Oh, I wished Bill would move from this retrograde Mailing System. It is
such a pain to respond with this system.
Anyways, my counter point is below:
The problem is that the paper assumes errors. Garbage in, garbage out.
Jojo, I've been watching this. You have swallowed a pile of highly
defective argument.
Be specific, what garbage in and what garbage out.
There is a lost consideration. Take a random combination of five letters.
Not just any combination will form a functional word. However, there are
many combinations that would form a word. There is an assumption here that
the mutations to form a particular word must occur simultaneously. That's
completely bogus.
Ah, you are using what I would call the "non-specificity" argument. That
is, a random combination would create other words other than words that are
useful. In other words, you are claiming that other combinations could
conceivably result in life, just not the life we know.
A random word combination like "Science" is a word and you are arguing that
a different random word "kejsll" is also a word in some other context and
would also be useful. Hence, you are arguing that ANY random combination
would work and would result in the creation of useful animo acids for life.
We just happen to settle for the 21 animo acids combination that we end up
with.
This argument is bogus, if this is what you are saying. the chemical
processes do not simply work with any combination. Some combinations are
chemically inert and useless for reactions. Some are incompatible with
others. That is, they poison each others reactions. Some have a wrong
chirality, hence would not combine properly with the useful amino acids.
Hence, your assertion that other combinations would also work is faulty.
Mutations of any kind are believed to occur once in every 100,000 gene
replications (though some estimate they occur far less frequently). Davis,
68; Wysong, 272.
This would vary greatly with environment and the particular organism.
Assuming that the first single-celled organism had 10,000 genes, the
same number as E. coli (Wysong, 113), one mutation would exist for every
ten cells.
A "mutation" is a process. So what is being said is that there would be
one mutation per ten cell replications.
Just note: the first living things, under most understandings, would
certainly not be a "single-celled organism." It would be a
self-replicating molecule, an enzyme that catalyzes its own production. It
would not be something we would recognize as living. We don't recognize
DNA as living, rather DNA can catalyze the assembly of elements that
create something we recognize as living, but stripping this down to
basics, the simplest element is something that reproduces itself, given
the appropriate environment. DNA as we know it is probably far more
complex than the original self-replicating molecule.
Once again, tell us what this self-replicating simple molecule is. Simply
speculating that this is true does not make it true.
Since only one mutation per 1,000 is non-harmful (Davis, 66),
I don't trust this figure. What research is it based upon? (No, I'm not
looking it up today.) Note, again, this does not refer to changes.
Further, the definition of mutation used in the original claim about once
in every 100,000 gene replications may be different. If a mutation
requires an expressed difference, what kind of difference?
The paper where the research is sourced is in the References. In fact, the
author is telling you specifically where, in Davis, 66.
I don't know what "harmful" means. Does it mean that any cell with that
specific mutation will not function?
Goodness, you have a penchant for long essays to obfuscate. Harmful means
it causes harm to the cell, either by disrupting its normal functions or
creating conditions that would stop its normal processes. It is toxic, a
poison, a disruption. I do not see the point of this contention other than
to obfuscate.
there would be only one non-harmful mutation in a population of 10,000
such cells. The odds that this one non-harmful mutation would affect a
particular gene, however, is 1 in 10,000 (since there are 10,000 genes).
Therefore, one would need a population of 100,000,000 cells before one of
them would be expected to possess a non-harmful mutation of a specific
gene.
The odds of a single cell possessing non-harmful mutations of five
specific (functionally related) genes is the product of their separate
probabilities. Morris, 63. In other words, the probability is 1 in 108 X
108 X 108 X 108 X 108, or 1 in 1040. If one hundred trillion (1014)
bacteria were produced every second for five billion years (1017 seconds),
the resulting population (1031) would be only 1/1,000,000,000 of what was
needed!
There is a total imprecision of definition here. The claim of five genes
needing to be changed simultaneously is highly suspect. There is a
complete neglect of the vast amount of "junk DNA" present in the genome.
"Junk DNA" may have been functional at one time, but expression was turned
off. To turn expression on and off takes, if I'm correct, a single
mutation.
It's a mess.
Read the references. Your contention that you do not agree is borne out of
ignorance of the research. Like I said, this paper is well-cited. Read the
citations and come back. If you are unwilling to read the references, then
stop speculating.
[...]
When one considers that a structure as "simple" as the wing on a fruit
fly involves 30-40 genes (Bird, 1:88), it is mathematically absurd to
think that random genetic mutations can account for the vast diversity of
life on earth. Even Julian Huxley, a staunch evolutionist who made
assumptions very favorable to the theory, computed the odds against the
evolution of a horse to be 1 in 10300,000. Pitman, 68. If only more
Christians had that kind of faith!
The problem with these calculations is that they assume only one possible
"horse." Imagine you toss a coin many times, then you look in the sequence
of coin tosses for some remarkable pattern of, say, 100 tosses. You then
calculate the probability of *that pattern* arising by chance. You will
conclude that it's impossible, by the argument being used.
If other possible "horses" have been created, we would have seen them
existing today. This is a totally bogus argument. This is called the "non
specificity" argument. This argument works on the assumption that anything
could happen without any considerations if it could actually happen.
Random genetic changes are only one part of the mechanism of evolution.
The process is guided by results, i.e., by the mechanism of life and how
it is impacted by the random changes. Populations diverge when they no
longer gene-mix. E coli is already a very complex organism that shares
genes, if I'm correct.
What "mechanism of life". You arguments are vague. You are making
assumptions here without explaining it.
We don't understand the whole process, but ascribing it to "creation"
simply begs the question. Created. Fine. *How?*
Treating a mystery as if it is a proof for something is a common logical
error. A mystery is a mystery.
The *mechanism* of evolution is reasonably well understood, however, and
post-hoc probability analyses, based on a highly biased selection of
possible probabilities, are no help.
What "mechanism" of evolution is reasonably well understood? Are you
referring to the process of "Natural Selection"?
The first step is to understand how the characteristics of life are
maintained by the genetic code, how life works *without* change. Then how
the code changes. The code changes. We know that. Most of the changes are,
in fact, completely harmless. (Well, maybe not. But not harmless changes
are eliminated quickly, most of them, only a few would survive to birth in
a human, for example.)
Postulating "creation by an intelligent being" as the mechanism of
evolution, avoiding examination of the *mechanism of creation* -- as if it
were simply magic or the equivalent -- postulating continual divine
intervention in the mutation process that takes place with each
individual, without actually doing the work to show that there is a
non-random element in real mutations, is simple laziness.
Goddidit.
We may individually choose to stop investigation with such a conclusion,
and that can sometimes be functional. But sitting here and imagining that
nearly everyone who thinks about these problems is befogged because of
their stupid belief in something radically improbable, according to your
own biased analysis, is actually arrogance, and God doesn't like
arrogance. Have a bit of humility, Jaro, it would benefit you.
Don't say you weren't warned.
Fautly conclusions. Just because I believe in God does not mean I stop
doing good science. Science is the discovery of the truth. If that truth
points to God, so be it, if not, so be it. The father of Modern Physics had
this philosphy. Isaac Newton studied both science and the Bible to know the
"mind of God". What nobler goal can there be?
This idea that God is anti-science is a manifestation of man's rebellion
against God. Nothing can be more asinine.
Jojo
PS. You have a penchant for writing long essays with useless facts to
obfuscate. You appear to be incapable of expressing your thoughts directly.
You make too many assumptions and ran with those assumptions as if they are
true. Gotta confess, debating with you is an exercise in extreme
frustration control. I think you do this deliberately to obfuscate.
