Speaking of probabilities, how did the ID crowd calculate them again?

Take one long chain protein that performs a specific function, then calculate how probable it is that it would spontaneously appear.

Would it not be easier and more relevant to start small?

For example: How many possible peptides are there that are 10 amino acids long? That would be about 20E-10, right?

Now out of all these peptides, how many are chemically reactive?
Out of all those, how many of those are biologically relevant? What functions are they capable of performing? What reactions can they catalyse?

Because if there's one thing I've found out about proteins, it's that there's a bunch that are shorter, that are capable of catalysing the same reactions. Eg. The Stoffel fragment of Taq polymerase is 289 amino acids shorter than the native Taq polymerase and can still perform exactly the same functions. In fact there's a bunch of homologous proteins out there that can perform exactly the same functions as every single protein in your body and yet have a different sequence of amino acids. For example, a haemoglobin from a human performs exactly the same job as a haemoglobin from a pig or mouse, and yet has a different amono acid sequence. So how many combinations of amino acids chains are there that can produce biologically active molecule? Lots*

The odds of short-chain peptides and functional proteins spontaneously appearing just got smaller.

*(actually "lots" is a somewhat of an understatement, but you get the idea, however we cannot put a figure on it yet as we haven't been able to test them all)

Hi Poly,
I finally had the time to read through this thread, not sure if I can continue to post here but I’ll follow the discussion as much as I am able atm.
I found to my relief that there are many refreshing posts here and wonderful links such as the ones posted by RObert and AJ.

Perhaps I’m missing something (after all I’m just a rib), but how come that creationists have no problem blindly believing that life was created out of dirt by a very complex, invisible being, even though this being didn’t provide any explanation how he did this; but refuse to even consider that life originated out of dirt through natural forces when scientists suggest this and can explain intelligibly how this could’ve happened (see AJ’s video on abiogenesis)?

Even before Darwin’s time, philosophers (e.g. Hume) already understood that improbability is not evidence of design even though they were not aware of an alternative.

Besides, it looks like Hoyle didn’t consider that life assembled by a combination of things, such as natural forces (law of physics) and not by chance alone.
Your poor typing monkeys are working by change alone.

Celivia,

Maybe not only Monkeys err at typing. Perhaps, being taken from Adam's rib, should have been typed as, "isolated from Adam's rib-onucleic acid"? I am a pathetic typist, as many of our friends OLO know and can well testify. But, being a primate, I have an excuse.

Then again, if humanity is made in God's image, and humans are primates; inversely, do we have the inference of God replicating Cheetah's poor typing skills in Genesis?

Ekkk!

Oly.

Poly,

FYI:

http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/PX/Views/Exhibit/narrative/monster.html

Oly.

Celivia's new name 'RIB' :) or should it be eye fillet? quite yummy and very tender!

Cel, I can't answer all those questions. I can add to them though. 'why this..why that.. why not such and such' there are truckloads.

But to address one thing.. we don't 'blindly' believe anything. As I've tried to show in most of my posts, the resurrection of Christ is a very well attested event of history, that is the primary validification of Genesis. You might call it our main reference point.
That's all I can really say on that. The message of Genesis (to address Oly's questions) is not the processes involved so much.. but the fact of Gods creation.

The Genesis position on the unification of Gravitation and Electromagnetic forces is.. 'no comment' :) what in the world would the Creator need to explain that to early man for?

Bugsy... that was getting close to a constructive post. Well it was constructive, but if you could be more specific it might help.

I see where ur going with that, but I'm not sure you are estimating the actual probabilities of all those peptides being in the right place and the right time. It still comes back to 'n' chemicals and forces/influences swirling at random. As I typed that, it occured to me that some 'swirling' could in fact accellarate any possibilities.. reducing the negative probability.. adding this to the 'simultaneous' argument rather than sequential..and you have the embryo of a reasonable argument. (on face value)

Well, hallelujah Poly, you just reinvented the wheel (evolutionarily speaking). The argument is fact well past embryonic, but it isn;t yet mature, as we cannot assign values to the probabilities as yet. But we know we are dealing with very large numbers when we talk about functional polymers (ie proteins and nucleic acids).

I'm not sure how specific you want me to get on this. But imagine if you will a primordial soup filled with a bunch of amino acids. Suddenly a short chain polypeptide (say 10-20 amino acids in length) wraps itself around a magnesium ion and in the process renders it unable to catalyse certain reactions (it can catalyse hundreds of different reactions), but it's left with a marvelous ability to catalyse the linking of amino acids into long chains. Because the magensium ion doesn't catalyse all the the other reactions it used to, it tends to do this amino acid polymerisation at a much faster rate than it did before. In this way, proteins can add specificity and speed to certain reactions. Imagine if you will a similar protein (short chain peptide) doing the same for nucleic acids, just randomly producing long strings of the stuff. Nucleic acids can also replicate relatively easily because they pair up. Then you have the begininngs of protolife, a soup filled with long strands of replicating nucleic acids and proteins. Each molecule of which can cataylse different reactions.

However, they don't have to produce 'life' just yet, they just have to be able to replicate themselves and they can do this in various ponds etc for millions and millions of years. Remember that each chemical reaction can take a nanosecond and there are billions (trillions, quadrillions, Brazilians?)of them going on simultaneously.

The numbers are large and the probabilities are difficult to calculate, but we are pretty damn certain that they are much more probable than what the ID crowd will argue.

No, we don't KNOW, but then again, I don't KNOW what the last thing you ate was, but I'm pretty sure that you did eat something.

Ah, but Bugsy - Porkyboaz KNOWS that the Resurrection of his Lord Jesus Christ somehow proves in substantially literal terms the Biblical Genesis account. As you're undoubtedly aware, this is actually an elaboration of the 'post hoc ergo procter hoc' logical fallacy, where something is held to be true by virtue of some antecedent.

In this case the antecedent is a myth, which renders the logic not only fallacious but also invalid in any objective terms.

Faith conquers reason in the end, I guess. And we know that Porky essentially utilises OLO as a missionary soapbox, so I think full credit should be given to Bugsy and others who persistently refutes the rubbish that Porky posts.

Personally, of late I'd mostly rather make fun of him than waste my time with serious argumentation. We go through the same old crap with Porky under various iterations (and aliases) but his output doesn't change: Biblical non sequiturs, Islamophobic hate-mongering and xenophobic rabble-rousing - in no particular order - that provide amusement but doesn't change anything.

I once did a straw poll of OLO users, asking everybody if they'd been brought closer to God via any of Porkyboaz's contributions - and absolutely nobody responded in the affirmative. As I recall, it wasn't too long after that he morphed from BOAZ_David into Polycarp.

Not that it's made any difference.