Good morning, all. I'm new here.
I find this particular argument of Behe's to be unconvincing. When I first read
DBB, I was an eager Christian and ID supporter (I'm now an atheist and evolutionist), but I was suspicious that the argument was a false analogy even then. As one or more of you have already mentioned, motorcycles and organic molecules aren't comparable.
But even if they were, we would be faced with only an argument from improbability, and such arguments utterly fail. The reason (which I'm sure someone at some point has already pointed out on these boards) is twofold: retrodiction of an improbable event is tantamount to describing a 1:1 probability, and remarkably improbable non-intelligently caused events can and do occur all the time. All that is required is a sufficient number of opportunities for the event to occur.
To begin with, let’s imagine a hand of five cards dealt from a thoroughly-shuffled deck. The odds of getting any specific combination of five cards are one in 311,875,200 (~0.00000000320641). Long odds, indeed. But every single possible hand combination displays the same likelihood (or unlikelihood, as the case may be!), so to look backward at a dealt hand and proclaim "That hand had only a 1 in 311,875,200 chance of occurring naturally, therefore it must have been intelligently arranged!" is a
non-sequitir, because it essentially amounts to "predicting" with a 1:1 possibility that any hand will show this result! This is why retrodiction of the improbability of past events is completely irrelevant to establishing intelligent causality: one is not actually describing a case of a 1-in-311,875,200 shot, but rather a 1-in-1 shot of an event displaying a probability of 1 in 311,875,200.
Let’s now consider the other reason that arguments from improbability fail: longitudinal opportunity for success. Let's assume that five separate chemical bonding events are required to form a certain amino acid (a simple one like glycine or alanine). We’ll label these events A, B, C, D, and E. To avoid overestimating our chances, let’s arbitrarily assign relatively small probabilities (less than 2%) to each, given only one occurrence of proximity/contact between the requisite atoms:
P(A)=0.0025
P(B)=0.0137
P(C)=0.0154
P(D)=0.0018
P(E)=0.0024
Now, what are the odds of this specific amino acid being formed in one attempt (i.e., given only one chance for each event to occur)? We use the following formula:
P(all events occurring) = P(A) x P(B) x P(C) x P(D) x P(E)
We get a result of 0.000000000002278584, or roughly 1 in 438.6 billion that all the necessary events will happen in one attempt.
A hopelessly long shot, no doubt. But then we wonder: what are the odds of at least
one of these events occurring, if each has only one chance to do so?
We use the formula:
P(A or B or C or D or E) = 1- [P(~A) x P(~B) x P(~C) x P(~D) x P(~E)]
We get 0.035381082189274984, or 1 in 29 that at least one will occur on our first attempt* to randomly construct our amino acid! These odds are much more encouraging. And mathematically, if we give it 29 attempts, we'll certainly get the first of our necessary chemical bonds, and be one step closer to forming our amino acid. Let's imagine that D is the lucky event, and we get a stable organic molecule as a result. Now we have only four more bonds to effect:
P(A)=0.0025
P(B)=0.0137
P(C)=0.0154
P(E)=0.0024
The odds of at least one of these events occurring on our very next bonding attempt is 0.03364163713612, or roughly 1 in 29, again. So let's take our molecule again and give it 29 more chances to pick up other atoms. Done. Second bond formed. So after only 58 total attempts, we've got 2/5 of our amino acid formed.
It's not hard to see how easy it is to build complex organic chemicals, given enough time and opportunities for the necessary events to occur.
-J
*By "attempt" I'm just referring to blind chances for the atoms to bond, floating around and bumping into each other in the primordial soup. It's not meant to convey deliberate manipulation.
Siempre que ensees, ensea a la vez a dudar de lo que enseas.
-Jos Ortega y Gasset
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