Evolution Takes a Shot in the Head!

[_Nightlion]

Nightlion,

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.

Nice effort to camouflage a non reply to come off talking down to me. Wonders what the honest odds of carbon and hydrogen abiogenesis would be?

It is because it is?
That's like what God says about himself....I am that I am.

Exodus3:14 And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you

[_Physics Guy]

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 10^45. This is the same probability of flipping a coin 150 times in a row and getting heads every time. [Exponentiation signs ^ added. They're important.]

What is the probability of the Earth continuing to orbit the Sun?

In every instant, there are infinitely many directions in space in which our planet could move. What are the odds that the planet Earth keeps on moving in exactly the right direction, out of all those infinitely many possibilities, to keep on its orbit? If it should fly off in any one of those other directions, we might hit another planet, or hit the sun, or (far more likely) fly off into the cold dark interstellar night forever. And yet somehow the Earth chooses the one good possibility, out of all the infinitely many alternatives. Moreover the Earth hasn't just made this fantastically lucky choice once. It keeps on making it every nanosecond, every picosecond ... every instant.

Never mind 1 chance in 10^45. This is one chance in uncountable infinity, raised to an uncountably infinite power. It's obviously ridiculous. There is no way any sane person could imagine that the Earth keeps on its orbit by sheer chance!

And of course it doesn't. The Earth's direction of motion is not chosen randomly. It's determined by natural law. There is no choice to make whatever. We might have been quite lucky that the Earth's orbit lies in the "Goldilocks" zone of distance from the Sun, not too hot and not too cold, but there are lots of planets and it's not surprising if one of them got lucky. Given that the Earth formed in this orbit, the chance of it continuing in this orbit is not small at all. It's almost certain that it will continuing orbiting so for hundreds of millions more years at the least.

The ID argument about abiogenesis being ridiculously improbable is just the same as that idiotic argument about the Earth's orbit being improbable. It assumes that things are random which are not random at all.

We do not yet understand biological machinery the way we understand the simple Newtonian problem of planetary orbits. And the molecular machinery of living cells is so fantastically complex that I do have to gulp a bit when I confess my faith in abiogenesis. But purportedly knock-down arguments against abiogenesis based on probability estimates are just childish. They're not just wrong on some technical point: they are utterly stupid.

Just because it's not designed doesn't mean that it's random.

[_Fence Sitter]

Just because it's not designed doesn't mean that it's random.

I think this is a concept that at its very base, is difficult for some to accept. Part of our nature is a survival instinct, developed over hundreds of thousands of years, that screams at us to find out what caused that noise behind us. On an instinctual level we are very much driven by cause and effects. The inability to assign a cause to something is the very definition of miraculous and the comfort derived from placing such phenomena in the miraculous allows us to assign a cause to something we don't understand and satisfies our natural instincts.

So the argument that we cannot fully explain a certain event, like the origin of life, means there must be a divine origin behind it, is one that rings true to people on an instinctual level. The problem is that those instincts are based of survival probabilities, probabilities we have seen to be created by the environment which does not care if that miraculous cause is from Odin, Allah, an alien, the Flying Spaghetti monster or an unending line of Elohim's. Even if the miraculous cause is true it gets one no closer to their particular God or religious belief than it does say a Scientologist.

[_Goya]

It is because it is?

That's like what God says about himself....I am that I am.

God = Popeye

[_SteelHead]

NL keeps confusing abiogenesis with evolution.

[_krose]

Now get the blogger to calculate the probability of a hidden creator god existing.

[_Nightlion]

Nightlion keeps confusing abiogenesis with evolution.

Sort of like:
LOVE AND MARRIAGE
can't HAVE ONE WITHOUT
THE OTHER

If it were possible to begin with, which it isn't.

The true science is ineffable
Looks like God truly must have made all things.

All that is needed then is to prove God exists.

God has given commandments that if obeyed will prove his existence as the promised results will be experienced.

But man says: NAW, we wanna vaunt up in our own importance and arrogantly trample upon anything that would threaten that importance.