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Originally posted by CM:
What would the chances be for a single cell to be created.
If i remember correctly from bio class it was 10000 million to 1.
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Hmm. Well, CM. You are talking about the initial creation of organic materials and of living organisms. Not about evolution. Evolution is concerned with how living organisms have diversified after they first appeared. This is another fundamental misunderstanding which is a hallmark of the creationist model. If you wish to return to this old, debunked argument, you'll need to address it towards biology and biochemistry instead of evolution. But evolutionary theory per se assumes the existence of life and deals with its continuation after an unspecified origin.
In any case, the kind of calculations that you cited are not relevant. The computation of your probabilities does not take into account the intricacies of natural selection. Before I get on to that, let me give an observation on your method. The core problem is the issue of trying to calculate the probability of something that already happened. Probability theory states that, before one can accurately calculate the probability of a particular event, one must know all possible outcomes that could happen in place of that event. Is that known here? Of course not. The absurdity of this argument can be illustrated when one realises that similar methods can be used to prove the impossibility of, say, a snowflake forming (much less the billions of snowflakes that regularly appear). Again, we are dealing with the fact that matter is governed by a certain set of physical and chemical laws. And that is what allows these things to happen.
Alright. So what about the probability you cited? Well, what's wrong here is that nothing of the sort has ever been correctly demonstrated. What if there was a mechanism which recognised those chance arrangements which looked useful and preserved them? In fact, the mechanism to preserve the new assemblage would be similar to the way in which natural selection works in the biological world. The usual fallacy is that the "mathematician" in question makes the invalid assumption that that the early Earth contains only enough organic material building blocks to form a single DNA molecule. Plus the misunderstanding that those attempts to build such a molecule happen one at a time, and that these attempts are made at random. This is utter nonsense. DNA is a self-assembling molecule. Natural selection is not random, nor does it operate by pure chance. Natural selection preserves the gains and eradicates the mistakes. This in itself makes the probability of self-assembly much, much higher. In fact, the mathematical probability that a simple molecule of DNA will self-assemble is far greater than the probability of any particular hand of bridge being dealt from a deck of 52 standard playing cards. Yet nobody refuses to believe it when a hand is dealt. Plus there were oceans of molecules working on the problem, and no one knows how many possible self-replicating molecules could have served as the first one. So any calculation of the odds (including yours) of the origins of life is worthless unless it takes into accounts three things. Firstly, it has to recognise the immense range of starting materials that the first replicator might have formed from. Secondly, the innumerable different forms that the first replicator might have taken must be taken into account. Finally, the fact that much of the construction of the replicating molecule would have been non-random to start with. Precisely because these facts have not been taken into account in your calculation leads to the use of exaggerated probabilities.
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Originally posted by CM:
Now comes in the gambling part would you gamble on the basic fact that it takes 10 000 million years just to create a cell, what would be the odds of created millions of different species and various sub categories.
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But we are not given these odds in the first place. They are simply asserted without any supporting evidence. In fact, the whole argument is based upon a faulty premise. Therefore, it doesn't figure into any rational discussion. And so there are no insurmountable theoretical problems for the person who proposes that inorganic self-organising chemicals eventually produced organic life. The chemical environment on the surface of the earth four thousand million years ago was reducing, not oxidising as it is now. The material inputs for the development of complex carbon molecules were available. The temperature conditions were appropriate. The size of the planet meant that its gravitational field was neither too strong nor too weak. It is a highly plausible scenario. It makes sense.
[This message has been edited by Renaissance (edited July 29, 2001).]