Complexity, Evolutionists Biggest Problem

by Sea Breeze 46 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  snare&racket

  Ahhhhh.... so you are choosing comfort.

  All the best with that,

  Snare.
• 

  Sea Breeze

  For those interested, the symposium at Cornell that covered 25 peer-reviewed research papers is summarized is this publication.

  The bottom line seems to be that, there is only one possibly beneficial mutation out of a million detrimental ones. A species would long become extinct before the one in a million "beneficial" mutation would become fixated in a genetic population - even after considering all escape devices.
  
  Case in point, the H1N1 virus mutated itself into extinction around 2009.

  So, anyone interested in human health should be quite alarmed by these genetic findings because they show that we are actually falling apart genetically and the long-term outlook doesn't look bright. There aren't any known saving devices that can overcome this tide of entropy.
  
  Genetic science is showing the opposite of what evolution predicts.
  
  
  
• 

  ReadOnly

  It took an army of 128 computers running for 10 hours to process the data required in the 25 categories of molecules that are involved in this "simple cells'" life processes.

  It takes comparable amounts of computer time to process weather models to see what next week's weather likely will be. And even then the expectations aren't always correct!

  Given that next week's weather is so complex and people can't even properly calculate it using a lot of computer time, I'm sure someone has specifically designed next week's weather.

  Surely next week's weather can't be the result of natural processes....
• 

  Sea Breeze

  I don't think that weather modeling software gets the same kind of research findings that we are now regularly getting from the molecular biology and genetic research communities. If it doesn't rain one day, the weather continues. Not so with cells.

  One of the basic reasons why the theory of evolution cannot explain how the cell came into existence is the "irreducible complexity" in it. A living cell maintains itself with the harmonious co-operation of many organelles. If only one of these organelles fails to function, the cell cannot remain alive.
  

  The cell is the most complex and most elegantly designed system man has ever witnessed. Professor of biology Michael Denton, in his book entitled Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, explains this complexity with an example:

  "To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design.

  On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity... (a complexity) beyond our own creative capacities, a reality which is the very antithesis of chance, which excels in every sense anything produced by the intelligence of man..."
  
• 

  Jeffro

  The chance of a pack of playing cards being in any particular order is 8x10^67. By creationist ‘logic’, any shuffled deck of cards cannot exist because the probability of it happening is ‘too low’. The chance of a randomly shuffled deck being ‘in order’ (which you could think of loosely as a beneficial mutation) is exactly the same as the deck being in any other random order. Assigning special meaning to a specific order has no bearing on the actual probability of that order. It is only the probability of a predicted order that is low. Once it has already happened, the probability that it happened is exactly one.

  Improbable events occur all the time. And when conditions are more favourable for particular combinations of improbable events over other less favourable conditions, it is inevitable that complexity will arise. This is particularly the case in chemistry (and by extension, biology), where particular combinations are more stable than others, making them more likely than just ‘random chance’. This is long before you get to the concept of ‘natural selection’ in more complex biological systems.
• 

  Sea Breeze

  improbable events occur all the time.

  No they don't. Successful businesses, lives, governments, dog training.... nothing works like this at all.
  
  If all 108 billion people who have ever lived all started shuffling a deck of cards once per second at the supposed moment of the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, and continued until today, they would still only manage 4.7e28 shuffles, (4.7 × 10 to the 28th)

  The odds of shuffling a deck of cards and dealing them in the original order is 1 in 10 to the 68th power. (Roughly the number of atoms in the universe)
  
  What this means is that every time that a deck of cards has EVER been shuffled, since cards were invented, the order that they ended up was the first time they were ever in that order, or ever will be.

  The kinds of probabilities that evolutionists try to sell is just not being bought anymore. Too much research has been done with the results showing the opposite of what evolution predicts. The evolution hey day is over. Nature is too complex and there isn't enough time.
• 

  Jeffro

  Sea breeze:

  No they don't. Successful businesses and lives don't work like this at all.

  Your response is entirely wrong at every level. Every shuffled deck of cards that currently exists is in an order that is 1 in 8x10^67. Every one of them is an improbable event. And that’s just cards.

  You are confused between improbable events and specific desired outcomes.

  What this means is that every time that a deck of cards has EVER been shuffled, since cards were invented, the order that they ended up was the first time they were ever in that order, or ever will be.

  Wrong again. It means it’s extremely unlikely that two decks would be the same, but there is no mechanism to ensure that every outcome is actually unique.

  Also, the order of a deck of cards does not favour any particular patterns as more stable, so it also is not directly comparable to chemical or biological systems.
• 

  Sea Breeze

  The odds of shuffling a deck of cards and dealing them in the original order is 1 in 10 to the 68th power.
  
  Is the above a true statement ?
• 

  Jeffro

  You’ve rounded off the probability a little more than the slightly more accurate probability I provided, but it’s also suitable for the purpose here.

  But the problem here is that you are assigning special value to a particular outcome, apparently imagining it’s some kind of ‘gotcha’. Back in reality, any order of the cards has the same probability.
• 

  Disillusioned JW

  A fascinating book about how complexity can naturalistically arise from an evolutionist point of view is Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos, by Roger Lewin. The author has a Ph. D. in biochemistry, is a science writer, is a former editor of New Scientist magazine, and was Research News editor of the journal called Science. One of other his great books is called Thread of Life.