Jac3510 wrote:Katabole may not have, but what evidence do you have that Vikram Singh is incorrect? You asked for a defensible point and were provided a real datapoint.
I'm not sure it is a real datapoint, and I'm even surer that although it was presented as defensible, you have no idea how to defend it. However, let's see.
A number like 10^40000 is usually achieved very simply. You start with a simple probability, say 1 in 10, and extrapolate it through a number of steps to achieve the final figure. 1 in 10, times 1 in 10, times 1 in 10 gives us a chance of 1 in 1000. Starting with 1 in 10, you need 40000 extrapolations to achieve 1 in 10^40000. But what sort of self-replicating molecule requires 40000 extrapolations? The simplest self-replicating peptide probably consists of about 40 amino acids. If there is a 1 in 10 chance of two of these linking together appropriately at random, then the chances of the whole assemblage is 1 in 10^40. Even if there is only a 1 in 1000 chance of a random linkage, and the self-replicating molecule was 1000 units long, that's still only a probability of 1 in 10^3000. Vikram Singh's number is looking increasingly preposterous. Still, you claimed it was defensible. Any chance you might like to defend it? I thought not.
Then, of course, in order to achieve an unlikely possibility, all you need are sufficient opportunities. The chances of winning the lottery are very slight, but people do win it, week after week, because the number of people taking part is so huge. Given a billion planets, a billion cubic kilometers of water on each, and a billion years or so, the probability of a very improbable event occurring is hugely increased.
Finally, this random assemblage of available components is not at all a sensible scenario in the first place. The theory of the survival of successful entities extends into the abiotic. Once the first highly improbable linkages have occurred, the chances of subsequent successful linkages is increased, making the whole of the extrapolation thing explained above a nonsense.
But here's the kicker: even those are too complex to have came into existence by random chance, even in an ocean of 330 million cubic miles of water!
I don't believe that at all.
Bottom line, perhaps someday we'll come up with a model in which the probabilities are not absurd.
Right.
But we do not as of today have that model.
Wrong. See above.
And what that means is that, so far as the evidence tells us today, right now, there is no chemical pathway to the evolution of the first life.
Wrong again. If the evidence isn't there, it doesn't tell us anything. It certainly does not tell us that there are no chemical pathways to life.
Again, perhaps it will someday be found, but on what basis do we posit that it will be found?
On the basis that successive experiments have narrowed the field closer and closer. I have no doubt whatever that self-replicating chemicals which can be seen as clear precursors of life as we know it will be achieved in the laboratory in the next five years.
At what point does absence of evidence equal evidence of absence.
When every possible place where the evidence might be found has been explored. I walk into my garden and see no butterflies. I look at a bush and there are still no butterflies. At what point can I declare it 'proved' that there are no butterflies in my garden?
We have an absolute absence of evidence of a global flood, and that qualifies as evidence that no such event ever occurred, right?
Yes, because we observe continuity of strata in various places across the whole world. Every place where evidence could exist has been examined and found empty.
And so the creationist can make the claim here.
Not until every possible avenue has been explored and found empty.
Again, I'm not asking you to claim abiogenesis is wrong. I am hoping, though, that you can admit that your very basic question was asked--you requested a single defensible point that evolution (in the completely godless sense) is false (in the sense that God didn't guide it and didn't create anything out of nothing). You've been provided one. Proof? Of course not. But a defensible point? I really hope you can at least admit that . . .
Discussable, yes. Defensible? Well, you haven't defended it, but perhaps Vikram Singh might. I wonder where he is now...
