ID and Probability

R

Roman

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A Christian once told me that the chance of abiotic genesis was about as likely as an explosion in a junkyard creating a 747. The probability is so small that it's pretty much 0.

I can't remember my reply, but I know what I would have said now.

Imagine you're in a forest, surrounded by 10 million trees, when a thunderstorm builds up.

There's a bolt of lightning and it hits tree, knocking it down on you, a 1/10 million chance. That's such a small chance of being struck by lightning, it actually didn't happen. Statisitcally– highly improbable. Realistically– impossible.

Except trees get struck by lightning and crush people.

How does this work? The laws of probability tell me it's impossible!
 
Or how about you're driving down the road at 60 plus miles an hour and get crushed by a boulder rolling down a hill onto the road. That happens too. Not as often as lightning strikes, but still.

Anyway. The whole analogy is lame. For several reasons.

One. Pieces of junk aren't self-replicating.
Two. The first self-replicating organic material was not as complex as a 747.
Three. Time, baby, time.
 
Yep. Given an infinite amount of time and space, anything that can happen will eventually happen.

Given a ridiculously huge finite amount of time and space, lots of improbable things end up happening (abiotic genesis).
 
Remember, chance has only to do with the options (mutations and environmental stresses) that natural selection works on. Natural selection is the opposite of random chance. It's a ruthless weeder-out of things that don't work as well as other things.

And yes, the comparison of abiogenesis with the spontaneous formation of a complex structure is completely off base. Abiogenesis and the development of complexity by natural selection are two totally different things.
 
superluminal–
Natural selection is the opposite of random chance. It's a ruthless weeder-out of things that don't work as well as other things.
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In evolutionary biology, much natural selection is believed to be the result of random selection. Look up Hubbell and the null hypothesis. His controversial, but well supported theory, is that much of the biodiverstiy of today is not explained by the niche model but random chance.

It's very counterintuitve, but they have some very pretty and convincing models.
 
Roman said:
How does this work? The laws of probability tell me it's impossible!
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The laws of probability tell you its unlikely, perhaps. But not at all impossible.

The impossible carries a probability factor expressed as 0. As far as everything else goes, all bets are off.

Why else do y'think people play the Lottery? ;)
 
Basically what the God-lovers are saying is that someone has to set the rules of the creation like the physical laws for the hydrogen atom to form and the space time to begin which begets all the other stuff. Since science can not answer how the beginning happened, so everything else is questioned including the flu season happens because God is mad....that is a good argument until you say that yes I believe in God and he said to kill those stupid people...who believe in such nonsense, because God does not have room for them.....:D
 
Americans have become "innumerate." They have no intuitive understanding of numbers. To them the concept of a four or five billion year time span and what might happen during that time from pure choice is totally incomprehensible.

An abiotic genesis has that low a probability during what time span? They've become so innumerate that they don't even instinctively bound their statements with a temporal dimension.

It's the old monkeys-and-Shakespeare scenario. If you wait long enough, anything that is not completely impossible WILL happen.

The earth is so old that life appears to have arisen independently at two different times. They're discovering really odd creatures in fissures and the deepest oceans that appear unrelated to the rest of us. I don't think the final verdict is in on this but it will be interesting to see.
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
They're discovering really odd creatures in fissures and the deepest oceans that appear unrelated to the rest of us.
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There is nothing wrong or the laws of the universe will not be broken, if we find life forms similar to us, out there in the Universe. After all, the Universe does follow the fundamental properties of its own everywhere. The chances are good that our Sun is similar in composition and properties as the other Suns of similar size.
 
Come on! You guys and gals are way off track to Roman's question. Lightning hits a tree because it acts like a "lightning rod." A tree stands vertically 100 or several hundred feet above ground. When lightning - or the potential electric electron potential - builds up inside a storm cloud, its going to burst out and land at the highest structure around that attracts it. A tree, being straight up, acts as that attracter. The moral of the story: When in a thunderstorm in the wilderness, DO NOT seek shelter by running from the rain under the nearest tree - especially the tallest one!
 
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