Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
3 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,819 Year: 3,076/9,624 Month: 921/1,588 Week: 104/223 Day: 2/13 Hour: 1/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Can you disprove this secular argument against evolution?
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1025 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 27 of 293 (803516)
04-01-2017 7:51 AM
Reply to: Message 19 by forexhr
03-31-2017 2:35 PM


On the other hand, you have just 10e43 resources to scan through this space which means that evolution is physically impossible.
There is one obvious flaw in your reasoning, even assuming the numbers are correctly calculated.
On the one hand, you are trying to count the total number of possible arrangements of molecules.
On the other hand, you are trying to calculate the total number of ways this arrangement could be changed. However, the number you actually present is supposed to be the number of possible mutations which could have happened.
Mutation is obviously not the only way in which the arrangement of these molecules can be changed. Environmental changes will also affect this, and the number of possible environmental effects is incalculably large. Your 10^43 should be many, many, many orders of magnitude larger.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 19 by forexhr, posted 03-31-2017 2:35 PM forexhr has not replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1025 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 35 of 293 (803591)
04-02-2017 12:00 PM
Reply to: Message 28 by forexhr
04-02-2017 4:45 AM


C) In a time span of around 4.5 billion years there have been only 10e43 resources available to search for these biologically meaningful collections of matter.
This observation is false, as I pointed out in the post immediately prior to where you wrote this.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 28 by forexhr, posted 04-02-2017 4:45 AM forexhr has not replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1025 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


(1)
Message 128 of 293 (804168)
04-07-2017 2:46 PM
Reply to: Message 120 by forexhr
04-07-2017 10:09 AM


No, what I really mean is "Can an evolutionist provide a reasonable explanation for a gradual development of complex systems without presupposing something that is contradicted by direct empirical science. If system like eyes evolved through a gradual series of tiny steps then why does the step by step removal or deformation of eye components results in blindness and not in some simpler mode of vision? Presupposing that eyes evolved gradually without even considering this empirical question is what makes the evolution theory pseudoscience.
This would only be the case if changes consisted solely in adding new things on top; while everything that was already there remains the same.
If you turned off the internet then the company I work for would stop working. Everything that we do, every work process we have in place, every system that we use is reliant on a functional internet.
It would be silly from this to conclude that we always had the internet. Our company predates the internet, and there are people old enough to remember that. Since the internet became available, however, various organisational and technological changes have happened in our company; and they have all happened in an internet-capable environment. Therefore we've built a whole structure which is reliant on the internet, and which ceases to function without it.
I hope the analogy is clear.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 120 by forexhr, posted 04-07-2017 10:09 AM forexhr has not replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1025 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


(2)
Message 167 of 293 (804721)
04-12-2017 4:42 PM
Reply to: Message 165 by forexhr
04-12-2017 3:41 PM


Given the discussion on this thread one interesting question arises: why people who argue for evolution cannot choose only one of many thousands of bio-sturctures and provide an empirical illustration for the ratio of non-bio-functional arrangements of particles to bio-functional arrangements of particles and then, through simple mathematical calculations, put this ratio in the context of resources available to evolution?
The bigger question is why, every time herebedragons has pointed out the specific flaws in the examples you cite, you ignore it and accuse everyone else of arguing in generalities instead of specifics.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 165 by forexhr, posted 04-12-2017 3:41 PM forexhr has not replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1025 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 219 of 293 (805182)
04-16-2017 5:20 PM
Reply to: Message 189 by forexhr
04-14-2017 2:14 AM


You are calling out for red herrings because this does not change the essence of my argument. But anyway here's the link:
Protein-free spliceosomal snRNAs catalyze a reaction that resembles the first step of splicing - PMC
"Splicing of introns from mRNA precursors is a two-step reaction performed by the spliceosome, an immense cellular machine consisting of over 200 different proteins and five small RNAs (snRNAs)."
That's the first sentence of the paper. You should have kept reading, as the bulk of it seems to be about an experimental demonstration that splicing may be possible without using any of these proteins. If I understand it right, what the writers were trying to acheive was to understand what sort of simpler structure this spliceosome could have evolved from.
This is where your whole probability calculations are going wrong. There isn't only one way to acheive a result; and you rarely need perfection on the first attempt. The processes acheived with such efficiency by complicated protein machinery which is the product of thousands of millions of years of cumulative evolution can be acheived with less efficiency by simpler systems.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 189 by forexhr, posted 04-14-2017 2:14 AM forexhr has not replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1025 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


(7)
Message 265 of 293 (805600)
04-19-2017 2:15 PM
Reply to: Message 264 by forexhr
04-19-2017 12:00 PM


If the vast majority of lottery tickets are losers, if someone would told me that he has the winning ticket I would not believe it until I see verification. Since we don't have the verification that the jump was random, I prefer to believe what is more probable.
Your analogy is flawed. We already know the ticket is a winning ticket - since winning the lottery is supposed to be analogous to a mutation being beneficial. Since most mutations are not beneficial; one that is cannot be a random mutation - it was 'pre-programmed'.
What you're actually saying is that if somebody showed you the winning lottery ticket, you would chose to believe that the lottery was rigged, since this is more likely than someone winning it by chance.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 264 by forexhr, posted 04-19-2017 12:00 PM forexhr has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 268 by forexhr, posted 04-20-2017 3:10 AM caffeine has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024