The Insuperable Statistics of Polypeptide Synthesis

Debate Room
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Humans have over 20,000 different proteins in our bodies.
The largest of these is titin, in our muscles, composed of 33,450 amino acid residues, all in L form, all with peptide bonds, hence their name, “polypeptides.”

For any original naturalistic synthesis, the first amino acid had to be “selected” from the 20 which make up humans, then the second, and third up to 33,450.
Factor in the probability of L rather than D form and peptide rather than non-peptide bond and you have an a priori probability of 1/20 to the 33,450 x 1/2 to the 33,450 x 1/2 to the 33,450 which works out to about 1 chance in 10 to the 65,000th power.

Richard Dawkins, pre-eminent atheist and evolutionary biologist, admits that 1 chance in10 to the 40th is “impossible.”

A famous statistician declared that 1 in 10 to the 50 is impossible.
10 to the 50 grains of sand would fill 15 spheres out to the distance of Pluto. Imagine getting in a special space ship which can burrow through sand and selecting the one and only unique grain on your first and only try. That is the definition of 1 in 10 to the 50. You don’t get an infinite number of tries.

Moreover, it gets much much worse.

To pretend that groups of polypeptides bonded together in a desperate attempt to explain away the insuperable statistics is hopelessly false, because probabilities don’t change when broken down. Each segment is subject to the same analysis, even worse. You must explain how each small segment somehow benefits the host and how he can then do without it.

Now repeat this for the other 20,000 proteins and enzymes inside us.

You can’t and you won’t even make the foggiest attempt to do so.

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Hate to break it to you, if you can assign a probability, then it’s possible.

What they probably mean is, it feels impossible.

As in, its almost beyond human comprehension.

Either way, this does not lead you to a god(s), nor the supernatural or any other garbage.

You have all your work in front of you.

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Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha … That horse is ready to cook!

He doesn’t get it.

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Why are you assuming all outcomes are equally likely?

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Ah a god of the gaps polemic, we have seen one of those for…well actually they seem to be all the rage.

Now, what objective evidence can you demonstrate for any deity?

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My favourite part of these god of the gaps arguments. is where they imply that not having a natural explanation. somehow means they can simply assume that an unevidenced deity from an archaic superstition using inexplicable magic, is a more likely scenario?

Argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy, again. He keeps decrying atheists for valuing logic, maybe he should learn a little about it.

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It would be like marrying the girl next door; then saying the probability of it happening was 1/(number of women in the world). The probability for you to marry the neighbor vs someone you’ve never met (and will never meet); surely are not the same.

In the case of amino acids; there are electrical forces between them. Some have a positive charge and repel others with positive charges and attract the ones with negative charges. That means all combinations are NOT equally likely.

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Time to stop beating then don’t you think?..Oh hell, go ahead and have your fun then…

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And more creationist canards keep coming from our latest mythology fanboy.

Fake “probability” calculations? Check.

Duplicitous reference to modern sequences, instead of the much simpler antecedent sequences of the past? Check.

Complete ignorance of the prebiotic chemistry literature? Check.

This one’s not even much fun as a chew toy.

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That was shocking from a Chemical Engineer. :joy:

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He keeps calling himself a chemical engineer. I do not think it means what he thinks it means…

(Anybody want a peanut?)

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That’s what I called myself when I was working as a mixologist. It’s the same thing.

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Fair go I snorted a bit of shiraz at that one…

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Hey, I once built a birdhouse in high school shop class. Does that mean I can call myself a structural engineer? :smiley:

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Iranian wine? Really? I never even knew there was an Iranian wine, and I was the mixologist.

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The grape variety of shiraz originated in Persia (modern day Iran). Grown just about anywhere wine grapes can grow, I drink the Aussie variety, I am sure it is still made in Iran, but as alcohol is banned there I should imagine in very small quantities for farm use lest the viticulturalist lose his freedom and some body parts…

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I’m not sure that I understand the OP’s points.

When he talks about the sequences of amino acids, is he falling into the “one true sequence” fallacy that was suggested by Calilasseia in other threads?

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Basically yes, but there is much more to it. There is an ideological problem in his perception.
I’ll try to explain.
Even tho we do use reductionist logic for most of our inquiries, it is only ever used as a useful tool for separating, essentially, levels of complexity. In all fairness there used to be a time where we also made most of our conclusions based solely on those findings.
However it was never said nor implied that nature had to take those same steps that we arbitrary assigned.
Nowadays we use more complex approach when extracting conclusion but we still use reduction as a useful tool.

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Shiraz is also known as Syrah in Europe, South Africa, and South America. The grape has undergone DNA analysis, which reveals that

Syrah was the offspring of the grape varieties Dureza (father) and Mondeuse blanche (mother).

As far as the origin of the grape variety, there story of the Persian origin of the grape seems to lack documentation. Here’s what Wikipedia says:

Legends of Syrah’s origins often connect it with the city of Shiraz in Iran.[10] The former capital of the Persian Empire produced the well-known Shirazi wine[11] and legends claim the original grape was later brought to the Rhône. At least two significantly different versions of the myth are reported, giving different accounts of how the variety is supposed to have travelled, differing up to 1,800 years in dating the event. In one version, the Phocaeans could have brought Syrah/Shiraz to their colony around Marseilles, then known as Massilia, which was founded around 600 BC by the Greeks. The grape would then later have spread to the northern Rhône, which was never colonized by the Phocaeans. No documentary evidence exists to back up this legend, and it also requires the variety to later vanish from the Marseilles region without leaving any trace.[8]

The legend connecting Syrah with the city of Shiraz in Iran may, however, be of French origin. James Busby wrote in his Journal of a recent visit to the principal vineyards of Spain and France an excerpt from the 1826 book Œnologie Française; “according to the tradition of the neighbourhood, the plant [Scyras] was originally brought from Shiraz in Persia, by one of the hermits of the mountain” called Gaspare de Stérimberg.[12]

Another legend of the grape variety’s origin, based on the name Syrah, is that it was brought from Syracuse by the legions of Roman Emperor Probus sometime after AD 280. This legend also lacks documentary evidence and is inconsistent with ampelographic findings.[8] Another proposed etymology links it with the Proto-Celtic word *serra, “billhook”, presumably because the billhook was used in pruning.[13][14][15]

(Syrah - Wikipedia)

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Thank you for clarifying that.

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