That site you just gave has a very typical abiogenesis hand-waving exercise. The abstract uses phrases like "Volcanoes evolve" and "The fluids are frustrated". Fluids do not have emotions, and volcanoes are relatively straightforward geophysical phenomena; putting human feelings onto them is not a measure of scientific writing, is it.
But even more telling is that chirality is not addressed, just ignored in the sections talking about protein formation. And if you re-read my original post, you'll see that's the portion of probability I was talking about. I did not address the topic that talkorigins speciously attacks, I was talking about the simple odds of a non-directed process achieving uniform chirality in a single molecule. The talkorigins page does not address chirality (aka stereochemistry) at all.
And your assertion that "no one apart from creationists ever suggests that this is what happened" is not entirely accurate - check many current intro bio textbooks; they'll tell you that from a prebiotic soup (after citing Miller-Urey) we all evolved. Miller-Urey is an amazing sham, did you want to talk about that next?
That's the sort of sloppy pseudo-science I meant... Consider this: until there are quite accurate reproduction mechanisms in place, natural selection is not possible. Natural selection can only be effective when the entity being selected is going to be able to pass on its advantage to the next generation. If each instance of reproduction is not primarily faithful to the parent, then the qualities of the parent are no longer determining the child's success in survival; without that connection natural selection is not yet in the picture.
And the link you gave to talkorigins is making assumptions like crazy that protobiont protein bubbles are subject to natural selection. They have no accurate selection mechanism, so that is an incorrect basis upon which to build their theory. Without the foundational point being possible, the rest is not worth discussing (although it too has many holes).
Also their assertion about polymerization of proteins is in fact something I did address; I commented that aqueous solutions have a strong equilibrium gradient against the formation of polypeptides from individual amino acids, as the process of chain building includes the expulsion of one water molecule per reaction. And of course I also ignored the fact that many of the side chain functional groups are far more reactive than the ends of the amino acids; so in any environment, aqueous or not, the chain would be impossible to form without some intervention (enzymatic, e.g.) which prevented the more reactive side chains from ending the protein chain right there.
In that way they're right - the laws of chemistry and physics govern in a nonrandom fashion, and those laws make it impossible before you even start.
The point of an index fossil still being alive is that index fossils are used to date rock layers. So if you found a coelocanth fossil in some rock, showed it to a geologist, s/he would tell you the rock formed about 70MYA. Yet it could be 5000 years old, since coelocanths are still alive, and in places like volcanoes mud flows are rapidly formed which show sedimentary layers much like the grand canyon has, but they are formed in minutes or hours. The point is, its status as an index fossil is a major oopsy that has not been corrected.
Also before you claim that various dog breeds would be considered to have the same structure, look at the skeleton of a male Rottie vs. a greyhound. There are a lot of differences; head size is massively different as is morphology (shape); locomotion is quite different, jaw formation, etc.
Simple probability calculations give you an idea of how likely it is to have life arise. Since a basic tenet of science is to exclude non-naturalistic phenomena, for this discussion any divine intervention is excluded.
As most of you know, proteins are formed in all living creatures by sequences of 20 amino acids. 19 of the 20 are "chiral", meaning they have a handedness to them. As an illustration, take a left and right glove. If they're vaguely anatomically correct, you can't superimpose one on the other without inverting one (they overlap if placed palm to palm, but not if placed in the proper orientation on top of each other). Many molecules are like this, they are chemically identical but not optically identical. The optical nature comes because the L arrangement (or stereoisomer or enantiomer) bends light one way, and the R bends light another way for any given molecule. Further data here.
In all living creatures, plants, etc. proteins are formed from exclusively L forms of amino acids (again Glycine is non-chiral, it's so simple it has no handedness). Yet in natural circumstances outside already living things, there is no preference for L or R; lab experiments produce racemic (optically inactive, or equal amounts of L and R stereoisomers). So in a pre-biotic collection of chemicals, there is absolutely no reason to assume any preponderance of one chirality.
Modern science has stated that fossilized bacteria are found in rocks 3.5x10^9 years old. Since nothing simpler has been found, it is assumed that bacteria arose first. The simplest bacteria known has over 300 different proteins in it, with an average length of 450 amino acids each. The average amount of glycine in proteins is 7.5%, so there are typically 416 chiral amino acids in a bacterial protein.
Now we can calculate the probability of one protein arising with just the proper chirality. This of course completely ignores the much more complex sequence issue (which must be precise or folding and activation cannot occur). Since a growing peptide chain in an aqueous solution actually tends to dissociate, not to grow, we will also ignore the thermodynamics of chain growth - otherwise the spontaneous polymerization of amino acids into proteins would be excluded completely.
So to get a series of 416 properly chiral amino acids (and ignoring the glycines), the odds are one in 2^416 of getting them all properly aligned. That's one in over 10^125. Wow, that's big... the known universe is 10^28 inches across. The universe is assumed to be 10^18 seconds old. The visible universe is figured to have 10^62 to 10^80 atoms; so using the high bound number you could form one protein a second per atom in the universe for the life of the universe, and still have only one in 10^27 odds that you'd get one protein somewhere with the right chirality.
So what are the odds of life arising from non-life via protein assembly by purely random means? Essentially zero, on earth or any planet. There are those who say "but life is here so it's 1.0 on earth". Yes the odds are 1.0 on earth, but those odds include ALL possible methods of life arising; so to use the result as the conclusion you have to be willing to consider other models (including non-naturalistic) or you're not being honest, since the random arising model can easily be seen to be impossible.
And imagine a paleontologist uncovering a chihuahua fossil, a chow fossil, and a great dane fossil in a thousand years (fossilization actually doesn't have to take very long). They would very likely assign them to different species, probably different genera. Based on current practice, they might also show them as a progression in the family tree of canids.
Yes we can laugh at that, but it shows how fallible paleontology can be. For example, the neat horse evolution diagram that's been in textbooks for decades, and is still in many intro bio books. There are several problems with it, most notably that one of the "earliest" forms is now known to be alive and well in Turkey (the Hyrax). Or take the Coelocanth - it's still an index fossil for something like 70 million years ago, but you can go catch one in the Indian ocean if you want to today.
Let's not take paleontology as having the certainty of something like organic chemistry or integral calculus. It is very subject to human interpretation, therefore to human flaws.
You and I have had previous discussions on this, but for those who have an open mind and who are willing to consider facts and not dogma, read Robert Gentry's book (get it from a library if you don't want to spend on it) "Creation's Tiny Mystery" about Polonium halos, and why they disprove much of the underlying concepts of ancient-world geology.
If you're going to respond with a "refutation web site", please don't bother with the one on talkorigins by Brawley, it's been discredited so many times they should really remove it. Same goes for any site that tries to use Odom and Rink as being against Gentry; their letter after their paper clearly shows attempts to use them as refutation is pointless.
Here are some references for you about the fraud and the University of Jena:
Hambin, T. J. 1997. Haeckel's drawings. Times (London), 18 Aug. 1997.
Richardson, M. K., Hanken, J., Selwood, L., Wright, G. M., Richards, R. J., Pieau, C., and Raynaud, A. 1997) Haeckel, embryos, and evolution. Science 280: 983 -984
I'm very glad you agree that it has been abandoned by responsible scientists. However I think you'd best get educated on what is in the textbooks. In the last two years major college intro bio textbooks have been published and are in heavy use, textbooks that still contain Haeckel's drawings. Do you need the ISBN's for them?
If Christians had their way, the "facts" in bio textbooks (college and HS) would be real facts. Christians like truth.
For example, Haeckel's embryos, in most every textbook directly or indirectly. In the mid 1800's, Haeckel for whatever reason totally faked some drawings of embryonic development. Within a short time, his university tried and convicted him of fraud. Almost 150 years later, those drawings are still in most textbooks, cited as evidence for evolution. Let's work to get rid of that lie.
There are many other examples, let's work on getting rid of the just plain proven wrong things in textbooks. That's something that evolutionists and creationists should be able to agree on - getting proven facts in and junk science out.
Your erection and knocking down of straw men does not make any difference; the textbooks I was talking about are top-selling textbooks at the college level, not HS books (though they may be corrupted as well, I have not looked into that topic).
Bottom line for you: if you want to instill a respect for science, work to get the lies out of the textbooks. Same for the history books you cited that have clear lies in them.
The bio textbooks in frosh bio need to have the fraudulent statements removed from them - and it's not just a case of being a few months out of date. Look at Haeckel's embyros for example. Many authors have that in recent editions of leading textbooks, yet in the 1800s Haeckel was convicted of fraud by his own University for faking the drawings completely. I do think that over a hundred years is plenty of time for the textbooks to get brought up to date.
If no one in abiogenesis research makes that assumption, you'd better tell the textbook writers. A lot of them still point to Miller-Urey in 101-course textbooks as proof of chemical evolution. If there is something better to offer, why not use it?
Your links make some major leaps of faith - and ignore major points. I posted talking about the odds of getting correct chirality in just one moderate sized protein. Your link also mentions that random events can do it - the key difference is that I showed the odds of it happening randomly illustrate that it's flat out impossible.
In order for your "self-replicating RNA" to work, it would have to somehow improve its quality. Only an agent capable of very high fidelity in transcription and polymerization can be acted on by natural selection, since if random mutation occurs frequently enough as to obscure the gains made in the previous generations, then selection is no longer operative - you're back to a random model. And RNA is not accurate enough a self-reproducer to meet those criteria.
Suppose there were 1000 possible good protein sequences - that only reduces the odds by 10^3, and since the odds of getting one good protein are about 10^161, having 10^15 possible good choices still leaves you in impossible territory.
Yes I'm assuming life started based on proteins, and at near its current level of complexity - how else would it have started? The fundamental assumption of "descent with modification" is that there be accurate, reliable enough replication that a beneficial mutation will be carried to descendants. Anything less accurate only produces chaos - absent accurate reproduction, inheritance of advantageous traits is diluted and can no longer be a basis for improvement. Randomness takes over, and reversion to the mean would dictate a downward spiral, not an upward one.
And I said 19 chiral and one non-chiral, that's a total of 20 amino acids. If some form of life existed (Terran or otherwise) with a different basis, where's the evidence? If you believe in it without evidence, you're in a purely faith-based paradigm, not a scientific one. I for one am comfortable with that if you're willing to agree it's faith based not fact based.
You asserted that the probability of life randomly arising somewhere in the universe is unknown. That's certainly true for our current scientific state, since we can't yet claim to know all the intimate details of every single function of cellular life.
However we do know enough to make some interesting calculations. For example, all proteins in all living things known today are made up exclusively of 19 chiral and one non-chiral amino acid. On average, roughly 8% of bacterial protein amino acids are glycine (the non-chiral one). So in a smallish protein of only 450 amino acids, there are (0.92)*(450) or 414 chiral amino acids.
There is no natural process outside living cells that generates amino acids of one chirality; everything generates nicely racemic (equally L and R) mixtures.
It is fairly simple to calculate just how likely it would be to get just one protein to form randomly (proteins form sequentially, and since they need more than one copy of each amino acid, this must be done by the probstat model of "with replacement") from an unlimited supply of amino acids. To make the case easy, and to heavily tilt the odds towards the formation of proteins, let's ignore the energy gradient in aqueous solutions (which tends towards dissociation of proteins, not their assembly). So to calculate the odds of getting all 414 amino acids that are chiral to all be the correct chirality is one in 2^414 (or one in over 10^124).
To give some concept of that number, consider the assumptions made by fans of the Drake equation for example, and be generous. They estimate 200 billion (2*10^11) stars in our galaxy, and 20% of those having planets, with 3 to 5 possibly life-bearing bodies per star that has planets. Let's just say 10^12 possible planets, an order of magnitude higher than the upper limit of those Drake numbers. Also consider that the universe at 20 billion years is less than 10^18 seconds old. Let's say the earth has 10^50 atoms in it (slightly higher than estimates). So if you have one protein formed per each atom on every habitable planet in the galaxy (10^50*10^12 == 10^62) every millisecond since the big bang (10^18*10^3 = 10^21) you'd have 10^83 proteins formed. So the odds of getting one properly chiral protein by having 1000 formed per second per atom on all habitable planets and moons in our galaxy since the big bang would be 124-83 = one in 10^41. The universe is 10^28 inches across...
Now consider the odds of getting just one protein to have a particular sequence, which is immensely harder than the above which just focussed on getting the chirality alone correct. Plain fact is, random chance alone just will never be anywhere near adequate to explain the origin of life.
the planes of atoms in the Martian magnetites are aligned with atomic planes in the carbonate in which the magnetites are embedded. This shows that the magnetites formed in the rock and not inside microorganisms
Note that this skull was found in sand, not in volcanic rock. It clearly fossilized in a different area (sand is not high enough in calcium carbonate to cause petrification) and got relocated into the sand. The dating was done by comparison with other fossils found in the area, but if they were all relocated there somehow, why assume they're from the same layer of rock somewhere else? There were no skeletal bones which would indicate whether this skull belonged to a bipedal species, nor were there any gender identifying bones found. So that means we have a skull with the size of a chimp skull, the brain capacity of a chimp skull, less striking canines than modern chimps(male) but about the same as modern chimps(female). Hmmm, wonder if this is just a female chimp. Apply Occam's razor, folks! Look at this without the hype, and it's pretty clear it's not what many claim it to be.
Black Parrot, I must take exception to your claim that creationism is based on web sites without factual basis. A clear point about the instantaneous creation of the earth is from Robert Gentry's research. Yes, I know you're likely to respond with a web site (who's quoting web sites now???) like talkorigins. Before you do so, please read that site then consider that if Radon were to move in the way Brawley (the author on talkorigins) asserts, there would be evidence in the form of a "tube" or cylinder of pleochroic halos; no one has ever reported one. And they sure would have if they could after Gentry revealed he was a creationist, in order to discredit him. Additionally, the hypothesis Brawley puts forth was tested by Gentry in the 1960's and published papers in Science show Brawley's idea does not explain anything, as it's based on inaccurate assumptions (fine faults in the granite).
And don't bother responding with some site based on Odom and Rink's paper; that issue was also dealt with by Gentry in earlier papers, and in fact Odom wrote a letter to Gentry after their article was published, in which he mentions that he's never seen a pleochroic halo. So using his paper as attempted refutation is similarly pointless. And the reason there was no response in Science by Gentry is that Science refused to allow Gentry to publish anything further after he was out of the closet as a creationist.
You asked "how likely are Earthlike planets to evolve life-forms".
It's very straightforward to calculate how likely life is to arise. Assume that all the building blocks are present in unlimited quantities, that they do not degrade in water nor in light, that the formation reactions are most highly favorable one-way (i.e., once formed they do not dissociate), and that pH, temperature, pressure, and salinity are stable and favorable. Also we assume there are no other reagents that will combine with the growing chain, and we will ignore the fact that peptide building is endothermic (i.e., against the energy gradient).
The minimum organism theorized to be able to reproduce itself, while existing only on pre-available nutrients, is guesstimated at slightly over 250 proteins, the great majority of those are over 300 amino acids each.
There are twenty common amino acids in life (for simplicity, ignore the very unusual ones). Nineteen of the twenty are chiral; since chirality is important for life, that means that only 20 out of the 39 possible types are valid. However to make this calculation as favorable to the formation of life we'll just assume here that only the correct chiral variants are in play. Folding it properly, a major conundrum in current research, is also assumed to just happen.
The odds of forming one 300-component amino acid chain (aka polypeptide) is then very easy to calculate. Getting the first one right is a one in twenty chance. Getting the second one is one in twenty times one in twenty. As this continues, you can see the answer is one in 20^300, or 2*10^390.
That's just for one peptide. That doesn't count the nucleic acids and other key building blocks.
To put that number in perspective, there are 10^72 to 10^78 atoms in the known universe, range depends on who you cite. The known universe is about 10^28 inches across, or less than 10^38 Angstrom units across. A 15-billion year old universe would be less than 10^18 seconds old.
It is generally agreed that odds of one in 10^50 is synonymous with impossible. And only one protein has odds of one in 10^390. If you formed one protein a second per atom in the universe for the assumed life of the universe, you'd get 10^78 * 10*12 or 10^90 candidates. The odds are then one in 10^300 to get one correctly sequenced protein.
Exercise for the interested reader: determine the odds if one in five amino acids can be replaced by up to five alternates. See if this changes the numbers significantly.
Note to moderators: this is just arithmetic. No conclusions drawn by the poster. If you don't agree with the conclusions, post a rebuttal of the arithmetic. Don't just vent with mod points, that's just raw emotion, and this is only about hard, quantifiable facts.
By 1900 textbooks were claiming the Earth was 2GYa. Decades before radiometric dating. Yes Hutton, Lyell, etc. were in the millions not billions of years, but those following them extended it.
By the 1960s we were taught the Earth was 3.5 GYa, and now it's 4.5-4.6 as "conventional" wisdom.
BTW trees put on rings based on seasons, and many cases are recorded of multiple rings per annum.
If you're going to use VMWare (I do, have since 1.0, and it's great), here are some tips to keep in mind:
- when asked about the graphics card during a Linux install, say SVGA generic, later on you'll upgrade it to the VMWare video card when you install the VMWare tools.
- specify "Undoable" for your disk(s) if you ever want to run a bunch of odd tests, installing weird things for example, or trying a virus to see what it does, then just say "forget it" when you're done. If you're doing a virus test please do remember to turn off the network connection though...
- If you've used VMWare 1.x or 2.x but not tried 3.x, it's a whole new world. The mouse responds like it's a real system - even on my slower machine (dual PII-400's). 3.0 is a major leap forward.
- Have lots of memory in the host system, remember running two OS's means you'll be using a lot more RAM.
- Sound is a weak point currently, you can get it pretty good but not great. Using the preempt kernel patch on 2.4.17 helps but isn't quite enough. Playing around with priorities helps too.
In the creationist model as we can best understand the clues from modern science, prior to the Genesis flood, there were about 1600 years for reptiles to grow. As you are probably aware, reptiles never stop growing. In the antediluvian world, there was probably a higher partial pressure of oxygen, which is how we can explain the tiny (relatively) nostrils on a dinosaur allowing sufficient respiration for the immense body size. How else can those be explained?
If you credit radiometric dating, consider the post above about C14 and coal. Quick summary: all coal has C14 activity. C14, with a half-life of roughly 5730 years, would be extinct in 50 or 100 thousand years. By the evolutionary time scale, though, coal was laid down in the carboniferous era, something like 300 million years ago. There is no way C14 would be detectable in coal if it were anything like one thousandth of that age.
The Po halos are only proof of rapid formation of the granites - not of creation nor of when it happened. However the halos do not fit in with millions of years for the rocks to cool, a central point in the evolutionist model.
As to the somewhat more trivial point you mentioned about capitalization, if you look in the KJV you'll see that when the Lord is referred to with a pronoun, it is not capitalized. There are many guesses of who started that trend, but it's not a central point. After all, in Hebrew, there are no capitals anyway.
We have just one agenda - getting the truth to be taught. Since so much of evolution as taught is lies (Haeckel's embryos, horse evolution, vestigiality, etc. etc.) it should be abhorrent to anyone interested in science, regardless of the modifying adjective.
And anyway evolutionism is as much about faith as creationism is - but evolutionism is state-sponsored. Why do you need tax dollars to spread your faith?
And BTW before you mod me as flamebait or troll - here's what prominent people have said in agreement
"[The theory of evolution] forms a satisfactory faith on which to base our interpretation of nature."--*L. Harrison Matthews, "Introduction to Origin of Species," p. xxii (1977 edition).
" `Creation,' in the ordinary sense of the word, is perfectly conceivable. I find no difficulty in conceiving that, at some former period, this universe was not in existence, and that it made its appearance in six days (or instantaneously, if that is preferred), in consequence of the volition of some preexisting Being. Then, as now, the so-called a priori arguments against Theism and, given a Deity, against the possibility of creative acts, appeared to me to be devoid of reasonable foundation."--*Thomas H. Huxley, quoted in *L. Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, Vol. I (1903), p. 241 (1903).
"It is therefore a matter of faith, on the part of the biologist, that biogenesis did occur and he can choose whatever method of biogenesis happens to suit him personally; the evidence of what did happen is not available."--*G.A. Kerkut, Implications of Evolution (1960), p. 150.
"The more one studies paleontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution is based on faith alone . . exactly the same sort of faith which it is necessary to have when one encounters the great mysteries of religion."--*Louis Trenchard More, quoted in Science and the Two-tailed Dinosaur, p. 33.
"Today the tables are turned. The modified, but still characteristically Darwinian theory has itself become an orthodoxy, preached by its adherents with religious fervor, and doubted, they feel, only by a few muddlers imperfect in scientific faith."--*M. Grene, Faith of Darwinism," Encounter, November 1959, p. 49.
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That site you just gave has a very typical abiogenesis hand-waving exercise. The abstract uses phrases like "Volcanoes evolve" and "The fluids are frustrated". Fluids do not have emotions, and volcanoes are relatively straightforward geophysical phenomena; putting human feelings onto them is not a measure of scientific writing, is it.
But even more telling is that chirality is not addressed, just ignored in the sections talking about protein formation. And if you re-read my original post, you'll see that's the portion of probability I was talking about. I did not address the topic that talkorigins speciously attacks, I was talking about the simple odds of a non-directed process achieving uniform chirality in a single molecule. The talkorigins page does not address chirality (aka stereochemistry) at all.
And your assertion that "no one apart from creationists ever suggests that this is what happened" is not entirely accurate - check many current intro bio textbooks; they'll tell you that from a prebiotic soup (after citing Miller-Urey) we all evolved. Miller-Urey is an amazing sham, did you want to talk about that next?
That's the sort of sloppy pseudo-science I meant... Consider this: until there are quite accurate reproduction mechanisms in place, natural selection is not possible. Natural selection can only be effective when the entity being selected is going to be able to pass on its advantage to the next generation. If each instance of reproduction is not primarily faithful to the parent, then the qualities of the parent are no longer determining the child's success in survival; without that connection natural selection is not yet in the picture.
And the link you gave to talkorigins is making assumptions like crazy that protobiont protein bubbles are subject to natural selection. They have no accurate selection mechanism, so that is an incorrect basis upon which to build their theory. Without the foundational point being possible, the rest is not worth discussing (although it too has many holes).
Also their assertion about polymerization of proteins is in fact something I did address; I commented that aqueous solutions have a strong equilibrium gradient against the formation of polypeptides from individual amino acids, as the process of chain building includes the expulsion of one water molecule per reaction. And of course I also ignored the fact that many of the side chain functional groups are far more reactive than the ends of the amino acids; so in any environment, aqueous or not, the chain would be impossible to form without some intervention (enzymatic, e.g.) which prevented the more reactive side chains from ending the protein chain right there.
In that way they're right - the laws of chemistry and physics govern in a nonrandom fashion, and those laws make it impossible before you even start.
The point of an index fossil still being alive is that index fossils are used to date rock layers. So if you found a coelocanth fossil in some rock, showed it to a geologist, s/he would tell you the rock formed about 70MYA. Yet it could be 5000 years old, since coelocanths are still alive, and in places like volcanoes mud flows are rapidly formed which show sedimentary layers much like the grand canyon has, but they are formed in minutes or hours. The point is, its status as an index fossil is a major oopsy that has not been corrected.
Also before you claim that various dog breeds would be considered to have the same structure, look at the skeleton of a male Rottie vs. a greyhound. There are a lot of differences; head size is massively different as is morphology (shape); locomotion is quite different, jaw formation, etc.
Simple probability calculations give you an idea of how likely it is to have life arise. Since a basic tenet of science is to exclude non-naturalistic phenomena, for this discussion any divine intervention is excluded.
As most of you know, proteins are formed in all living creatures by sequences of 20 amino acids. 19 of the 20 are "chiral", meaning they have a handedness to them. As an illustration, take a left and right glove. If they're vaguely anatomically correct, you can't superimpose one on the other without inverting one (they overlap if placed palm to palm, but not if placed in the proper orientation on top of each other). Many molecules are like this, they are chemically identical but not optically identical. The optical nature comes because the L arrangement (or stereoisomer or enantiomer) bends light one way, and the R bends light another way for any given molecule. Further data here.
In all living creatures, plants, etc. proteins are formed from exclusively L forms of amino acids (again Glycine is non-chiral, it's so simple it has no handedness). Yet in natural circumstances outside already living things, there is no preference for L or R; lab experiments produce racemic (optically inactive, or equal amounts of L and R stereoisomers). So in a pre-biotic collection of chemicals, there is absolutely no reason to assume any preponderance of one chirality.
Modern science has stated that fossilized bacteria are found in rocks 3.5x10^9 years old. Since nothing simpler has been found, it is assumed that bacteria arose first. The simplest bacteria known has over 300 different proteins in it, with an average length of 450 amino acids each. The average amount of glycine in proteins is 7.5%, so there are typically 416 chiral amino acids in a bacterial protein.
Now we can calculate the probability of one protein arising with just the proper chirality. This of course completely ignores the much more complex sequence issue (which must be precise or folding and activation cannot occur). Since a growing peptide chain in an aqueous solution actually tends to dissociate, not to grow, we will also ignore the thermodynamics of chain growth - otherwise the spontaneous polymerization of amino acids into proteins would be excluded completely.
So to get a series of 416 properly chiral amino acids (and ignoring the glycines), the odds are one in 2^416 of getting them all properly aligned. That's one in over 10^125. Wow, that's big... the known universe is 10^28 inches across. The universe is assumed to be 10^18 seconds old. The visible universe is figured to have 10^62 to 10^80 atoms; so using the high bound number you could form one protein a second per atom in the universe for the life of the universe, and still have only one in 10^27 odds that you'd get one protein somewhere with the right chirality.
So what are the odds of life arising from non-life via protein assembly by purely random means? Essentially zero, on earth or any planet. There are those who say "but life is here so it's 1.0 on earth". Yes the odds are 1.0 on earth, but those odds include ALL possible methods of life arising; so to use the result as the conclusion you have to be willing to consider other models (including non-naturalistic) or you're not being honest, since the random arising model can easily be seen to be impossible.
And imagine a paleontologist uncovering a chihuahua fossil, a chow fossil, and a great dane fossil in a thousand years (fossilization actually doesn't have to take very long). They would very likely assign them to different species, probably different genera. Based on current practice, they might also show them as a progression in the family tree of canids.
Yes we can laugh at that, but it shows how fallible paleontology can be. For example, the neat horse evolution diagram that's been in textbooks for decades, and is still in many intro bio books. There are several problems with it, most notably that one of the "earliest" forms is now known to be alive and well in Turkey (the Hyrax). Or take the Coelocanth - it's still an index fossil for something like 70 million years ago, but you can go catch one in the Indian ocean if you want to today.
Let's not take paleontology as having the certainty of something like organic chemistry or integral calculus. It is very subject to human interpretation, therefore to human flaws.
You and I have had previous discussions on this, but for those who have an open mind and who are willing to consider facts and not dogma, read Robert Gentry's book (get it from a library if you don't want to spend on it) "Creation's Tiny Mystery" about Polonium halos, and why they disprove much of the underlying concepts of ancient-world geology.
If you're going to respond with a "refutation web site", please don't bother with the one on talkorigins by Brawley, it's been discredited so many times they should really remove it. Same goes for any site that tries to use Odom and Rink as being against Gentry; their letter after their paper clearly shows attempts to use them as refutation is pointless.
Here are some references for you about the fraud and the University of Jena:
Hambin, T. J. 1997. Haeckel's drawings.
Times (London), 18 Aug. 1997.
Richardson, M. K., Hanken, J., Selwood, L., Wright, G. M., Richards, R. J., Pieau, C., and Raynaud, A. 1997) Haeckel, embryos, and evolution. Science 280: 983 -984
Many are the exact woodcut drawing Haeckel did, complete with the "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" buzz-phrase.
I'm very glad you agree that it has been abandoned by responsible scientists. However I think you'd best get educated on what is in the textbooks. In the last two years major college intro bio textbooks have been published and are in heavy use, textbooks that still contain Haeckel's drawings. Do you need the ISBN's for them?
If Christians had their way, the "facts" in bio textbooks (college and HS) would be real facts. Christians like truth.
For example, Haeckel's embryos, in most every textbook directly or indirectly. In the mid 1800's, Haeckel for whatever reason totally faked some drawings of embryonic development. Within a short time, his university tried and convicted him of fraud. Almost 150 years later, those drawings are still in most textbooks, cited as evidence for evolution. Let's work to get rid of that lie.
There are many other examples, let's work on getting rid of the just plain proven wrong things in textbooks. That's something that evolutionists and creationists should be able to agree on - getting proven facts in and junk science out.
Your erection and knocking down of straw men does not make any difference; the textbooks I was talking about are top-selling textbooks at the college level, not HS books (though they may be corrupted as well, I have not looked into that topic).
Bottom line for you: if you want to instill a respect for science, work to get the lies out of the textbooks. Same for the history books you cited that have clear lies in them.
The bio textbooks in frosh bio need to have the fraudulent statements removed from them - and it's not just a case of being a few months out of date. Look at Haeckel's embyros for example. Many authors have that in recent editions of leading textbooks, yet in the 1800s Haeckel was convicted of fraud by his own University for faking the drawings completely. I do think that over a hundred years is plenty of time for the textbooks to get brought up to date.
If no one in abiogenesis research makes that assumption, you'd better tell the textbook writers. A lot of them still point to Miller-Urey in 101-course textbooks as proof of chemical evolution. If there is something better to offer, why not use it?
Your links make some major leaps of faith - and ignore major points. I posted talking about the odds of getting correct chirality in just one moderate sized protein. Your link also mentions that random events can do it - the key difference is that I showed the odds of it happening randomly illustrate that it's flat out impossible.
In order for your "self-replicating RNA" to work, it would have to somehow improve its quality. Only an agent capable of very high fidelity in transcription and polymerization can be acted on by natural selection, since if random mutation occurs frequently enough as to obscure the gains made in the previous generations, then selection is no longer operative - you're back to a random model. And RNA is not accurate enough a self-reproducer to meet those criteria.
Suppose there were 1000 possible good protein sequences - that only reduces the odds by 10^3, and since the odds of getting one good protein are about 10^161, having 10^15 possible good choices still leaves you in impossible territory.
Yes I'm assuming life started based on proteins, and at near its current level of complexity - how else would it have started? The fundamental assumption of "descent with modification" is that there be accurate, reliable enough replication that a beneficial mutation will be carried to descendants. Anything less accurate only produces chaos - absent accurate reproduction, inheritance of advantageous traits is diluted and can no longer be a basis for improvement. Randomness takes over, and reversion to the mean would dictate a downward spiral, not an upward one.
And I said 19 chiral and one non-chiral, that's a total of 20 amino acids. If some form of life existed (Terran or otherwise) with a different basis, where's the evidence? If you believe in it without evidence, you're in a purely faith-based paradigm, not a scientific one. I for one am comfortable with that if you're willing to agree it's faith based not fact based.
You asserted that the probability of life randomly arising somewhere in the universe is unknown. That's certainly true for our current scientific state, since we can't yet claim to know all the intimate details of every single function of cellular life.
However we do know enough to make some interesting calculations. For example, all proteins in all living things known today are made up exclusively of 19 chiral and one non-chiral amino acid. On average, roughly 8% of bacterial protein amino acids are glycine (the non-chiral one). So in a smallish protein of only 450 amino acids, there are (0.92)*(450) or 414 chiral amino acids.
There is no natural process outside living cells that generates amino acids of one chirality; everything generates nicely racemic (equally L and R) mixtures.
It is fairly simple to calculate just how likely it would be to get just one protein to form randomly (proteins form sequentially, and since they need more than one copy of each amino acid, this must be done by the probstat model of "with replacement") from an unlimited supply of amino acids. To make the case easy, and to heavily tilt the odds towards the formation of proteins, let's ignore the energy gradient in aqueous solutions (which tends towards dissociation of proteins, not their assembly). So to calculate the odds of getting all 414 amino acids that are chiral to all be the correct chirality is one in 2^414 (or one in over 10^124).
To give some concept of that number, consider the assumptions made by fans of the Drake equation for example, and be generous. They estimate 200 billion (2*10^11) stars in our galaxy, and 20% of those having planets, with 3 to 5 possibly life-bearing bodies per star that has planets. Let's just say 10^12 possible planets, an order of magnitude higher than the upper limit of those Drake numbers. Also consider that the universe at 20 billion years is less than 10^18 seconds old. Let's say the earth has 10^50 atoms in it (slightly higher than estimates). So if you have one protein formed per each atom on every habitable planet in the galaxy (10^50*10^12 == 10^62) every millisecond since the big bang (10^18*10^3 = 10^21) you'd have 10^83 proteins formed. So the odds of getting one properly chiral protein by having 1000 formed per second per atom on all habitable planets and moons in our galaxy since the big bang would be 124-83 = one in 10^41. The universe is 10^28 inches across...
Now consider the odds of getting just one protein to have a particular sequence, which is immensely harder than the above which just focussed on getting the chirality alone correct. Plain fact is, random chance alone just will never be anywhere near adequate to explain the origin of life.
For those who are interested, Pascal's Wager actually involves something far more significant.
Note that this skull was found in sand, not in volcanic rock. It clearly fossilized in a different area (sand is not high enough in calcium carbonate to cause petrification) and got relocated into the sand. The dating was done by comparison with other fossils found in the area, but if they were all relocated there somehow, why assume they're from the same layer of rock somewhere else? There were no skeletal bones which would indicate whether this skull belonged to a bipedal species, nor were there any gender identifying bones found. So that means we have a skull with the size of a chimp skull, the brain capacity of a chimp skull, less striking canines than modern chimps(male) but about the same as modern chimps(female). Hmmm, wonder if this is just a female chimp. Apply Occam's razor, folks! Look at this without the hype, and it's pretty clear it's not what many claim it to be.
Black Parrot, I must take exception to your claim that creationism is based on web sites without factual basis. A clear point about the instantaneous creation of the earth is from Robert Gentry's research. Yes, I know you're likely to respond with a web site (who's quoting web sites now???) like talkorigins. Before you do so, please read that site then consider that if Radon were to move in the way Brawley (the author on talkorigins) asserts, there would be evidence in the form of a "tube" or cylinder of pleochroic halos; no one has ever reported one. And they sure would have if they could after Gentry revealed he was a creationist, in order to discredit him. Additionally, the hypothesis Brawley puts forth was tested by Gentry in the 1960's and published papers in Science show Brawley's idea does not explain anything, as it's based on inaccurate assumptions (fine faults in the granite).
And don't bother responding with some site based on Odom and Rink's paper; that issue was also dealt with by Gentry in earlier papers, and in fact Odom wrote a letter to Gentry after their article was published, in which he mentions that he's never seen a pleochroic halo. So using his paper as attempted refutation is similarly pointless. And the reason there was no response in Science by Gentry is that Science refused to allow Gentry to publish anything further after he was out of the closet as a creationist.
You asked "how likely are Earthlike planets to evolve life-forms".
It's very straightforward to calculate how likely life is to arise. Assume that all the building blocks are present in unlimited quantities, that they do not degrade in water nor in light, that the formation reactions are most highly favorable one-way (i.e., once formed they do not dissociate), and that pH, temperature, pressure, and salinity are stable and favorable. Also we assume there are no other reagents that will combine with the growing chain, and we will ignore the fact that peptide building is endothermic (i.e., against the energy gradient).
The minimum organism theorized to be able to reproduce itself, while existing only on pre-available nutrients, is guesstimated at slightly over 250 proteins, the great majority of those are over 300 amino acids each.
There are twenty common amino acids in life (for simplicity, ignore the very unusual ones). Nineteen of the twenty are chiral; since chirality is important for life, that means that only 20 out of the 39 possible types are valid. However to make this calculation as favorable to the formation of life we'll just assume here that only the correct chiral variants are in play. Folding it properly, a major conundrum in current research, is also assumed to just happen.
The odds of forming one 300-component amino acid chain (aka polypeptide) is then very easy to calculate. Getting the first one right is a one in twenty chance. Getting the second one is one in twenty times one in twenty. As this continues, you can see the answer is one in 20^300, or 2*10^390.
That's just for one peptide. That doesn't count the nucleic acids and other key building blocks.
To put that number in perspective, there are 10^72 to 10^78 atoms in the known universe, range depends on who you cite. The known universe is about 10^28 inches across, or less than 10^38 Angstrom units across. A 15-billion year old universe would be less than 10^18 seconds old.
It is generally agreed that odds of one in 10^50 is synonymous with impossible. And only one protein has odds of one in 10^390. If you formed one protein a second per atom in the universe for the assumed life of the universe, you'd get 10^78 * 10*12 or 10^90 candidates. The odds are then one in 10^300 to get one correctly sequenced protein.
Exercise for the interested reader: determine the odds if one in five amino acids can be replaced by up to five alternates. See if this changes the numbers significantly.
Note to moderators: this is just arithmetic. No conclusions drawn by the poster. If you don't agree with the conclusions, post a rebuttal of the arithmetic. Don't just vent with mod points, that's just raw emotion, and this is only about hard, quantifiable facts.
By 1900 textbooks were claiming the Earth was 2GYa. Decades before radiometric dating. Yes Hutton, Lyell, etc. were in the millions not billions of years, but those following them extended it.
By the 1960s we were taught the Earth was 3.5 GYa, and now it's 4.5-4.6 as "conventional" wisdom.
BTW trees put on rings based on seasons, and many cases are recorded of multiple rings per annum.
If you're going to use VMWare (I do, have since 1.0, and it's great), here are some tips to keep in mind:
- when asked about the graphics card during a Linux install, say SVGA generic, later on you'll upgrade it to the VMWare video card when you install the VMWare tools.
- specify "Undoable" for your disk(s) if you ever want to run a bunch of odd tests, installing weird things for example, or trying a virus to see what it does, then just say "forget it" when you're done. If you're doing a virus test please do remember to turn off the network connection though...
- If you've used VMWare 1.x or 2.x but not tried 3.x, it's a whole new world. The mouse responds like it's a real system - even on my slower machine (dual PII-400's). 3.0 is a major leap forward.
- Have lots of memory in the host system, remember running two OS's means you'll be using a lot more RAM.
- Sound is a weak point currently, you can get it pretty good but not great. Using the preempt kernel patch on 2.4.17 helps but isn't quite enough. Playing around with priorities helps too.
If you credit radiometric dating, consider the post above about C14 and coal. Quick summary: all coal has C14 activity. C14, with a half-life of roughly 5730 years, would be extinct in 50 or 100 thousand years. By the evolutionary time scale, though, coal was laid down in the carboniferous era, something like 300 million years ago. There is no way C14 would be detectable in coal if it were anything like one thousandth of that age.
The Po halos are only proof of rapid formation of the granites - not of creation nor of when it happened. However the halos do not fit in with millions of years for the rocks to cool, a central point in the evolutionist model.
As to the somewhat more trivial point you mentioned about capitalization, if you look in the KJV you'll see that when the Lord is referred to with a pronoun, it is not capitalized. There are many guesses of who started that trend, but it's not a central point. After all, in Hebrew, there are no capitals anyway.
And anyway evolutionism is as much about faith as creationism is - but evolutionism is state-sponsored. Why do you need tax dollars to spread your faith?
And BTW before you mod me as flamebait or troll - here's what prominent people have said in agreement