Evolution Takes a Shot in the Head!

[_Nightlion]

By Tim Barnett (gonna quote the article in full because you wont check it out but I will put the link up too.)



The origin of life is a mystery that has plagued origin of life researchers trying to find a naturalistic explanation. Nobel Prize winning molecular biologist Francis Crick, who co-discovered the structure of the DNA molecule, said, “The origin of life seems almost to be a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.”

These are very telling words from an atheist. Of course, when Crick speaks of the beginning of life from non-life as almost a miracle, he is speaking of the incomprehensible improbability of getting the first life by chance.

What exactly are some of these conditions that had to be satisfied? Allow me to demonstrate. But to do this, you need to understand a little bit of biology.

All living things are made of cells. The simplest forms of life have only a single cell, while human beings have over one hundred trillion cells. Next, all cells are made of proteins. Proteins perform specific functions in each of our cells. Some act like tiny machines, while others act as structural components. Finally, each protein is made of a chain of amino acids. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. They join together into long chains that eventually fold into the functional protein.

Scientists believe the simplest form of life has a minimum of 250 to 400 proteins, and each protein is made of (on average) 300 to 400 amino acids. There are 20 different amino acids that make up all of life.

What I would like to do is calculate the probability of building one functional protein with only 150 amino acids by chance alone. But right out of the gate we encounter our first problem. It turns out that amino acids come in two forms: left-handed and right-handed. However, all of life is composed of left-handed amino acids. If one right-handed amino finds its way into your amino acid chain, then our protein is ruined. This is a well-known problem in biology called the chirality problem.

You might be thinking, what’s the probability of getting 150 left-handed amino acids in a row? Given that the odds of getting a left-handed amino acid are 50%, the probability of getting 150 left-handed amino acids is (½)150 or 1 chance in 1045. This is the same probability of flipping a coin 150 times in a row and getting heads every time.

There’s another problem. Imagine you get all 150 left-handed amino acids in one place. You still need to bond them together with peptide bonds. However, not all bonds are peptide bonds. In fact, molecular bonds are grouped into two categories: peptide and non-peptide. The odds of getting a peptide bond are also 50%. Therefore, the probability of getting 149 peptide bonds between adjacent left-handed amino acids is (½)149, or again 1 chance in 1045. This is the same probability of flipping a coin 149 times in a row and getting heads every time. We could call this the bonding problem.

But wait, there’s more. The final problem is even more daunting than either the chirality problem or the bonding problem. It’s called the sequence problem. Amino acids are like a 20-character chemical alphabet. Each amino acid must be in a specific order, or we don’t get an amino acid sequence that folds into a functional protein. So, the specific order of the individual amino acids matters. Information scientists refer to this as specified complexity, or specified information.

At each site you have 20 different amino acids to choose from. When you do the math, there are 10195 total possible ways one can construct a protein composed of 150 amino acids. The question is, how many of those arrangements are actually functional? Doug Axe at Cambridge University has determined that the probability of getting a functional protein from all of the total possible proteins is 1 in 1074.

Think of it this way. Using the letters G, O, and D, you can create 27 possible three-letter words. However, only four make an actual meaningful sequence (i.e. DOG, GOD, GOO, ODD). That means if you put these letters in a bag and drew three at random, the odds of picking an actual three-letter word out of all the possible three-letter words are approximately 1 in 7.

Taking these three problems together, we can calculate the probability of building our very modest functional protein to be 1 in 10164. Remember, this is only one protein, and life requires hundreds of proteins.

Here is an analogy to help you appreciate this incomprehensible improbability. Imagine I put all the elementary particles in the universe in a jar—that is, every proton, neutron, and electron goes into a universe-sized jar. Next, I mark them all blue except for one green particle. Finally, I blindfold you, put a gun to your head, and ask you to pick out the green particle, or I pull the trigger.

The odds of picking the green particle while blindfolded are 1 in 1080. Of course, the odds of picking any particle are the same. However, it is vastly more probable that you would pick a blue, life-prohibiting particle than the one, green, life-permitting particle.

To make this analogy even more accurate, you would have to pick that green particle, twice in a row, blindfolded. If you indeed picked the green particle twice in a row, the rational person should conclude that you cheated. You peeked. You designed the outcome for your survival. Design is the best explanation. In the same way, the best explanation of the origin of the first protein and of life is a Designer.

Is it any wonder that the famous atheist, Antony Flew, upon learning about this information came to believe in God? In a letter in the August-September issue of Britain’s Philosophy Now magazine, Flew wrote, “It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism.”
https://www.str.org/blog/building-a-protein-by-chance?fbclid=IwAR3M-fpyi-o_p1wrzy9KJYVE76z1AZVYM6HsXuyRSd60Tks8sQisb8ykwp4#.W_5QyCdRco9

[_SteelHead]

Now imagine a primordial sea full of organic chemicals. Billions of billions of molecules, and picking two green in a row is a statistical certainty.

The problem with your creator scenario - whence came the creator, however statsistically improbable the permutations you described above, your creator is orders and orders of magnitude more unlikely.

[_krose]

Those look like some steep odds there. Obviously the most logical alternative is that it was magic.


Also... what does any of this have to do with evolution?

[_Meadowchik]

The problem with your creator scenario - whence came the creator, however statsistically improbable the permutations you described above, your creator is orders and orders of magnitude more unlikely.

Like my 7-year-old likes to say, "If god is god, than who created god?"

[_Nightlion]

Now imagine a primordial sea full of organic chemicals. Billions of billions of molecules, and picking two green in a row is a statistical certainty.

The problem with your creator scenario - whence came the creator, however statsistically improbable the permutations you described above, your creator is orders and orders of magnitude more unlikely.

There can be NO 'organic' chemicals until the building blocks of those molecules are brought together in the perfect sequences. It is admitted by a career atheists that it could never happen without God.

God did not need to begin as a physical being. He only needed to become self aware in light and truth. Those are not sequenced elements. As soon as he could express a will he could begin to create and organize all things.

[_Shulem]

I am God in disguise.

Shulem

[_I have a question]

Alternatively, life on earth exists because a disobedient woman ate the wrong piece of fruit...

[_Craig Paxton]

By Tim Barnett (gonna quote the article in full because you wont check it out but I will put the link up too.)



The origin of life is a mystery that has plagued origin of life researchers trying to find a naturalistic explanation. Nobel Prize winning molecular biologist Francis Crick, who co-discovered the structure of the DNA molecule, said, “The origin of life seems almost to be a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.”

These are very telling words from an atheist. Of course, when Crick speaks of the beginning of life from non-life as almost a miracle, he is speaking of the incomprehensible improbability of getting the first life by chance.

What exactly are some of these conditions that had to be satisfied? Allow me to demonstrate. But to do this, you need to understand a little bit of biology.

All living things are made of cells. The simplest forms of life have only a single cell, while human beings have over one hundred trillion cells. Next, all cells are made of proteins. Proteins perform specific functions in each of our cells. Some act like tiny machines, while others act as structural components. Finally, each protein is made of a chain of amino acids. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. They join together into long chains that eventually fold into the functional protein.

Scientists believe the simplest form of life has a minimum of 250 to 400 proteins, and each protein is made of (on average) 300 to 400 amino acids. There are 20 different amino acids that make up all of life.

What I would like to do is calculate the probability of building one functional protein with only 150 amino acids by chance alone. But right out of the gate we encounter our first problem. It turns out that amino acids come in two forms: left-handed and right-handed. However, all of life is composed of left-handed amino acids. If one right-handed amino finds its way into your amino acid chain, then our protein is ruined. This is a well-known problem in biology called the chirality problem.

You might be thinking, what’s the probability of getting 150 left-handed amino acids in a row? Given that the odds of getting a left-handed amino acid are 50%, the probability of getting 150 left-handed amino acids is (½)150 or 1 chance in 1045. This is the same probability of flipping a coin 150 times in a row and getting heads every time.

There’s another problem. Imagine you get all 150 left-handed amino acids in one place. You still need to bond them together with peptide bonds. However, not all bonds are peptide bonds. In fact, molecular bonds are grouped into two categories: peptide and non-peptide. The odds of getting a peptide bond are also 50%. Therefore, the probability of getting 149 peptide bonds between adjacent left-handed amino acids is (½)149, or again 1 chance in 1045. This is the same probability of flipping a coin 149 times in a row and getting heads every time. We could call this the bonding problem.

But wait, there’s more. The final problem is even more daunting than either the chirality problem or the bonding problem. It’s called the sequence problem. Amino acids are like a 20-character chemical alphabet. Each amino acid must be in a specific order, or we don’t get an amino acid sequence that folds into a functional protein. So, the specific order of the individual amino acids matters. Information scientists refer to this as specified complexity, or specified information.

At each site you have 20 different amino acids to choose from. When you do the math, there are 10195 total possible ways one can construct a protein composed of 150 amino acids. The question is, how many of those arrangements are actually functional? Doug Axe at Cambridge University has determined that the probability of getting a functional protein from all of the total possible proteins is 1 in 1074.

Think of it this way. Using the letters G, O, and D, you can create 27 possible three-letter words. However, only four make an actual meaningful sequence (i.e. DOG, GOD, GOO, ODD). That means if you put these letters in a bag and drew three at random, the odds of picking an actual three-letter word out of all the possible three-letter words are approximately 1 in 7.

Taking these three problems together, we can calculate the probability of building our very modest functional protein to be 1 in 10164. Remember, this is only one protein, and life requires hundreds of proteins.

Here is an analogy to help you appreciate this incomprehensible improbability. Imagine I put all the elementary particles in the universe in a jar—that is, every proton, neutron, and electron goes into a universe-sized jar. Next, I mark them all blue except for one green particle. Finally, I blindfold you, put a gun to your head, and ask you to pick out the green particle, or I pull the trigger.

The odds of picking the green particle while blindfolded are 1 in 1080. Of course, the odds of picking any particle are the same. However, it is vastly more probable that you would pick a blue, life-prohibiting particle than the one, green, life-permitting particle.

To make this analogy even more accurate, you would have to pick that green particle, twice in a row, blindfolded. If you indeed picked the green particle twice in a row, the rational person should conclude that you cheated. You peeked. You designed the outcome for your survival. Design is the best explanation. In the same way, the best explanation of the origin of the first protein and of life is a Designer.

Is it any wonder that the famous atheist, Antony Flew, upon learning about this information came to believe in God? In a letter in the August-September issue of Britain’s Philosophy Now magazine, Flew wrote, “It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism.”
https://www.str.org/blog/building-a-protein-by-chance?fbclid=IwAR3M-fpyi-o_p1wrzy9KJYVE76z1AZVYM6HsXuyRSd60Tks8sQisb8ykwp4#.W_5QyCdRco9

That a "designer" was somehow involved in the formation of Life on earth is even more improbable. Its just adding yet another step to the chain of events, making the likelihood even less likely.

[_krose]

Attempting to calculate the probability for something that has already happened seems like a pointless exercise. The fact is, life on earth did originate at some point in the past. We can debate how it happened, and whatever hypothesis is advanced for the process could be calculated as highly improbable, but it definitely did happen.

I wonder, what is the probability that I would exist exactly as I am? I can’t put numbers on it, but it seems impossible when you look at everything that had to line up perfectly.

1. I had to be conceived at such a time and in such a way that each parent would contribute the exact set of genes to make me me, from the thousands and thousands of options each of them could have possibly contributed.

2. Before this could happen, the two of them had to meet and become a couple, choosing each other from among all the billions of people on the planet.

3. Each of my parents had to have those same improbable events happen precisely as they did to bring both of them into existence as they were.

Now repeat all of this up the genetic line for however many generations for as long as there have been humans on the planet. The odds must surely be mind boggling.

Logically, it’s virtually impossible for me to exist. And yet I do.

[_DrW]

Now imagine a primordial sea full of organic chemicals. Billions of billions of molecules, and picking two green in a row is a statistical certainty.

The problem with your creator scenario - whence came the creator, however statsistically improbable the permutations you described above, your creator is orders and orders of magnitude more unlikely.

There can be NO 'organic' chemicals until the building blocks of those molecules are brought together in the perfect sequences. It is admitted by a career atheists that it could never happen without God.

God did not need to begin as a physical being. He only needed to become self aware in light and truth. Those are not sequenced elements. As soon as he could express a will he could begin to create and organize all things.

NL,

If you are going to make bald faced statements about organic chemistry, you should at least have some idea what you are talking about - and it often appears that you don't. Like now.

As has been described on this board many times (perhaps you haven't been paying attention), many people mistakenly believe that naturally formed organic molecules are an exclusive product of life. As described on another thread, any compound comprised of carbon and hydrogen is an organic molecule.

Organic molecules might incorporate other elements (O, N, S, Cl, etc.) in addition to these two elements, but a compound that does not have carbon and hydrogen is considered inorganic. While organic molecules are necessary for life, life is not necessary for production of organic molecules.

A great example of extraterrestrial organic molecules without life are the vast lakes of liquid light hydrocarbons (methane, ethane, etc.) on Titan.

A good case can be made for the idea that life is simply a product of the natural evolution of chemistry. In other words, life might well constitute a naturally occurring state of matter.

Normally I let your nonsense pass without comment, but now and then it just gets to be too much to bear.