> What in the world has led you to believe that evolution of complex > species is a one in a trillion event? Somebody has been lying to you > or you've been misreading.
Uh, if you read my message accurately, you would see I was saying that was a made up number. > If you take > the fundamental laws of physics and chemistry as a given, however, > life isn't that unlikely at all. Yes, and that's what many of us see as quite convenient...that so many of these fundamental laws interact to make life possible. That if even one were different, we wouldn't be here. > The combination of amino acids is pure chemistry. There isn't > anything > magical, mystical or even wowie there. You keep shaking up amino > acids > in a suitable medium and chains form that are the basic blocks of RNA. Well sure. And they have even in a lab created self-replicating RNA. But that's far from answering the vast number of questions about how this all happened randomly, even allowing for natural selection, particularly when it seems clear that both proteins and nucleic acids of some kind would both be needed to get a system going. Could such a system eventually arise given a large enough petri dish and enough time? Possibly. What that process was though has yet to be explained. > Keep running samples in a massively parallel system with differential > survival for a very long time and see what the odds are of something > *other* than complex life. And therein lies the problem. That's a theory that's not going to be very easy to test. And the question would always be as well, how much time really is sufficient for such evolution to take place? I think attempts to quantify this are inherently flawed, but that's the improbability factor I am referring to. Not necessarily whether evolution occurred or not, but whether the time frame is sufficient to explain the level of complexity we have now, given the amount of time needed for even small steps in the process to occur. Evolutionists explain this with natural selection and use it to practically take any randomness at all out of the system. But that is as flawed an argument as to say it doesn't occur at all. > What are the odds that > life evolved from a chemical soup? Quite good. We can see what > happens > in similar circumstances, we can watch the more advanced stages, we > can pinpoint the things that need to happen in order for the process > to continue and come to the current stage. Actually no, we haven't come near to doing that just yet. We can show a very minuscule amount of the beginning step(s) and we can show it at the advanced stage. We have no good demonstration yet for how it got beyond the protein stages (to my knowledge). One also has to be very careful about experiments in this area, as to whether they employ forces that could not exist in nature. What we can force in a lab is almost certainly beyond a level that might occur naturally. > But I will take a theory that is comprehensible > to human reason and testable over one that is not any day. As I've mentioned before, I do not choose my faith based solely on what I cannot explain about the natural world. Nor does having faith mean I toss out what science can tell me. I simply find it is not, nor ever will be, sufficient to explain the world to me. Do I believe in God solely to be able to answer those questions? Most definitely not. But I know I am a happier person in many ways as a result. --- Mary Jo ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Want to reach the ColdFusion community with something they want? Let them know on the House of Fusion mailing lists Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:306665 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
