"The Edge of Evolution" by Michael Behe

It's really not that hard. Each nucleotide can be one of four bases A,T,C or G. The chance of any one being correct for the enzyme in question is therefore 1 in 4. First nucleotide correct? 1 in 4. Second nucleotide correct as well? 1 in 4²=16. Third as well? 1 in 4³=64. And so on, all the way up to 1 in 4¹⁰⁰⁰. The -1 represents the one chance in this enormous figure that will give you the desired enzyme. If you want any enzyme you can divide the result by 20,000 (that's the estimated number of enzymes possible). It's still a laughingly tiny probability.Edited by Kaichos Man, : add quote.

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"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy." Charles Darwin

It is estimated that there are around 20,000 enzymes. I don't know how accurate this figure is- if you have a more accurate one, please let me know. You want to reduce the figure by 1/3? Go ahead. It's still side-splittingly improbable. No no. By taking all the enzymes into account I'm including any function.

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"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy." Charles Darwin

Let's simplify things and say its the possibility of evolving a human enzyme. There. Now the figures are correct. Show me how wrong I am.

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"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy." Charles Darwin

Computer models can return any result you like. You just tweak the variables until you get the desired outcome. Dawkins "Weasel" is a classic example.Edited by Kaichos Man, : typo

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"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy." Charles Darwin

G'day Drosophilla. I'm sure you are aware that I started a thread entitled "Adding information to the genome". In it I tried (and failed, for the most part) to get some evolutionists to agree to an amount of new information needed to be "seen" by natural selection. My argument was simple: up until natural selection can "see" a de novo genetic structure it can only be built by random forces.Note that this argument does not ignore natural selection; it merely attempts to calculate the amount of new information needed to enable natural selection to enter the equation.A quote from your referred website:"But this argument contains a hidden assumption: that the entire page has to be typed at once, or that the entire amino acid sequence has to be assembled at once. What if you can build it piece by piece?"Same problem. Natural selection can do nothing until there's phenotypic modification. Of course, that can be caused by a single nucleotide switching an existing gene on or off, but that's not creating new information, it's merely modifying existing information.Having said this, I should say that a level should be established in the creation of our gene for a human enzyme at which natural selection plays a role (at that point probabilities become meaningless because there is a directive force). Would natural selection be able to "see" a half-functional gene? Then the probability reduces to 1 in 4⁵⁰⁰ divided by 20,000.It's still workably impossible, even with natural selection factored in.

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"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy." Charles Darwin

Precisely. So how would you learn about design problems in a program modelling evolution? By finding evolution doesn't happen, of course. And what do you do in such a situation? Well the program is obviously defective, so you work on it until it does show evolution happening. It's always easy enough to justify an adjustment to a variable.Dawkins Weasel (yes, I know, it's a toy) is a prime example of this. I mean, what exatly did the "correct letters" represent? Single nucleotides? Wouldn't be seen by natural selection. Genes? Can't be created by random processes. But Dawkins was smart enough to refuse to say what they represented.

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"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy." Charles Darwin

But it is precisely the "inherited traits" that are so misleading and dishonest. SNPs won't be seen by selection (unless they alter existing information). Genes will be seen by selection, but they are too complex to be built by random processes.Mt Improbable can't be climbed because the inheritable traits are either invisible to selection or too complex to occur without selection.Dawkins program is akin to me flapping my arms and saying "There, feel the air pressure under your hands? That's how you fly- it's easy."

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"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy." Charles Darwin

Blimey. Who came up with that? Rene Descartes?I would define genetic information as: "A DNA sequence that plays a role, direct or indirect, in the formation or function of an organism".No doubt this will precipitate a small avalanche of examples that are clearly information, but don't fit the definition.

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"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy." Charles Darwin

Is it, indeed? Well let's take a look at it.I wrote:"Natural selection can do nothing until there's phenotypic modification"You wrote:"Natural selection will not actively select AGAINST a neutral modification (i.e. a change that does not effect a phenotypic change"Hmm. The babble appears to be contagious. You appear to be advocating the creation of complex novel genetic structures by random (non-selective) processes. Fine- Kimura believed in that. The trouble is, if you want to create, say, a gene, you'll need about 1300 'neutral' mutations, not 20. And given that for every 175 mutations, about 3 of them will be deleterious, you're not going to get very far."Beneficial" mutations are too rare to calculate, according to Kimura.

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"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy." Charles Darwin

But you have just stated the purpose of the program: Inherited traits? Variations? Selection? If the program wasn't designed to explain biological evolution then it was designed to con people into believing that it does.

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"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy." Charles Darwin

Point taken. However, the core idea you believe it was designed to show: Is a neat way of side-stepping Irreducible Complexity, in that it assigns selective advantage to each of a sequence of small modifications. No wonder Tricky Dicky used an abstract model for that. The reality of SNPs and genes would soon expose the impossibility of the process. Yes. Given a parallel lifetime

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"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy." Charles Darwin