Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 9:56 am
Gman you are absolutely wrong.
The argument you quoted is based on a simple calculation requiring no expertise in chemistry.
There are 20 amino acids being consided in this example.
The proposed length of the amino acid chain is 100.
Therefore the chances of randomly generating a specific amino acid sequence is 20 to the 100th power.
The answer is 1.26 * 10^130
Exactly what was quoted.
What this means is that they are stating that somehow abiogenisis boils down to the chance occurrence of a single 100 amino acid length sequence.
How do they know?
Also you mischaracterize the two posibilities for life.
1. Chance assembly of life from chemicals
2. There is a Creator who designed biological systems
Its not chance assembly, its as follows.
1. Assembly of life from chemicals
2. There is a Creator who designed biological systems
Within in #1 there are two posibilities.
1. The chance formation of life.
2. Chemical processes under certain conditions will likely lead to life.
The problem is we don't know which if any of these solutions are correct.
And we don't know what their probabilities are because of the lack of information.
You can calculate all the probabilities as your "Chemist" friend has done, but in reality as we gain more knowledge such calculations tend to be only a starting point as certain posibilities are naturally removed.
For example if I were to calculate the the probability of landing in certain position in a gym after launching off a skate ramp, I could do as follows.
Do as you professor did and calculate the number of square inches in the gym and calculate all posible positions. This is a good starting point but...
Quickly we realize that there is a maximum range which can be reached by the ramp.
Also we realize that the isn't much allowance for lateral velocity when being launched from a ramp.
The original calculation would have given us billions of possible solutions.
But in reality we can predict with some accuracy where the skater will land.
It doesn't take a chemist to calculate all possible combinations, whether real or imagined.
There are too many assumptions in this sort of calculation.
1. All solutions are equally likely.
2. There is only one valid combination.
This is not a combination lock.
The argument you quoted is based on a simple calculation requiring no expertise in chemistry.
There are 20 amino acids being consided in this example.
The proposed length of the amino acid chain is 100.
Therefore the chances of randomly generating a specific amino acid sequence is 20 to the 100th power.
The answer is 1.26 * 10^130
Exactly what was quoted.
What this means is that they are stating that somehow abiogenisis boils down to the chance occurrence of a single 100 amino acid length sequence.
How do they know?
Also you mischaracterize the two posibilities for life.
1. Chance assembly of life from chemicals
2. There is a Creator who designed biological systems
Its not chance assembly, its as follows.
1. Assembly of life from chemicals
2. There is a Creator who designed biological systems
Within in #1 there are two posibilities.
1. The chance formation of life.
2. Chemical processes under certain conditions will likely lead to life.
The problem is we don't know which if any of these solutions are correct.
And we don't know what their probabilities are because of the lack of information.
You can calculate all the probabilities as your "Chemist" friend has done, but in reality as we gain more knowledge such calculations tend to be only a starting point as certain posibilities are naturally removed.
For example if I were to calculate the the probability of landing in certain position in a gym after launching off a skate ramp, I could do as follows.
Do as you professor did and calculate the number of square inches in the gym and calculate all posible positions. This is a good starting point but...
Quickly we realize that there is a maximum range which can be reached by the ramp.
Also we realize that the isn't much allowance for lateral velocity when being launched from a ramp.
The original calculation would have given us billions of possible solutions.
But in reality we can predict with some accuracy where the skater will land.
It doesn't take a chemist to calculate all possible combinations, whether real or imagined.
There are too many assumptions in this sort of calculation.
1. All solutions are equally likely.
2. There is only one valid combination.
This is not a combination lock.