Can you disprove this secular argument against evolution?

All bio-structures are built of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur(CHNOPS), and differ only in number and spatial arrangements of these elements. Hence, if we start with the simple self-replicating molecule(evolution's starting point), then the only way to find new proteins, molecular machines, organs or organ systems is by re-arrangement of CHNOPS.The idea of evolution is based on two fundamental premises. The first one says that mutations cause variations or re-arrangements of CHNOPS. The second one says that the certain variations will be selectively preserved in response to environment. For example, when functional protein exists, and it is beneficial in the current environment, then - it will be selected. That's fine.But that begs the question: how did this selectable combination of CHNOPS(protein) came to be? This is the crucial and the most important question. There are virtually infinite number of ways in which CHNOPS comprising protein can be arranged, and most are junk, or non-selectable arrangements. For e.g. for a protein 92 AA long, with 10e122 possible AA combinatios, there is only 1 in every 10e63 functional sequence*. On the other hand, published extreme upper limit estimates puts the maximum number of mutations or CHNOPS re-arrangements at 10e43**. So, the total number of evolutionary CHNOPS re-arrangements is 20 orders of magnitude insufficient to find only one selectable state for evolution to preserve - a protein, let alone molecular machines, organs or organ systems.*Functionally acceptable substitutions in two alpha-helical regions of lambda repressor. Reidhaar-Olson JF, Sauer RT.
**How much of protein sequence space has been explored by life on Earth?, David T.F Dryden, Andrew R Thomson, John H WhiteEdited by Admin, : Add paragraph breaks and turn the references into links.

Thread copied here from the Can you disprove this secular argument against evolution? thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

This is essentially an old argument, which may be refuted by pointing out that the origin of the first replicators is outside the scope of evolutionary theory.The answer, therefore, cannot directly refute evolutionary theory, and there is no reason to assume that it would be a problem for that theory.I would also add that the assumption that the first replicators were proteins is very likely false and thus any argument centred around the difficulty of finding functional proteins is missing the markEdited by PaulK, : No reason given.

Hi forexhr, and welcome to the fray.Two points here.1st math cannot disprove reality, it can only model it. So if you model does not match reality, then there is something wrong with the model, not reality, and that's enough to answer your question.2nd this type of argument is as old as the hills, and maybe you should do some research on it's validity first before making it.See the old improbable probability problem for some related infoAlso look at PRATT ListEnjoy

This argument is not about the origin of the first replicators. It is about the origin of 'evolutionary-selectable' arrangements of CHNOPS(de novo proteins, molecular machines, organs or organ systems) in the context of the resources available to evolution and all the possible ways in which CHNOPS comprising bio-structures can be arranged.Hence, the question is how does the theory of evolution explains the problem of arrival to the 'evolutionary-selectable state'? 'Evolutionary-selectable state' in the evolution of some biological system or structure is such an arrangement of CHNOPS, or nucleotides in the DNA, which contains information necessary to build functional system or structure that offers a selectable benefit to an organism. If something offers selectable benefit then, of course, it will be selected. But, before selection happens, we have one huge problem.There are virtually infinite number of ways in which CHNOPS comprising bio-structures can be arranged. For e.g. if we take CHNOPS in the form of 4 nucleotides, only 1,000 of them can be arranged into 10e602 combinations.
Or, let us consider nucleotide arrangements needed to build a human heart.
If we assume that only 8.2 percent of human DNA is functional(1), and given the ratio between the heart-weight and body-weight in humans, there is approximately 1,230,000 nucleotides representing the information to build a human heart. This nucleotides can be arranged into 10e740,000 possible combinations.Given the Reidhaar-Olson&Sauer ratio of protein functionality, where for a protein 92 AA long, with 10e122 possible AA combinatios, there is only 1 in every 10e63 functional sequence, that means that only 1 in every 10e382,000 combination contains information for a functional human heart.Using fast mutation rates, total number of organisms that have ever lived on Earth, length of genomes and so forth... published extreme upper limit estimates puts the maximum number of mutations at 10e43. Now, even if all mutational resources were spent on search for functional heart, the probability to find the information to build a human heart is 1/10e381,950. This is like winning the lottery jackpot 54,560 times in a row. Now, we now that in everyday life, if a person believes that it is possible to win the jackpot 'only' 10 times in a row, this person would be called crazy.So, by what process did evolution arrived to the selectability states and find functional(evolutionary-selectable) arrangement of CHNOPS in the space of 10e382,000 junk combinations with only 10e43 resources available?(1) Only 8.2 % of Human DNA is Functional, Say Genetic Researchers | Genetics | Sci-News.comEdited by forexhr, : No reason given.Edited by forexhr, : No reason given.

I am not talking about models but physical resources available to evolution and virtually infinite number of ways in which CHNOPS comprising bio-structures can be arranged. Your personal description of my argument and rationalisation from the TalkOrigins has nothing to do with that. Edited by forexhr, : No reason given.

Sorry but there still does not seem to be any connection between the OPs points and the fact of evolution or the Theory of Evolution.

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This argument is not about the origin of the first replicators. It is about the origin of 'evolutionary-selectable' arrangements of CHNOPS(de novo proteins, molecular machines, organs or organ systems) in the context of the resources available to evolution and all the possible ways in which CHNOPS comprising bio-structures can be arranged.

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So you are asking how we got from the first replicators to protein-based life ?That is still not much of an argument. If evolution was basically false we should find that in the areas we know well, not in attempting to reconstruct the path between largely unknown start and end points.

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Or, let us consider nucleotide arrangements needed to build a human heart.
If we assume that only 8.2 percent of human DNA is functional(1), and given the ratio between the heart-weight and body-weight in humans, there is approximately 1,230,000 nucleotides representing the information to build a human heart. This nucleotides can be arranged into 10e740,000 possible combinations.

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And the vast majority of those would be MUCH more difficult to reach than the range of configurations corresponding to human hearts. Evolution does not try random combinations at the level of individual organs at all. Nor does DNA explicitly code for the locations of individual nucleotides. What you are likely to see is minor variations in the proteins - which will often be found in ALL the molecules of that protein or changes in size and shape produced by regulatory changes.

It really is all covered in "Alice in Wonderland".

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Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
'I don't much care where -' said Alice.
'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
'- so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation.
'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.

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It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.

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If you don't know where you are going any road can take you there

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Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.

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Your challenge is to roll 100 dice and get all sixes.You can either bundle them all up at once and roll them, again and again till about the end of the universe, or:You can roll them and then select only those not already sixes and roll just those dice again. You'll be done in a few minutes.Evolution is more akin to the latter approach than to the former.Those who come up with massive mathematical numbers against evolution are generally using the first approach.On another website we had a creationist assure us many times that the odds against evolution were 1^720. He never did figure out why we were laughing.

There seems to be an element of the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy here, in that you are calculating (I do not know how accurately) the odds of what did happen happening, rather than the odds of something similarly interesting happening.

Not quite, but then no analogy is 100% correct.Basically, you made the same mistake as Elliott Sober and Royal Truman (who in turn must have gotten it from Sober): you assume that as soon as a correct roll happens it gets locked in place and not allowed to change. No, they are still subject to change.Rather, the cumulative selection model is that each generation of attempts is based on the best of the previous generation. Hard to work as a simple roll of the dice. Dawkins' WEASEL chose letters at random, make many copies of that random string, in each one choose a position at random and replace it with a random letter. Out of the population of strings, pick the one that comes closest to the target string and use that to make the next generation of many copies with random changes. Note that in that model, a correct letter is just as likely to be chosen for random change as an incorrect one, despite Sober's and Truman's misunderstanding.The outcome is that you produce the target string within minutes or even seconds, whereas starting from scratch every time (your "You can either bundle them all up at once and roll them, again and again till about the end of the universe") would indeed take thousands of times longer than the current age of the universe in order to have one change in a million of succeeding.Nearly three decades ago I could not believe what Dawkins was saying, so I wrote my own version, MONKEY, based directly on Dawkins' description of WEASEL (he did not post his code). It worked so phenomenally well that I still could not believe it, so I analyzed the probabilities involved (published as "Monkey Probabilities" or MPROBS).The probabilities for success at every stage are low and for failure are high. What turns out to happen is that for complete failure you need for every single attempt to fail. With more parallel paths (eg, greater population sizes), the probability for consistent complete failure becomes vanishingly small, thus rendering eventual success virtually inevitable.

I constructed an argument so simple that it cannot be misrepresented.Premise 1: All bio-structures are built from the same six essential elemental ingredients: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur (CHNOPS).Premise 2: In order to find functional bio-structures - lungs, heart, blood vessels, stomach, liver, kidneys, muscles, brain, nerves, skin, hair, ovaries, uterus, testes, prostate, penis, bones, ligaments..., it is necessary to change spatial arrangements of CHNOPS.Premise 3: In order to change spatial arrangements of CHNOPS we need resources.Premise 4: There were 10e43 resources(mutations) available in the whole evolution process.Premise 5: There are 10e63 junk(non-selectable) arrangements of CHNOPS in just one simple bio-structure (protein).Premise 6: All evolutionary resources were insufficient to find just one selectable state(functional bio-structure) for evolution to preserve, let alone all protein folds, organs and organ systems that we observe in biology.Conclusion: Evolution didn't happen.Hence, you can either show that premises in this argument are not true or that the conclusion does not follow from the premises. But, you cannot disprove an argument by appeals to things that make you laugh.Edited by forexhr, : No reason given.

How do you determine what is "selectable" and what is not?

I'm sorry but your whole premise is what makes folk laugh.You are still not understanding even Alice. You need to stop and study Alice first and then perhaps a discussion might be possible.For example, is there any reason a heart might be needed? Or blood vessels, stomach, liver, kidneys, muscles, brain, nerves, skin, hair, ovaries, uterus, testes, prostate, penis, bones, ligaments?Sorry Charley, you don't get the worm.Reality says none of those are needed for life or evolution.You still need to present some argument that has some relationship to either the fact of evolution or the theory of evolution before anyone can begin to take you seriously.