How long does it take to evolve?

I am curious if anyone could help me calculate this:Let's ignore the enigma of abiogenesis for the sake of this discussion.Ditto for the complexity conundrum which has already been discussed at length on this forum- assume every mutation would happen exactly as needed, in perfect order.I would like to know, approximately how many mutations would theoretically be needed to transform the most basic form of life into a human being?I know it is not easy to count, but I am looking for an educated guess. If DNA alone is 6 ft of microscopic code, that must been quite a bit of evolving right there!Then, let us assume a uniform mutation rate of .003 mutations per cell generation ( I lifted that number from wikipedia- please feel free to point out if I have used it incorrectly).Next, we figure that the life span of a cell is somewhere between a week and a year - (another tidbit I picked up online at biology.about.com ; again, I welcome corrections as needed). Let us assume a uniform rate of 1 month per generation.Once we know the number of mutations needed, the mutation rate , and lifespan, how long would a best-case-scenario human evolution have taken?I think that this is a crucial starting point, and would much appreciate if someone could help provide a layman like myself some light on the subject.Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Put in blank lines.

And responding with intelligent answers.
The reason I think this discussion is so important , is because I have seen far too much irrelevance from both sides of the c/e debate.
In order for evolution to win this debate, or at least this arm of it , they don't need to prove that evolution happened. They just need to prove that it COULD happen.
And in order for the creationists to win, they don't have to prove that creation happened. They just have to prove that e/v could NOT happen.
So i figger, if we could figure out a best case scenario, and there still is not enough time to evolve, we would have ruled out e/v.Unfortunately, it seems as though no one has no idea how to figure out, a) how many of the relevant mutations are needed. b) how long is the regeneration cycle c) what percentage of the relevant mutations are thought to be beneficial d) how long should it take for each beneficial stage to dominate its population e) How many of the beneficial mutations will be thwarted by subsequent fatal mutationsI could start puking out guesses for every one of these numbers, but unless someone can procure some meaningful inputs, I fear that neither camp will be very much impressed from a calculation based on contrived numbers.I do, however, believe, that an inability to provide any estimate whatsoever as to the likelihood or possibility of evolution occurring is a strike against the theory. Perhaps not a fatal blow, but a serious shortfall .

Sheesh.
I am here to investigate the truth for no one but myself. I have heard presentations from both sides of the coin, and I am trying to be intellectually honest by putting my own, independent thoughts out and seeing whether they hold water from advocates of both sides.
Lying? I started with a question, which if answered, would shed light on the subject, at least as I perceive it. ( I know there is much I don't know about this subject. I thought I could use this site some intellectual feedback from people that know more about it than me. ) Perhaps I should have started with that intro rather than giving the impression that I am already sold on e/v. If I were trying to preach, I would understand your disgust. But that is not my intention at all.I didn't get my answer. So I am just thinking out loud how I perceive it.
If I am wrong, if you have the patience to show me where, I, ME, MYSELF, ONLY ME, would like to understand where I went wrong. I am not trying to convert , preach, or any of that. If you have better things to do, I can't say I really blame anyone. But why the disgust?
Am I being dishonest for wanting to understand something?I am interested in honest dialogue. If this site is reserved for people that have already come to the conclusion that evolution is fact, I guess I don't belong here.

I really appreciate your taking the time to actually read my question- seems like you have some interesting things to say. I just wanted to respond with a quick thank you. now I am going to try and absorb your comments.

Once again, I appreciate your taking the time (no pun intended).The paper deals with an observation of stages of species and figuring out how long it took using various dating methods. ie, it took this amount of years to get from point a to point b.
I , on the other hand , am trying to look at the micro-level changes, and to reverse engineer how many changes had to occur to get from point a to point b. Then, we will try and estimate how long each change ought to take on average.Then, my dream is to compare the amount of time it took in the findings of the pnas paper and compare that to the expected timing based on the changes that took place, and see if it matches.

I love you too, my dear.I don't think you understood what I meant by creationists "winning" if etc. But who cares.
I can try to explain, but probably won't have time for about two weeks.
Others understood me just fine.

RazD
I appreciate your dialogue.
When the claim that a q like this is usually followed by a gotcha is made against me, I am incriminated for a crime others may have committed.
For crying out loud, this is supposed to be an opportunity to discuss issues, not an interrogation room in KGB headquarters where every blink comes under scrutiny.
Of course I am going to ask every question that pops in to my head, perhaps some can intrinsically not be answered. I am not that smart, thought out, or cunning.
The attacks against me are so asinine , but I guess it's a price I have to pay to access insightful comments from people like RAZD.
I repeat, I have heard many a presentation from both the evolution side and their detractors. I ought to be allowed to think for myself without being bullied into some evolutionary group think, even if it is the unanimous consensus of a respected community. If its true, let me get there myself. If I am dishonest to myself, I will not send any missionaries after anyone. I promise.

Ok, here goes.
But if this makes sense, I deserve an apology.
Dawkins points out, and I believe correctly so, that toe doesn't prove there was no creator, it just makes it possible for us to intelligently accept that life ( don't nitpick my wording)to exist without .
All I meant to say was, if toe could Happen, ev wins. And if it couldn't, we don't prove creation, but we don't have the viable alternative of ev. If you find another alternative, fine, I was not discussing that.
Pardon my Grammer I wrote this from my phone and it is very hard to get things right. Edited by Lamden, : No reason given.

Dwise:
As I believe I forewarned in one of my prior posts, I was unable to reply until now, as I was traveling . By no means am I ungrateful for the great deal of time and effort that you have put in to addressing both my direct question and the generalities of the subject matter. I would like to at least show you the courtesy that you deserve, namely to read , absorb, and respond as to whether your words have found their mark. I am still somewhat strapped for time, as I have visitors at my home for the next few days. I would like to begin now, and continue when the opportunity arises.Firstly, a short intro is in order. Please understand that this was my first post, and I did not quite know the law of the jungle, and how strictly it is unofficially enforced amongst the beasts. I had no idea the extant of the prevailing attitude of the overwhelming majority of pro evolution members, although a quick perusal would have revealed that. I found this site by Googling evolution and creation debate, and the site name seemed to indicate that this was just that. Naive? maybe. But innocent enough.Now, a little about myself. I was raised religious (not Christian), and I remain so. If this precludes any further discussion, so be it.If not, I share with you that, being a person of reason , I , like many others, was taught that the world testified about the Creator, etc. etc.. , Yet was told by virtually unanimous representation of the scientific community, at least as represented in Wikipedia, that the world can be explained without one. So I decided to investigate myself. The question I posed was original, thought of by myself alone, and I hope to get a chance to elaborate on it if we can get passed this first step.Some religious people believe in God-guided evolution- I have no interest in discussing that, as I don't really care that much how God did it. My only interest is in random, "natural", unguided ev, which I believe to be impossible due to ID and IC. Are these indeed valid confirmations of a Creator, or not? if satisfactorily explained, I will a) admit debunked b) not change my religious beliefs, as they are formed based on an overwhelming collaboration of compelling arguments ( which by nature, is a matter of opinion or choice or whatever) and is not relevant to this discussion. c) I have no interest in evangelising. d) I have no problem being shown wrong, admitting mistakes, or learning new stuff.I hope this is all OK. If not, why prolong the agony?And here we start:

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Your question sounds very much like a common creationist "unanswerable question". An "unanswerable question" is a dishonest fundamentalist proselytizing trick widely used by creationists. It's a question that is designed to be impossible to answer, at least for most of the creationist's victims. Its primary purpose is to knock your opponent's feet out from under him and, by throwing him off-balance, hopefully to make him doubt his own position, thus softening him up for conversion (like I said, I have read their training materials). Secondarily, though in a very close second, they are useful in deceiving an audience by making the opponent's position appear weak, even to the point of making it appear that you have disproven his position.

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I hope I took care of all that.

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Now regard your question in light of all that. You wanted us to calculate how long it would take for single-cell organisms to evolve into humans. In order to do that, we would need to construct a detailed mathematical model of every single stage of that evolution. That would require us to possess complete and highly detailed knowledge of every single stage. Not only does that not yet exist, but the likelihood that we on this forum would be such foremost experts is extremely slim. And even if one of us were an expert, constructing that detailed mathematical model is a non-trivial task, so to expect us to do it immediately off the top of our heads and on the back of an envelope is highly unreasonable..

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OK, this deserves a response: I do not expect anyone to know the actual answer, I am merely trying to point out that from a back of the envelope calculation, the numbers don't seem to come close enough to be a viable consideration. As Warren Buffet once quipped, ( I am in finance), he doesn't use a calculator when he performs valuation calculations- if he can't do it in his head, it's too close, and he doesn't buy the stock.
similarly, my approach was as follows: Ev started gaining traction say 100 years ago. Since then, people have been dying to find some substantial instance of ev, not just specks on moth wings etc, yet nothing has been found for 100 years. So it takes at least 100 yrs to change enough to have something to write home about. In truth,, we could ostensibly go back for all of recorded history and see if anything significant has happened to any species. say 5000 years? 10000? Have Humans changed? Multiply that by the number of changes needed to get from a single cell organism to Humans. Can we guess a minimum number of changes needed by analyzing the amount of info in the DNA code? 3 billion base pairs? So my layman line of reasoning was, even in the best case scenario, if everything mutated with marksmanship accuracy, it would have taken 3 billion times 5000 years to evolve a human, far more time than is widely considered the age of the universe, let alone the age of life.
Now, I know that some things can evolve simultaneously, as was pointed out by one of the commenters on this thread. And I know that over the past 5000 yrs, perhaps there were some insignificant mutations that did take place. But Then again, don't forget that I have allowed for perfect order. In reality, we must consider that all this has to happen randomly, in a succession that is constantly improving, and allow time for natural selection to allow the fittest to dominate.I have no doubt that there are flaws in my reasoning ( a lamden original!), but at the end of the day the numbers seem comfortable enough to allow for plenty of leeway and still be way, way off. I do not ask for an answer, just to show me if and how this particular line of reason is deluded. Why would I defend this if it is clearly wrong, I admit it just may be!)You have given me much to respond to, but this is a good start.

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This keeps reminding me of that incident told in the Pirke Avoth ("Sayings of the Fathers") about the uppity Gentile who was going from one rabbinic school to the next demanding the head rabbi to recite the whole of the Law (ie, the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament) while standing on one foot. Now, it would not have been unreasonable to ask that they recite portions from memory, since memorizing the Torah was a primary skill that they taught (memorizing entire books was common practice even in Gentile academies, as memorizing the Talmud in yeshivas centuries later), but to have to recite the entire Torah in one session would be a non-trivial task and to have to do that while standing on one foot was just plain unreasonable.

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I am curious as to where you read about this... It is actually not in Pirkei Avoth, and not exactly as you quoted, but in the Talmud, and very similar. However, you knew enough to have heard of Pirke Avoth, and of a story of the Sage Hillel. ( Doesn't affect your point, Just wondering... did you see it quoted as such, or have you studied these works?)Edited by Lamden, : No reason given.

You have given me a lot of homework, some I understood, some not. please give me some time to absorb. I hope to check out that website, and get back to you with questions. figure a week or two.
so far, From what you wrote,
I do think I understood: What I meant to say is, that acc. to the way I understand natural selection, the creatures that have mutations that are beneficial to the species will tend to outlive the ones w/o those benefits, and eventually will dominate the population.
This means that it is a much longer route than had it the observed mutations occured "as the crow flies".For illustration purposes only, it would be a far longer process to rearrange a in to b if along every step of the way, the interim product had to be better than the way the product was before. I am not quite saying a feels wrong argument, but a "way off" one. I will have to go back and reread what you said earlier to see if it sufficiently covers my point, at least as far as I can understand. give me time!Edited by Admin, : Fix quotes.

YEdited by Lamden, : No reason given.

No sir!

I am hesitant post in public, lots of witch hunters out there! Maybe in a pm as we get more chummy

a) Jewish, not Christian.b) I agree with much of what you have written in your website. There is no place for "creation science", only "science". So if the creation science is all bogus, to hell with it.c) I also believe that one ought to look at established science, and see if one can find evidence of a creator. I am not sure why that is a false dichotomy. If one could conclude that the world as we know it could not reasonably have come about any other way, that would appear to point to evidence of a creator. If one could reasonably explain how the world etc could occur "by itself", then the world would not be evidence of a creator.This is what I am trying to get from this website, and I think we are engaging in productive conversation.Most directly, I found on your website a program you ran to try and get the word monkey out of randomness. I understood the first part of your explanation, but lost you somewhere in the middle. I was hoping you could take the trouble to answer me in layman's terms, if possible. ( I got some exposure to probability theory when I was studying for my CFA exams, but never had to actually use it, so I am pretty weak . I do remember that it was pretty cool!)To state simply what I don't get is: I want to hypothesize that, for all practical purposes, one can never get complex organization from randomness. The monkey program, modeled after Dawkins methinks weasel sentence, was intended to demonstrate that with NS it is not as far fetched as it seems.What I don't get is, that the program was designed with "monkey" in mind. wouldn't it be more fitting to compare NS to trying to program some unknown word . It could be monkey, bird, or perhaps tyrannosaurus, but not programmed in advance.Now , the most likely answer I would expect is, that each step of NS is intrinsically "programmed " to stay put, as it provides some sort of advantage to the creature. But I don't get that either, as each step towards a "good thing" is hard to believe that it really helps that much. Ie, is a little snub of liver or kidney really so useful to an animal?I think this is a key point that reveals best to you my line of thinking.Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Add blank lines.