All the answers to aniron are intelligent and to the point, but i think his real intention is to de-rail the debate away from the probability argument which the topic is about. Typical behaviour for the not-so-bright amongst the anti-abiogenesis people, lets not support him when he respond in the predictable fashion with an 'argument' right out of Meyers book.
Putting the 'probability argument' against abiogenesis in the grave once and for all
by bohm 51 Replies latest jw friends
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Psychotic Parrot
It was an attempt to derail the thread, which is why i was compelled to call him/her out on it & put it to rest quickly.
Job done
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zoiks
Nice work, bohm! Well stated, and I like the rice analogy.
The 'probability theists' also overlook another simple fact: there wasn't just one opportunity for proteins to form. We're talking millions of combinations and reactions per second, for millions of years.
An example: flipping a coin and getting heads 1,000 times in a row...what are the odds? What is the probability? Pretty damn low, especially with one coin being flipped over and over again. But flip a million coins, once every second, for millions of years. The numbers start to skew in the other direction.
I don't know if abiogenesis is true. But the probability/chance arguments don't hold much water, in my opinion.
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hamsterbait
Whar are the chances of seeing your post in exactly this part of the universe at this moment.
It cannot be an accident.
There IS a God.
But we need to ascertain if "IS" is.
What are the chances of God NOT existing?
There IS a God.
IS IS IS.
So there.
HB
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bohm
Zoiks:
i better make this point before someone else does it: For the coins the probability is about 10^-300 to. A million coins for a million years, each coin searching 1000 configuration a second will search through about 10^20 configurations in that time (give or take some orders of magnitude), so it wont make a dent - the key is to observe that the assumption of 'random assembly' must be verified, ie. one must argue that the conditions of early life was more like a gas of high temperature than of the conditioins that lead to snow-flake formation and other complex phenomena.
In a way the probability argument is a lot of logical fallacies rolled into one. As noted above there is the strawman, but we also have a circular argument: "Abiogenesis is false!", "why?", "Assuming random assembly, the odds are (low-low-number)", "But how can we assume random assembly?", "Because abiogenesis is false!". This is usually followed up by 'shifting the burden of proof' where it is demanded that unless physics can state how life was formed in abiogenesis, the random assembly assumption must be true - but as noted above that would mean we also had to assume design for a large number of illnesses and natural phenomena we do not understand completely.
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zoiks
Bohm - thanks for clearing that up for me!
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Mad Sweeney
What physical laws are ignored by scientists who calculate those sorts of odds and how does inclusion of those physical laws in calculations lead to better odds of abiogenesis happening? I assume you left out the details in your original post because it was long enough already and people who are into science probably already know. It is on the evolutionist who asserts abiogenesis to prove that it is both possible and that it did indeed happen; you can't require others to prove that it didn't. That's no different from believers demanding that atheists prove there is no god. It's bad debate.
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BurnTheShips
Molecules don't combine by chance alone.
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Psychotic Parrot
The laws in question are the laws of electromagnetism, thermodynamics & just plain chemistry (covalent electron bonds, etc). Those are the laws that are left out when the probability calculations are made. With those laws in place, the probability factor essentially vanishes.
An illustration:
Take a ball, hold it in the air, then let go. Now if you take gravity out of the scenario, just think of all the possible directions the ball could travel in? It could go in literally any direction of the x, y, z vector, the possibilities are, while not endless, certainly numbering in at least the billions & the probability that it'll fall straight downwards is incredibly slim. And as BTS pointed out, it's very unlikely to fall straight downwards by mere chance alone. Put gravity back into the scenario however, & the ball will fall straight downwards every time, probability is no longer a factor, it's simply a matter of physics running running it's course. This illustration shows that although the probability of chemicals coming together to form life (even over a period of millions to billions of years) by chance alone is incredibly low, as BTS pointed out it is in fact verging on the impossible, when the laws of physics & chemistry are factored in, it is no longer a matter of probability, but merely a matter of chemistry & physics running their course in their environment. Once you have an environment with certain chemicals & circumstances, chance is no longer a factor, just like with evolution by natural selection.
As for the probability of such an environment existing... well, just look at how vast the universe is, & how common those chemicals are in the universe (thanks to stars) & you'll see how likely it is that life should have happened at least once, which it has.
Finally, i agree, it isn't down to anyone to refute abiogenesis, but rather it is the responsibility of scientists to prove it. And they are working on it. So far they have discovered that it can happen, under a multitude of circumstances, now they are working on finding out if it did happen on this planet, billions of years ago, not an easy thing to do, so you have to admire them for working on such a difficult problem, it takes a lot of effort & diligence.
Oh & one more thing, it is not for evolutionists to prove that abiogenesis happened, as evolution is not abiogenesis. Evolutionists (a term which covers many different fields of study) deal with the many different aspects of evolution, biochemists deal with abiogenesis. Just a minor quibble, but i thought i'd clarify it.
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bohm
Mad Sweeney:
I First off, i want to make it clear this is not an argument for abiogenesis, just as it is not an argument against theism when one point holes in the various claims noahs ark has been found. I am objecting to something i see as really, really crappy math/physics. You wrote:
What physical laws are ignored by scientists who calculate those sorts of odds and how does inclusion of those physical laws in calculations lead to better odds of abiogenesis happening?
My answer is they are pretty much leaving out everything that is NOT some guy who randomly assemble molecules and hope to end up with a modern proteine. Take a snowflake for example - a snowflake would NEVER, EVER form by random putting water molecules together, yet they trivially form under the right circumstances (i may add that snow-flake formation is not completely understood yet!). What we can only say in the case of snowflake is that it cannot happend only by chance, there must be some chemical stuff going on that aid the chrystal growth, and thats it! no odds.
I assume you left out the details in your original post because it was long enough already and people who are into science probably already know.
i left it out because i dont have a clue what it should be. i dont even know what enviroment (ie what simple chemicals) one could expect at the time life is thought to occur.
It is on the evolutionist who asserts abiogenesis to prove that it is both possible and that it did indeed happen; you can't require others to prove that it didn't. That's no different from believers demanding that atheists prove there is no god. It's bad debate.
It is a problem for abiogenesis that we do not know what the pathway to life was, yet the fact we do not have a full picture of how life occured it does NOT mean one can safely say 'well, then it must have occured at random', and then use the chance hypothesis to calculate the extremely low odds and use THAT as an argument for a God or spirit.
Your last post is exactly what (some) theists are doing in this case: They are using the lack of theories to assert that the 'God didit' theory is correct. THATS using lack of evidence to justify a conclusion. The probability argument is just a smokescreen that is used to hide that awfull logical fallacy.