It just blows me away that so much intellectual talent is wasted on trying to prove a theory that is clearly proven false from basic mathematical precepts!

I just wonder what breakthroughs would happen in science if this talent was directed to productively finding proper solutions to the origins questions,,,, instead of fruitlessly wasting away in a scientific de^ad end!

It truly makes me sad,,Not only for the wasted brain power,,but also from what I feel is a threat to their eternal spiritual weel being,,,Maybe, in all truth, I should be a lot sadder than what I am for the wasted lives I see!

It is indeed unlikely that someone who had no chance of seeing a cube first would be able to solve it blind. However, even without seeing it first, a blind man with a grasp of the task at hand, a knowledge of the algorithms involved, and a desire to accomplish the goal is still a very far cry from a process with no comprehension of the task at hand, no intelligent input, and no goal.

Look, the point of his example is that it is very unlikely. Definitely the case — I accept his point. I just think his example could be better both quantatively (the odds are probably worse than his example suggests — and yes, that’s just my gut feeling) and qualitatively (an intelligent agent — albeit with a significant physical limitation — trying to accomplish a goal).

Though people can solve the cube blindfolded after carefully observing it, to date I have never heard of anyone solving a rubics cube with no chance of seeing it. (I’m sure a “blind man’s cube” is possible with braille on it, but hey.) Hence Hoyle, who specifically stated that the solvers were “blind” made no error of logic.

“The fossil record show us saltation, stasis, and extinction.”

Well said.

bornagain77 wrote:

“Sir Fred Hoyle also compared the chance of obtaining just one single functioning protein (out of the over one million protein molecules needed for that simplest cell), by chance combinations of amino acids, to a solar system packed full of blind men solving Rubik’s Cube simultaneously.”

With all due respect to Sir Hoyle, we need to tighten up his example. There are several people in the world today who can solve the cube blindfolded, having studied it for a few minutes. Further, a blind man is still an intelligent being with the capacity to understand that there is a goal and to direct his efforts toward that goal. To tighten Sir Hoyle’s analogy, we would have to say that we are dealing with a solar system full of blind men who have been tasked with turning faces of the cube with (i) no knowledge of what is on the faces of the cube, (ii) no knowledge of the algorithms required, (iii) no awareness of the goal, (iv) no inclination to try to figure out if there is a goal, and (v) even if there is a goal, no inclination to direct their efforts towards that goal.

I think you missed the point. First, you are preaching to the choir. I am aware of lot of your arguments and have never disputed them. I was not aware of the IBM computer. The OOL is the biggest of all problems for the materialist because it obviates multiple universes. Even if there were multiple universes, if there no way that life could form then they are still up a creek in terms of a naturalistic explanation.

As I said, I am not questioning the complexity of individual cell organisms. Koonin is primarilyy making the point that a lot of the diversity in individual cell organisms is probably due to hgt which I believe is a similar position that Woese makes.

He also subscribes to Margulis’s Endosymbiotic theory which is highly speculative. However, I believe there is evidence for hgt so this is not a speculative process. What is speculative is that different cell types could have formed this way especially if there are specific processes that are unique to the different cell organisms.

What I am disputing is that this is a major attack on Darwinism. James Valentine makes a similar point and he is considered one of the top paleontologist in the world. He hypothesizes some unique mechanism that is responsible for the Cambrian Explosion and that it in no way can be explained by Darwin’s ideas. However, Valentine believes that neo-Darwinism explains everything after the Cambrian Explosion. This is essentially what Koonin is saying. So it is not necessarily ture that is hard to get an anti Darwin comment out of the scientific community when it applies to the pre Cambrian era. It is after the Cambrian Explosion that they seem to be in lock step.

Excellent encapsulation of delicious quotes about the state of the challenge of life, especially of abiogenesis.

What is surprising about the paper Jerry is that it is like pulling teeth to get evolutionists to even admit the fossil record is overwhelming characterized by abrupt appearance of exceedingly complex novelty,,as well as stability afterwards.

It is quite refreshing for IDers to have such a candid admission of the true state of evidence from a Darwinist, when we are use to such blatant distortions of evidence from them!

Here is a little hint at the problem of Darwinian evolution accounting for the complexity for even a simple bacteria:

The complexity found in the simplest bacterium known to science makes the complexity of any man-made machine look like child’s play. As stated by Geneticist Michael Denton PhD,

“Although the tiniest living things known to science, bacterial cells, are incredibly small (10-12 grams), each is a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of elegantly designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world”.

So, as you can see, there simply is no simple life on earth as naturalism had presumed – even the well known single celled amoeba has the complexity of the city of London and reproduces that complexity in only 20 minutes.

Here are a couple of quotes for the complexity found in any biological system, including simple bacteria, by two experts in biology:

“Most biological reactions are chain reactions. To interact in a chain, these precisely built molecules must fit together most precisely, as the cog wheels of a Swiss watch do. But if this is so, then how can such a system develop at all? For if any one of the specific cog wheels in these chains is changed, then the whole system must simply become inoperative. Saying it can be improved by random mutation of one link, is like saying you could improve a Swiss watch by dropping it and thus bending one of its wheels or axis. To get a better watch, all the wheels must be changed simultaneously to make a good fit again.” Albert Szent-Györgyi von Nagyrapolt (Nobel prize for Medicine in 1937). “Drive in Living Matter to Perfect Itself,” Synthesis I, Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 18 (1977)

“Each cell with genetic information, from bacteria to man, consists of artificial languages and their decoding systems, memory banks for information storage and retrieval, elegant control systems regulating the automated assembly of parts and components, error fail-safe and proof-reading devices utilized for quality control, assembly processes involving the principle of prefabrication and modular construction and a capacity not equaled in any of our most advanced machines, for it would be capable of replicating its entire structure within a matter of a few hours” Geneticist Michael Denton PhD.

To give an idea how impossible “simple” bacterial life is for naturalistic blind chance, Sir Fred Hoyle calculated the chance of obtaining the required set of enzymes for just one of any of the numerous types of “simple” bacterial life found on the early earth to be one in 10^40,000 (that is a one with 40 thousand zeros to the right). He compared the random emergence of the simplest bacterium on earth to the likelihood “a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 therein”. Sir Fred Hoyle also compared the chance of obtaining just one single functioning protein (out of the over one million protein molecules needed for that simplest cell), by chance combinations of amino acids, to a solar system packed full of blind men solving Rubik’s Cube simultaneously.

The simplest bacteria ever found on earth is constructed with over a million protein molecules. Protein molecules are made from one dimensional sequences of the 20 different L-amino acids that can be used as building blocks for proteins. These one dimensional sequences of amino acids fold into complex three-dimensional structures. The proteins vary in length of sequences of amino acids. The average sequence of a typical protein is about 300 to 400 amino acids long. Yet many crucial proteins are thousands of amino acids long. Proteins do their work on the atomic scale. Therefore, proteins must be able to identify and precisely manipulate and interrelate with the many differently, and specifically, shaped atoms, atomic molecules and protein molecules at the same time to accomplish the construction, metabolism, structure and maintenance of the cell. Proteins are required to have the precisely correct shape to accomplish their specific function or functions in the cell. More than a slight variation in the precisely correct shape of the protein molecule type will be for the life of the cell. It turns out there is some tolerance for error in the sequence of L-amino acids that make up some the less crucial protein molecule types. These errors can occur without adversely affecting the precisely required shape of the protein molecule type. This would seem to give some wiggle room to the naturalists, but as the following quote indicates this wiggle room is an illusion.

“A common rebuttal is that not all amino acids in organic molecules must be strictly sequenced. One can destroy or randomly replace about 1 amino acid out of 100 without doing damage to the function or shape of the molecule. This is vital since life necessarily exists in a “sequence—disrupting” radiation environment. However, this is equivalent to writing a computer program that will tolerate the destruction of 1 statement of code out of 1001. In other words, this error-handling ability of organic molecules constitutes a far more unlikely occurrence than strictly sequenced molecules.” Dr. Hugh Ross PhD.

It is easily demonstrated mathematically that the entire universe does not even begin to come close to being old enough, nor large enough, to ally generate just one small but precisely sequenced 100 amino acid protein (out of the over one million interdependent protein molecules of longer sequences that would be required to match the sequences of their particular protein types) in that very first living bacteria. If any combinations of the 20 L-amino acids that are used in constructing proteins are equally possible, then there are (20^100) =1.3 x 10^130 possible amino acid sequences in proteins being composed of 100 amino acids. This impossibility, of finding even one “required” specifically sequenced protein, would still be true even if amino acids had a tendency to chemically bond with each other, which they don’t despite over fifty years of experimentation trying to get amino acids to bond naturally (The odds of a single 100 amino acid protein overcoming the impossibilities of chemical bonding and forming spontaneously have been calculated at less than 1 in 10^125 (Meyer, Evidence for Design, pg. 75)). The staggering impossibility found for the universe ever generating a “required” specifically sequenced 100 amino acid protein by would still be true even if we allowed that the entire universe, all 10^80 sub-atomic particles of it, were nothing but groups of 100 freely bonding amino acids, and we then tried a trillion unique combinations per second for all those 100 amino acid groups for 100 billion years! Even after 100 billion years of trying a trillion unique combinations per second, we still would have made only one billion, trillionth of the entire total combinations possible for a 100 amino acid protein during that 100 billion years of trying! Even a child knows you cannot put any piece of a puzzle anywhere in a puzzle. You must have the required piece in the required place! The simplest forms of life ever found on earth are exceedingly far more complicated jigsaw puzzles than any of the puzzles man has ever made. Yet to believe a naturalistic theory we would have to believe that this tremendously complex puzzle of millions of precisely shaped, and placed, protein molecules “just happened” to overcome the impossible hurdles of chemical bonding and probability and put itself together into the sheer wonder of immense complexity that we find in the cell.

Instead of us just looking at the probability of a single protein molecule occurring (a solar system full of blind men solving the Rubik’s Cube simultaneously), let’s also look at the complexity that goes into crafting the shape of just one protein molecule. Complexity will give us a better indication if a protein molecule is, indeed, the handi-work of an infinitely powerful Creator (Super-Intelligent Designer).
In the year 2000 IBM announced the development of a new super-computer, called Blue Gene, that is 500 times faster than any supercomputer built up until that time. It took 4-5 years to build. Blue Gene stands about six feet high, and occupies a floor space of 40 feet by 40 feet. It cost $100 million to build. It was built specifically to better enable computer simulations of molecular biology. The computer performs one quadrillion (one million billion) computations per second. Despite its speed, it is estimated it will take one entire year for it to analyze the mechanism by which JUST ONE “simple” protein will fold onto itself from its one-dimensional starting point to its final three-dimensional shape. In real life, the protein folds into its final shape in a fraction of a second! The computer would have to operate at least 33 million times faster to accomplish what the protein does in a fraction of a second. That is the complexity found for JUST ONE “simple” protein. It is estimated, on the total number of known life forms on earth, that there are some 50 billion different types of unique proteins today. It is very possible the domain of the protein world may hold many trillions more completely distinct and different types of proteins. The simplest bacterium known to man has millions of protein molecules divided into, at bare minimum, several hundred distinct proteins types. These millions of precisely shaped protein molecules are interwoven into the final structure of the bacterium. Numerous times specific proteins in a distinct protein type will have very specific modifications to a few of the amino acids, in their sequence, in order for them to more precisely accomplish their specific function or functions in the overall parent structure of their protein type. To think naturalists can account for such complexity by saying it “happened by chance” should be the very definition of “absurd” we find in dictionaries. Naturalists have absolutely no answers for how this complexity arose in the first living cell unless, of course, you can take their imagination as hard evidence. Yet the “real” evidence scientists have found overwhelmingly supports the anthropic hypothesis once again. It should be remembered that naturalism postulated a very simple “first cell”. Yet the simplest cell scientists have been able to find, or to even realistically theorize about, is vastly more complex than any machine man has ever made through concerted effort !! What makes matters much worse for naturalists is that naturalists try to assert that proteins of one function can easily mutate into other proteins of completely different functions by pure chance. Yet once again the empirical evidence we now have betrays the naturalists. Individual proteins have been experimentally proven to quickly lose their function in the cell with random point mutations. What are the odds of any functional protein in a cell mutating into any other functional folded protein, of very questionable value, by pure chance?

“From actual experimental results it can easily be calculated that the odds of finding a folded protein (by random point mutations to an existing protein) are about 1 in 10 to the 65 power (Sauer, MIT). To put this fantastic number in perspective imagine that someone hid a grain of sand, marked with a tiny ‘X’, somewhere in the Sahara Desert. After wandering blindfolded for several years in the desert you reach down, pick up a grain of sand, take off your blindfold, and find it has a tiny ‘X’. Suspicious, you give the grain of sand to someone to hide again, again you wander blindfolded into the desert, bend down, and the grain you pick up again has an ‘X’. A third time you repeat this action and a third time you find the marked grain. The odds of finding that marked grain of sand in the Sahara Desert three times in a row are about the same as finding one new functional protein structure (from chance transmutation of an existing functional protein structure). Rather than accept the result as a lucky coincidence, most people would be certain that the game had been fixed.” Michael J. Behe, The Weekly Standard, June 7, 1999, Experimental Support for Regarding Functional Classes of Proteins to be Highly Isolated from Each Other

“Mutations are rare phenomena, and a simultaneous change of even two amino acid residues in one protein is totally unlikely. One could think, for instance, that by constantly changing amino acids one by one, it will eventually be possible to change the entire sequence substantially… These minor changes, however, are bound to eventually result in a situation in which the enzyme has ceased to perform its previous function but has not yet begun its ‘new duties’. It is at this point it will be destroyed – along with the organism carrying it.” Maxim D. Frank-Kamenetski, Unraveling DNA, 1997, p. 72. (Professor at Brown U. Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Biomedical Engineering)

Even if evolution somehow managed to overcome the impossible hurdles for generating novel proteins by totally natural means, Evolution would still face the monumental hurdles of generating complimentary protein/protein binding sites in which the novel proteins could actually interface with each other in order to accomplish specific tasks in the cell (it is estimated in Behe’s “EOE” that there are least 10,000 different types of protein-protein binding sites in a “simple” cell). What does the recent hard evidence say about novel protein-protein binding site generation from what is actually observed to be occurring on the protein level of malaria and HIV since they have infected humans?

Once again the naturalists are brutally betrayed by the hard evidence that science has recently uncovered!

The likelihood of developing two binding sites in a protein complex would be the square of of the probability of developing one: a double CCC (chloroquine complexity cluster), 10^20 times 10^20, which is 10^40. There have likely been fewer than 10^40 cells in the entire world in the past 4 billion years, so the odds are against a single event of this variety (just 2 binding sites being generated by ) in the (entire) history of life. It is biologically unreasonable. Dr. Michael J. Behe PhD. (from page 146 of his book “Edge of Evolution”)

DaveScot:

If I recall correctly the authors, in a different experiment, tried deleting some ultra-conserved (95% – 100%) sequences and those DID have bad consequences for the GM mouse.

Over on TelicThoughts this conversation went along for quite a while, mostly between me and I believe it was Mesk. He reported that thought the majority of ultra-conserved non-coding segments that have been deleted caused noticeable degridation, there have been 9 segments found so far that did not.