Saturday, December 12, 2009

"Last Post on Chance"

I began this series with a post called:
“Nothing Did It”
“Atheism of the Gaps” -
“Es - ka - Pay” -
“Please Read This” -
“Which Came First” -
“Why Would You Choose ID” -
“Chance Did It” -
“That’s Embarrassing” -

I read this by an atheist named Keith. It’s quite interesting in light of what’s been said in this series.

“If we [atheists] find evidence to show something we thought was wrong, we don't hold on to the original belief like leach.”

Mm, hmm.

So, where was I. Oh yes. To rule out the chance hypothesis, it’s not enough to show the probability of an event to be really, really, really low. I've done that and like JD says, in the face of evidence to the contrary, atheists just go off on tangents about Noah's ark and such.

Anyhow, we also have to look at how many chances did the genes and proteins have to form - by chance. This needs to be done because people like Dawkins actually believe (in the absence of any evidence but what else is new) that on early earth the products for building life were fairly jumping on each other vying for the “chance” to be the first to create something new.

Reality holds no such promise. Luckily we can figure out how many chances the building blocks of life had in order to interact with each other and to then, do their thing. In fact, we can know with a fair level of certainty the maximum number of events that have taken place since the Big Bang singularity. Here goes:

. An “event” takes place when an elementary particle interacts with another elementary particle
. Only the observable universe possesses the power to effect “events” on earth.
. There are roughly 10 ^ 80 sub atomic particles in the known / observable universe.
. There have been roughly 10 ^ 16 seconds since the Big Bang
. These events cannot happen more quickly than light can cross the smallest unit of distance. That distance is a Planck length of 10 ^ -33 centimetres.
. The time it takes for light to travel that distance is the Planck time of 10 ^ -43 seconds.

Got that?

. Elementary particles can only interact, at most 10 ^ 43 times per second.
. Since there are 10 ^ 80 particles in the universe and 10 ^ 16 seconds since the Big Bang, in the entire history of the universe, there are a fixed number of chances for the building blocks of life to interact with each other.
. 10 ^ 80 particles x 10 ^ 16 seconds x 10 ^ 43 possible events per second = 10 ^ 139 possible interactions since time began.

Other scientists have estimated that the rate of possible events is significantly lower than this estimate but I’ve used this one because it gives “chance” the greatest opportunity for proving atheists correct.

Regardless, NONE - not a single estimate of opportunities for interactions of life’s building blocks is sufficient in number to allow the chance hypothesis to be a plausible explanation for the creation of life. Why? Because there hasn’t been enough time, not by a long shot, to allow a single protein nor the information necessary to build a suite of proteins required to bring about even a minimally complex cell.

In order to have a better than 50 / 50 chance of creating a single working protein of 150 amino acids in length, a random or chance process would have to generate more than half of the 10 ^ 164 non workable sequences for each workable sequence (If I’m losing you, see my last post).

The problem is, that number is way, way more than the number of events that could have taken place since BB and way, way more than the known particles in the entire universe. In fact to build this protein by chance, the required opportunities needed exceeds the number of possible opportunities by more than 24 orders of magnitude or by more than a trillion trillion times.

Atheist: “Big numbers don’t mean anything.”
Anyone else: “Shut up you fool.”

What all this means is that if every event in the whole universe since the Big Bang was geared to do nothing but string together amino acids (of course they weren’t devoted to this task) of the right length, the number of combinations produced would be just a tiny, tiny fraction, less than one trillion, trillion of the number of events that would be needed to have even a 50/50 chance of building one functional protein, ANY functional protein by chance alone.

To Review:
. The odds of creating a suite of required proteins to build a minimally complex cell by chance alone is 1 chance in 10 ^ 41,000

. The number of possible events since BB, even if they were all dedicated to only one task, that of building the first living cell is “only” 10 ^ 139.

. If we subtract all the possible events in all of history, that only increases the probability of building a minimally complex cell to 1 chance in 10 ^ 40,861.

That means that for any atheist trying to explain the origin of life by chance alone, that person also needs to explain away the fact that the entire universe does not possess enough opportunities for life to arise by chance alone.

Atheist 1: Ya, well, you still haven’t explained which information theory you like so we can discount everything you’ve said and feel secure in our atheism.
Atheist 2: And you believe the Bible so nothing you’ve said in this entire series has any truth in it.

Most if not all atheists will say at this point, “Well, if there is any chance at all, no matter how small, even One chance in a Trillion Trillion that life came about by chance alone, then I believe that life came about by chance alone.”

Atheist 3: “I have to believe that life arose by chance because my world-view does not allow for any other option or any other evidence.”

Dull of mind - Slow of thought.


Ginx said...

And yet they find amino acids on comets...


Your rants need to come with an order of coffee.

Makarios said...

And you think that an amino acid is the same as a protein?

Ginx said...

Proteins are made of amino acids.

You are making biochemistry seem far more esoteric than it actually is.

Ginx said...

I'll tell you what, I'll play devil's advocate and posit that God did it.

What are the implications? Does it have any effect on any scientific paper ever written? Show me what you want changed.

Makarios said...

Show me where scientific papers are in danger of eternal separation from God.

Gorth Satana said...


No. One of the reasons we can discount nearly everything you've said about information is that you don't understand information theory. Because you don't understand information theory, you make huge errors in the area of information theory.
I've given you links to read that would teach you the difference between Shannon information, data and code.
Just because you don't understand information theory is not a reason for atheists to "feel secure in our atheism".

Gorth Satana said...

And it's not "information theory you LIKE", I said "accept" and "are using". Which are different things entirely.

Ginx said...

That's the thing, no one is preaching a science class and saying "but God had nothing to do with it." They're just teaching science, and God is absent from all observed phenomena. So what are you posting about?

Makarios said...

I'm posting about the presence of God. He is found in the answer to the question, "What is the origin of the information needed to build the first living organism?"

Chance as cause is simply not an option.

Ginx said...

Clearly the arbitrary choice of the god Yahweh is the answer. Which gets me back to how fucking ridiculous the Bible is, but you would never dream of discussing that.

If I quoted from a scientific paper that said 1/100th of the stupid things stated in the Bible, you would be on here posting about it. There is clearly no time to analyze your own faith in your criticism of anything that calls your beliefs into question.

Makarios said...

The arbitrary choice? No, no, no. The scientific choice. Chance is out. Predestination is out. Chemical vitality is out. Choices must come from what we uniformly know to be true from experience and knowledge. What we know uniformly is that specified information comes from an intelligent source and only from an intelligent source.

Chris Mackey said...

Information can come from non-guided, unthinking sources.

Makarios said...

What kind of information are we talking about Chris? Can you remember?

Natalija said...

Okay, I'm a Christian (albeit one constantly seeking truth) and I've been scouring blogs, and found you commenting a TON on other blogs Makarios. So I checked yours out and honestly?? I think maybe you should listen to some of these atheists you're so quick to mock because they seem to know a lot more about hard science than you do. If I had to choose right now I'd side with them. I just can't see a clear line of logic or hard facts or in most entries even a basic respect for the regular commenters who are pretty darn respectful of you and and your sometimes irrational rantings. I don't say this to offend, only to say that you might want to generally look a little less eyes-closed if you're actually trying to get anyone on your team. Do you honestly think your arguments are winning anyone over?

Makarios said...

Do you honestly think your arguments are winning anyone over?

No - but you go right ahead, if you want.