Origin of Life (Pt2) (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, December 29, 2009, 01:29 (5240 days ago) @ xeno6696


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> An "Attempt" in this case isn't a conscious thing, if it is nature. It still relies on "the right things being in the right place." The argument from Dembski and others against this is that there isn't enough time for "chance" to work out a solution. I'm challenging their claim by showing that their resolution of time isn't fine enough, as 1 "try" per second isn't enough when you consider the speed at which a chemical reaction actually happens. And just like with dice, the more attempts you have, the more chances you have to get it "right" by brute force. In short, Dembski (and others) either willingly or unwittingly skew their attempts when talking about time. -I'm going to stick my neck in again: Dembski does not use time. He calculates odds of choosing correct molecules to make life. Shroeder uses time. Shapiro has one time example, the other is an example of putting together a living organism, simpler than anything alive today, as odds of the molecules coming together, time not a requirement. Behe uses time in his discussion of malaria mutation resistence evolution, but the rest of his arguments are really philosophy of science. The Wistar Institute Symposium of 1967 was the first to raise the time issue, as the math participants studied the known mutation rates, and said the time was not available to allow for evolution. Of course they did not know what we know now: epigenetic methods, methylation, and recognized 'punctuated equilibrium', ways that speed up the process tremendously.-I suggest that Matt find the book "The Philosophic Scientists", 1985, by David Foster, Ph.D.. He follows up on Sir Arthur Eddington's proposal that'the stuff of the world is mind stuff', and uses statistics to show that the specificity of human hemoglobin is 10^650. and that the specificity of the T4 phage is 10^78,000. Human DNA specificity is correspondingly much, much larger. Foster does use time with the universe 10^18 seconds old. -Further most chemcical reactions in organic chemistry require enzymes and most of them are huge in molecular weight (with enormous specificity) with sites that provide for the reactions on the enzyme molecule. -Matt's approach is one way of going at things, but what I have described above is a lot more practical than studying the entire universe. One does not need that approach to to reach some solid conclusions, in my view.