with the latter two, but quantum gravity does nothing to explain the ammount of variablity between universes.........it's simply a theory about how the first quanta could have formed into atoms, since there is no current attractive force which binds quanta together. In fact, I don't even believe it ammounts to a theory, more like a "well, SOMETHING must have made the quanta come together" speculation. It's a statement of the fact that there's very little evidence for life self-assembling and much mathematical evidence against it...... String theory has nothing to do with quantum gravity, as far as I know. I dunno why.......I've just never heard anyone state the contrary. I assumed the cell would be needed to protect the genetic material, metabolism would be needed to give the cell energy to replicate and the need for replication is obvious......... You have zero proof to back this statement, which is why we have no reason to believe that first life was any simpler than what I've previously described. And it's pure FAITH to believe that it was anything simpler than a simple cell, which is pretty damn complex. No, because one of those little guys was bound to make it eventually.........you can't say inanimate chemicals were BOUND to form life eventually on their own.Besides, I doubt the number of sperm my father released in his life time were a google........ You'll have to consult Dembski for that one........or another scientist who's come up with such figures, as there have been many. At a very basic level, yes. Then maybe I'm completely ignorant, but chemical processes that both form dome shapes when in water seem to be pretty similar.......

Has nothing to do with Behe. As for Dembski, do you read Dembski's work, or just rebuttles to it? I've heard numbers like these thrown around a lot........again, maybe you haven't heard of them because you focus on critical commentary on ID.

You seem to have troulbe understanding this point:You have made a claim. You have to back it up.You claim the math comes to a certain conclusion. If you wish to keep putting that forward it is up to you to summarize the input assumptions, the logic and the calculations used.It has already been pointed out to you that, basically, all such arguments are meaningless. We simply do not know enough to make any sensible calculations. There is, therefore, no proof that life could have arisen by any speculated paths and, just as strongly, no proof that it could not have.If you wish to formally claim that lack of knowledge is a good way to prove something then please do so. This is a god-of-the-gaps argument. Is that what you are coming down to?