Are you a biochemist? Are there no mechanisms or syntheses that are simple? Can I yawn away terrible arguments? I mean, just what ARE the rules?
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I didn’t. I asked why you assumed independence. Also:
- Presumably you also used the naive definition of probability as well.
- Also shouldn’t there be more than one order in which these can be constructed? Your calculations don’t seem to reflect that.
I have no idea. Aren’t there differing electrical forces between them?
I’m confused, it either has happened, or it is impossible, those are mutually exclusive positions?
Again I should love to have seem present his maths for scrutiny, that lower these odds he thinks are insurmountable, by adding a deity he hasn’t even tried to demonstrate any objective evidence for, using inexplicable magic, how do you even start to demonstrate the probability of that? I guess we won’t know until a visiting apologists attempts this, instead of using yet another argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy, as Bullwinkle did here again of course.
“We can’t explain or don’t understand X, therefor god”…same old same old.
A fallacy with your argument is that you seem to believe this one protein (with it’s specific sequence) is specifically required for human life, so the fact that it exists is like winning the Powerball lottery a hundred times in a row or something.
But this isn’t true.
As was pointed out on this forum in another thread by Calilasseia, let us instead talk about insulin. Insulin is a long, complicated protein that helps us regulate and utilize sugar.
A diabetic does not produce insulin, so we can substitute it with insulin from a cow or a pig . . . and these insulins (which don’t occur in humans) are chemically different from human insulin, yet they work just fine. I strongly suspect that dog insulin, goat insulin, and sheep insulin would probably work just as well (or, perhaps, even better) than pig or beef insulin . . . even though these types of insulin will be different from what humans naturally create when we don’t have diabetes.
The point is that there are many, many proteins with vastly different amino acid sequences that can function, so the argument that life would fall apart if this one specific protein never occurred is not true.
This fallacy is rather like talking about the alphabet for the English language. There are (mathematically) an infinite number of symbols that could be created to symbolize the sounds and rhythms of English, but this doesn’t mean that we couldn’t communicate in writing if nobody invented the “A” or “B” letters.
The Cyrillic alphabet, the Greek alphabet, and (probably) the Mandarin Chinese alphabet could be used to write in English just as well . . . like when we romanize Japanese words such tsunami, bonsai, or kimono (which have become incorporated into English).
In a like manner, even though proteins formed and they were used . . . it doesn’t mean that we won some lottery with near impossible odds.
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“The point being, that Borel’s Law is a “rule of thumb” that exists on a sliding scale, depending on the phenomenon in question. It is not a mathematical theorem, nor is there any hard number that draws a line in the statistical sand saying that all events of a given probability and smaller are impossible for all types of events.”
From same site, and by Emile Borel himself.
From Probability and Certainty, p. 124-126:
The Problem of Life.
In conclusion, I feel it is necessary to say a few words regarding a question that does not really come within the scope of this book, but that certain readers might nevertheless reproach me for having entirely neglected. I mean the problem of the appearance of life on our planet (and eventually on other planets in the universe) and the probability that this appearance may have been due to chance. If this problem seems to me to lie outside our subject, this is because the probability in question is too complex for us to be able to calculate its order of magnitude. It is on this point that I wish to make several explanatory comments.
this process of evolution involves certain properties of living matter that prevent us from asserting that the process was accomplished in accordance with the laws of chance.
In short, Borel says what many a talk.origins poster has said time and time again when confronted with such creationist arguments: namely, that probability estimates that ignore the non-random elements predetermined by physics and chemistry are meaningless.
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This poster has been banned.
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I don’t say it often enough, but well done on an excellent job. His posts suggest he was not seeking honest debate, and in the unlikely event I want to be preached at I will go find a church.
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I am sorry he got banned.
As I’m still new to this forum stuff (I developed computer literacy late in life, and I have learning disabilities), he wasn’t banned because he disagreed, was he?
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I am not, he was a bigot, and he was trolling.
No, he was banned because he was trolling for a reaction, using sweeping bigotry about atheists. He posted little of any value, and the claims he did make were sweeping irrational pieces of grandiose verbiage. Poorly reasoned, and offered in a slightly nauseous self aggrandising tone. He might need to see an Osteopath after slapping himself on the back that much.
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Ok. Thank you very much for clarifying.
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So, you decided that you were going to dump a pile of creationist lies into the Random & Fun section, in a failed attempt to evade the withering scutiny that your lies would have been subjected to, if you had posted them in Debate Room … once again, we can always count upon a creationist to exhibit duplicity.
Let’s deal with your garbage in detail shall we?
The idea that a creationist is in a position to deliver science lessons, is a joke. As is your foetid collection of apologetic fabrications.
And apparently something you didn’t bother to learn, when copy-pasting your second-hand creationist rip-off of Wikipedia, is that the connectin protein in question exists in a number of different splice isoforms. This means that during the transcription process, one or more exons may be omitted from contributing to the finally synthesised protein. Indeed, once more, even Wikipedia links to the proteome database entries for those different isoforms. For example here is Isoform N2BA, the gene for which which has 34,350 base pairs (scroll down the page for the full sequence). That corresponds to a protein containing just 11,450 amino acids.
Next, we have transcript variant IC, the gene for which has a whopping 109,224 base pairs, corresponding to a protein containing 36,408 amino acids.
Next, we have transcript variant N-2B, the gene for which has 82,029 base pairs, corresponding to a protein containing 27,343 amino acids.
Next, we have transcript variant N-2A, the gene for which has 101,520 base pairs, corresponding to a protein containing 33,840 amino acids.
Next, we have transcript variant novex-3, the gene for which has merely 18,220 base pairs, corresponding to a protein containing just 6,073 amino acids.
Other isoforms are known, the above is by no means an exhaustive list.
So, already, your failed attempt to peddle the tiresome and duplicitous creationist canard known as the “One True Sequence” fallacy fails, even before we start looking at the homologous gene in other species. Though that’s an exercise I shall leave for the diligent if they wish to pursue it. In the meantime, since it’s obvious you never learned that we’re wise to this garbage you just tried to sneak under the radar, I cover both the Serial Trials Fallacy and the “One True Sequence” fallacy in the Google Docs document supplied in this post.
We have long experience of creationist lying.
Moving on …
Apparently you forgot that this is accomplished by the action of ribosomes, which are enzymes that perform the requiite chemistry with a high degree of fidelity. In your eagerness to post your apologetic garbage, you also forgot that once the gene for the protein exists, ribosomes will perform the requisite chaining of amino acids in accordance with well understood rules of chemistry.
Let’ see what other garbage you’re serving up shall we?
Not when a ribosome is acting. Forget that little detail, did you?
Oh look, it’s fake creationist “probability” calculation time, folks!
Two reasons this excrement of yours fails. One, if you’re trying to conflate evolution with abiogenesis (a familiar and mendacious creationist tactic), then your fake “probability” calculation fails, because scientists do NOT postulate that modern molecules appeared de novo from prebiotic chemistry. Instead, they postulate that FAR SIMPLER ANTECEDENTS were formed first, and additional complexity was added in incremental stages later. Indeed, this has been found to be the case for the ribosome itself, courtesy of this peer reviewed scientific paper:
Evolution Of The Ribosome At Atomic Resolution by Anton S. Petrov, Chad R. Bernier, Chiaolong Hsiao and Loren Dean Williams, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 111(28): 10251-10256 (30th June 2014) [Full paper downloadable from here]
From the beginning of that paper:
What was that I said about simpler antecedents acquiring additional complexity later?
The other reason your fake “probability” calculations fail, is, once again, because the action of a ribosome during translation and transcription isn’t “random”, it proceeds in a well-defined orderly fashion.
Do you even bother learning anything substantive about the issues you posture as being in a position to lecture us on?
Moving on …
Crap. See above. Ribosome coupling of amino acids once a gene exists isn’t “random”, and prebiotic chemists don’t postulate that a protein this huge emerged de novo from prebitoic chemistry. That’s two reasons your assertions are not merely wrong, but mendacious.
Another lie. Oh wait, the problem of chirality in organic synthesis was solved in the 1960s by a Japanese chemist, who received the Nobel Prize for his work. Again, the creationist fetish for “random chance” is bullshit.
Someone else has already exposed your lies about Borel in detailed yet succinct manner, so comment on this from me is superfluous here.
All of whch are the products of well understood chemistry. You have heard of chemistry haven’t you?
Except that you’re not presenting a “rational examination of the occurrence being considered”, you’re presenting a wildly and mendaciously inaccurate strawman caricature of actual biochemistry.
Except that once again, te action of ribosomes in the presence of an existing gene isn’t “random”.
Plus, you obviously don’t know what the word means in rigorous scientific circles. Oh wait, I cover this in detail as part of Canard #10 in my list of creationist canards, which includes a detailed exposition of how scientists use the word “random” in proper, rigorous discourse, along with a brief exposition of Markov Chain processes, which are used as part of the process of defining statistical random variables. See this post for the link to the extensive Google Docs document I provide on this subject.
Try all the details I’ve provided above.
I just did. read the above and fucking weep.
You mean the way you did with your duplicitous apologetics?
You mean the way you yawned away the whole business of transcription that I mentioned above, not to mention all the findings of prebiotic chemistry that destroy your pathetic little creationist masturbation fantasies?
Crap. All you presented was the usual brand of creationist apologetic horseshit.
Apparently you’ve never heard of the Establishment Clause either.
WRONG.
Heard of selection have you? Which is anything but random?
And once again, try learning what scientists ACTUALLY mean when they use the word “random”.
Selection is a high pass filter. Learn about it.
Projection much, mythology fanboy?
Again, projection much, mythology fanboy?
The way you didn’t admit that your apologetics were a steaming pile of lies?
The only stench here, is the stench of your creationist duplicity.
Not the mendacious sort we see all the time from mythology fanboys like you.
Lie.
We know from past experience, that some of your ilk are genuinely stupid enough to believe the gibberish you dump here from your soiled intellectual nappies.
But we also know that it IS gibberish.
Most of us have never bothered visiting Christian message boards, let alone posting therein. The last time I even saw one of your outposts of crazy was about 7 years ago, when I had the misfortune to be pointed at Rapture Ready by one of your ilk. That place is diseased.
Says the mythology fanboy who launched into a lie-riddled creationist diatribe with his first post. Projection much, mythology fanboy?
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I was waiting for you to take up cudgels on this one…entertaining and informative. Poor little MFB, his arse must be soooo painful right now, but, that is god’s plan I guess!
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Calilasseia is on the case… I don’t have to go an look anything up. LOL
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I read some of his posts .Usually trolls are bored or want to take their anger out on the internet. I love this advice poster “Never feed the trolls” because they only waste time and they enjoy angry comments which are thrown at them .
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I’d agree to a point, and nothing this guy offered was new of course, but I usually try not to focus on the trolling, but rather address the points so that a) I am engaged in an exercise of fact checking, and subjecting arguments (mine and others) to critical scrutiny. Also there will be neutral readers who won’t directly engage in the debate, and it might be useful for them to see irrational and weak arguments exposed as such.
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This. My journey from a condition of believing that I believed in a god to becoming an atheist was helped a lot along the way by reading newsgroups (the old-school type of discussion forums, before the WWW dominated the landscape) and mailing lists that contained repeated debunking of things like creationist claims, religious claims based on e.g. the bible, alternative medicine claims, supernatural claims, alien stuff, new age shit, etc. By reading the responses to these claims written by people much more knowledgeable than me, i learned a lot, and it helped me to see through all the bullshit. So yes, I can attest that just refuting or debunking claims can indeed have an effect on the passive readers that don’t post anything.
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Ironically it’s a quite an interesting point that was missed by this clown, which is why highly educated and intelligent people choose to hold a subjective religious belief, a standard for credulity they would never accept in their professional lives.
He was simply parroting an argument he’d ripped off from somewhere and someone else in all likelihood. I doubt he even realised it was an irrational appeal to authority fallacy, or cared.
As others have implied context here might lend a clue, and the changing attitudes towards religions and religiosity generally. Most people who care, will know a no one wins a Nobel prize alone, there is enormous competition for funding for research, and for much of the time that Nobel prizes have been offered, a public declaration of atheism might well have ruined or at least hampered a career for example, though this for me while interesting to examine, is of course less relevant to the claim, than it’s obvious irrationality.
A more interesting stat, and for a variety of reasons, would be to compare the level of theistic belief among Nobel laureates and how it might have changed over the time the prizes have been awarded. As I say it was obvious from his very first post that guy had zero interest in honest debate, and was here to indulge his bigoted views of atheists and atheism. Ironically this made his arguments even easier to expose as weak and poorly reasoned.
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The synthesis of proteins is not a “random” event. Today I read an article about the formation of amino acids in a non-life environment that may eventually lead to the formation of single-celled algae. The Judeo-Christina deity doesn’t have a monopoly on creation. The Abrahamic “God” rose out of the pantheon of deities in ancient Mesopotamia. Go anywhere in the world and anthropologists will show you that every culture has a creation myth.
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Who built that? God???
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