Part 2, an attack on creationism (Creator, Earth, tradition, beliefs)

[yossarian22]

Originally Posted by Nick Soapdish

I plugged it into my computer (Java 1.4) and it returned "infinity".. not sure what that implies. I think the number was too great for the data structure.

Thats the whole problem. You need a special calculator to do this work. A financial one will be good for this.
Well, this somehow degraded into probability again...

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Originally Posted by Nick Soapdish

In my mind nature inventing self-replicating RNA structures is multitudes more improbable than winning the lottery. In comparison, winning the lottery is an easy gamble.

For a single try. When you have the materials for life floating around at the right temperature and supplied with energy for a few hundred million years, I'd put even odds on whether life would arise spontaneously.

Originally Posted by Nick Soapdish

Let's suppose there are 1 trillion monkeys and they had 1 billion years to attempt even one page (a small one at only 215 letters)... The odds would still only be 1 in 3.7313 x 10^286. That is pretty much impossible. The odds for the entire book would be exponentially less likely.

But the test is not "does this page match the first 215 letters of the third act of Hamlet?", it's "does this page have correct grammar and spelling, and is it as entertaining as 215 letters of Shakespeare would be?"

[Mr Spinkles]

Originally Posted by Nick Soapdish

I am trying to emphasize the complexity of something that is self replicating... it is not a trivial function.

Yet, by your definition of complexity ("composed of many interconnected parts"), self-replication has nothing to do with complexity. I've actually studied complexity a bit, and I've been trying to steer the discussion into a direction where we can talk about complexity in a meaningful way.

I think functional information may be a good measure of the complexity you are thinking of. If you have access to peer-reviewed journals online, you may be interested in this paper:

Functional information and the emergence of biocomplexity
Robert M. Hazen*,, Patrick L. Griffin*, James M. Carothers, and Jack W. Szostak
*Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution, 5251 Broad Branch Road NW, Washington, DC 20015-1305; California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research and Berkeley Center for Synthetic Biology, University of California, 717 Potter Street MC 3224, Berkeley, CA 94720-3224; and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Department of Molecular Biology and Center for Computational and Integrative Biology, 7215 Simches Research Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA 02114-2696

Published online before print May 9, 2007, 10.1073/pnas.0701744104
PNAS | May 15, 2007 | vol. 104 | Suppl. 1 | 8574-8581

Originally Posted by Nick

I agree. I would never suggest faith requires... well faith. Ultimately it is possible to doubt God's existence. But to others His existence is obvious.

This goes back to the cynical mindset the 20th century has instilled in us. ....
We all use intuition on an ongoing basis. Logic can only get you from point A to point B. And it can be used to make sure your beliefs are consistent. However, it doesn't tell you what point A is and how to get there. We all have assumptions about the world and it is intuition, common sense and our awareness that get there.

Okay. Your intuition says one thing, mine another. You say self-replicating molecules are too "complex" to have come about spontaneously, yet, by your definition of complexity, we have observed many compounds far more complex than DNA which occur spontaneously. Now what?

Originally Posted by Nick

Good point. If you did it would be a yes-it-is, no-it-isn't, yes-it-is, no-it-isn't, yes-it-is, no-it-isn't kind of argument.

Exactly.

Originally Posted by Nick

From my point of view, I have seen nothing that shows that self-replicating RNA structures spontaneously being created has even a slight probability of occurring within the time frame it is suggested to occur.

We have also not seen anything that shows that self-replicating molecules have as low a probability of occurring as your personal intuition suggests. What has been shown (as far back as post #446) is that, in this thread, we have seen two basic contenders for explaining the appearance of self-replicating molecules:

Numerous scientific hypotheses on the molecular origins of life, as developed/refuted/confirmed in hundreds of published papers over the last half-century,

VS.

Conveniently undefined and unspecified, unfalsifiable and uninvestigable....magic!

[Mr Spinkles]

Originally Posted by yossarian22

I am not sure how reliable the bionomial approximation is in this case, as it's meant for numbers close to zero.

2/5*10^307 is pretty darn close to zero.

[yossarian22]

Originally Posted by Mr Spinkles

2/5*10^307 is pretty darn close to zero.

Sorry, Another typo, I meant powers close to one 1.
Also using a approximation is dangerous in this because small differences are magnified heavily by the large exponent.

[Mr Spinkles]

Ah, okay, I didn't know that.