COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

The Truth About Darwin


You Can't Handle The Truth

Slimslowslider said over at BC: "are we or aren't we the roll of the dice, that is the question.'


OK, the opening is a little melodramatic but the fact is that people on both sides of the issue of Darwin's theory of evolution can't or won't handle the truth. But I know the truth about Darwinism and I can handle it.

Darwin's theory stated as succinctly as possible is:

Random Mutation operating through Natural Selection explains the Origin of the Species.

When I was first asked about the scientific validity of Darwin's theory I had to say that I did not dispute the concept of evolution. After all, it is easy to see one's biological antecedents in other, older species. But I did question Darwin's theory of it. I thought Darwin's theory needed to be tested scientifically. And, so, the first order of business was to see if any of the terms within the theory could be tested objectively.

The terms available for testing are Random mutation, Natural selection, and Species. I rejected Natural selection and Species because the definitions are too loose to be called objective. That left Random mutation. But I was leery of the 'mutation' part of the term as also being too loosely defined.

That left the term 'Random.' Now this is a term that one can work with objectively, that is, if you think of mathematics, actually Statistics, as scientifically objective.

In Statistics, probability is the relative possibility that an event will occur, as expressed by the ratio of the number of actual occurrences to the total number of possible occurrences.

Take, for example, a roulette wheel. It has 36 numbers and a couple of zeros making for 38 possible spots for a ball to land on when the wheel is spun.

It is assumed that the chance of landing on any particular number is the same as any other number. So the chance of landing on any particular number is 1 in 38.

1 in 38 isn't much of a chance but people do win. To win twice in a row the chance increases the chance to 1 in 38 x 38 which = 1 chance in 1444.

To win 10 times in a row the chance increases to 1 in 38 x 38 x 38 x 38 x 38 x 38 x 38 x 38 x 38 x 38 which = 1 chance in (Well, you know what? My calculator can't handle the truth)

Let's back off to the biggest truth my calculator can handle: 5 wins in a row. So, the chance of winning 5 times in a row are 1 in 38 x 38 x 38 x 38 x 38 which = 1 in 80 million. Now, if a guy told you that he won 5 straight rolls on the roulette wheel you would say that the guy is full of shit.

Now a statistician might say it could be true if the guy played one spin of the wheel every minute of every day for for 152 years. Then there would have been 80 million spins of the wheel and, so, there would have been an even chance of that happening or not happening. (Please, no nit pickers here. I'm trying to get the major point across)

If you've followed me this far (wake up, Doug) then maybe you can see that I became suspicious of, say, human DNA, which has 3 Billion base pairs, assembling itself randomly. Still, an intuition is not proof. And the proponents of Darwinism say that I just don't comprehend how much time nature has had to do this. We need hard numbers.

The first and hardest number to be determined is: How many "spins of the wheel" or events has nature had to work with?"

Here's how I eventually worked it out. Truth is, I don't know and will never know how many events nature has had to work its magic. But I have found a way to calculate the maximum number of events that she has had to work with and if the maximum number does not give an even chance of assembling Human DNA then no lesser number will accomplish it either.

So, let's have a go at finding out that number. It's really not that hard when physicists have already done all of the heavy lifting, as it were.

Let's define an event. It's when something happens. Physically, something must move.

How many "somethings' are there in the universe?
Answer: no. of Particles in the universe: 10^80

How long have they been moving, in seconds?
Answer: Age of universe in secs: 3600 x 24 x 365 x 15,000,000,000 = 10^17

How fast are they moving?
Answer: Speed of light in m/sec: 10^8

How far must they move?
Answer: Smallest measurable distance in universe: a Planck length: 10^-35 m

Question: How many times could all of the particles in the universe moving at the speed of light for 15 billion years travel a distance of one Planck length?

Answer: 10^140

I can calculate what the odds are assembling Human DNA randomly but I would rather start with a simpler analogy from which we can infer the truth.

A typewriter has 26+ keys; Let's say 32 for convenience. How many keystrokes could be typed accurately using a random selection process before the chance of success exceeded 1 in 10^140?

I've worked it out for you: 93 keystrokes.

Now, consider the 3 billion base pairs that make up of human DNA. That's the equivalent of typing 3 billion 2 keystrokes sequences accurately using a random key selection process. What are the chances of that happening? 10 doubles = 1024 or 10^3 We have 300,000,000 of these. Our chance of hitting these 6 billion keystrokes accurately? 1 in (300,000,000 x 10^3) or 1 in 10^900,000,000. There is only one word to describe these numbers: preposterous.

So, does random mutation over a long time produce the life forms we see today? Ain't no way.

If the universe was a trillion times older and a trillion times bigger and if light travelled a trillion times faster it would only make the maximum no. of events possible to 10^176. Then our analogy would only rise to 105 keystrokes. It is not possible for the theory of random mutations operating through natural selection to explain anything about the evolution of life. In fairness to Darwin: he never heard of DNA.

So, if life was created non-randomly, what is the mechanism driving evolution?

I have a theory about that, too. But won't go into that now. This post is hard enough to digest as it is. You didn't think that this was going to easy, did you? Serious people will make the effort.

60 comments:

  1. Imagine a Ford F150 with a butterfly that just landed on the hood. You watch the butteryfly on the truck slowly moving its wings. You would be looking at two things one of which is infinitely more complicated than the other. The simpler of the two by any measure is the pickup.

    Yet, if you pointed to the Ford and told someone it just happened to be there by random selection, they would laugh at you.

    Make the same claim to most modern educated people about the butterfly and they will agree and wonder why do you even mention it. What is it about us that we accept the absurd and question the obvious?

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  2. You busted my $9.99 Costco calculator.

    But another way to look at it is--

    Life can only come from life.

    There is, always has been, and ever will be, a universe.

    Consciousness Is, and life, evolution, is a gradual release of consciouness, and a drive toward God.

    The Great Mother plays, but why, ultimately, only she finally knows for sure.

    We are on the road to something, so we best mind our p's and q's, because we have to earn our Being, Consciousness, Bliss.

    If this isn't true, I wasted some unvaluable time learning about it, long ago.

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  3. That's the perennial philosphy, in a Hindu nutshell, and many of our poets seem to agree with it.

    Dante, Whitman, even the Bard.

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  4. Dante, in a Christian dressing, Walt and the Bard with a heavy dose of the pagan.

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  5. As one who has gambled for the rent money, let me make one observation:

    You take the "Odds;" I'll take Luck. :)

    On a different "scientific" note (I apologize; this is way, way O/T, but I can't resist:) This guy makes imminent sense to me. BTW, it's a pretty long piece, but don't give up on it in the middle There's a lot of really good stuff toward the end.

    Climate

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  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  7. DNA/RNA is too fragile to have originated elsewhere. Cosmic radiation sterilizes space.

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  8. I Am That I Am is a Hebrew rendition of this.

    AND HERE WITH MORE CERTAIN NEWS

    Michael Savage has just reported that a study by, I think he said, John Hopkins U. has shown that MASTURBATION lessens the chances of PROSTATE CANCER.

    Hello, happy hands!

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  9. Which came first, the ribosome or the protein?

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  10. Well, it 'beats' the old vitamin C treatment:)

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  11. Think about it. It would take a miracle to create life from nothing. Then millions and millions of miracles for all lifeforms on earth to have evolved to the point they have today.

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  12. There is a pull from the front. It is morality, ethics, that is in love with that pull from the front. That is the engine that makes it go, if I understand rightly what they are saying, who claim to know.

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  13. Somebody here posted about an hour long video awhile back that fits in here. I think it may have been Mat. I watched that whole damn thing. As I recall, it basically started out with the birth of the universe and went logically from there about where we are today and in the end after taking things to their logical conclusion it said that we have to be a computer simulation initiated by a higher intelligence.

    I think.

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  14. I think there can be some confusion about 'creation'. The myths say the forms pour out of the Pleroma continuosly. That it is not a once event, but always ongoing, the pouring of forms into time.

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  15. If them aliens ever show up, I'm gonna ask 'em what they think about all this, if they think, and see just what they say, if they say.

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  16. "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down"

    - Darwin

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  17. Think about it. It would take a miracle to create life from nothing.

    Right. Life comes from Life. Nothing can come from nothing. Life, the source, has many names in the traditions, call it Big Mamma if you want, call it Yahweh, call it the Big Spider.

    The poets, and Jesus in our tradition, hint around about it being Being,
    Consciousneess, Bliss, as the Hindus say.

    Jesus said, the Kingdom of Heaven is spread over the earth, and people don't see it.

    Which irritated him, as he was trying to be helpful, and got strung up for the effort.

    Like that fellow al-Hallaj, in the muslim tradition.

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  18. What is the force that drives all these molecules to want to do stuff, anyways? Why shouldn't they say, ah, the heck with it all, let's relax. But they don't. They--if we can use the they word--they ceaselessly go about this business of organizing stuff into higher forms.

    At least here on earth that has seemed to be the case, and may continue, if we don't blow ourselves up.

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  19. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  20. The creation legends and myths are true, as originally written. According to this fellow

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  21. She is the best reason to hang around these UFO get togethers, if you have the money.

    Las Vegas, Mufon, and money and gambling, and the stars overhead...

    But the truth is in the word 'Adam'; we have risen from the earth, from energy ultimately, from 'isness.'

    And, even if you push the proposition back a star space or two, you are stil up against that question.


    She's a gal looks to be a good one to discuss these matters intimately with.

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  22. She is the best reason to hang around these UFO get togethers, if you have the money.

    Las Vegas, Mufon, and money and gambling, and the stars overhead...

    But the truth is in the word 'Adam'; we have risen from the earth, from energy ultimately, from 'isness.'

    And, even if you push the proposition back a star space or two, you are stil up against that question.


    She's a gal looks to be a good one to discuss these matters intimately with.

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  23. She is the best reason to hang around these UFO get togethers, if you have the money.

    Las Vegas, Mufon, and money and gambling, and the stars overhead...

    But the truth is in the word 'Adam'; we have risen from the earth, from energy ultimately, from 'isness.'

    And, even if you push the proposition back a star space or two, you are stil up against that question.


    She's a gal looks to be a good one to discuss these matters intimately with.

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  24. Damn those parallel universes, and triple posting.

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  25. She's full of shit, and doesn't know a thing, but she is damned nice looking, and gives a great toss of the head, the hair.

    The Sumarians, a mysterious race, bacame fascinated with the stars.
    And bimbos from LA are still making a buck on it.

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  26. Methuselah: DNA/RNA is too fragile to have originated elsewhere. Cosmic radiation sterilizes space.

    Yes, but the components of DNA and RNA (nucleic acids), along with the components of the protein structures they code for (amino acids) are detected in the surface of comets and in distant interstellar clouds. It's only when those puzzle pieces rain down on a hospitable planet with a sun and water that you get chemical evolution resulting in full-blown life. The way the universe is tweaked no doubt makes it very fertile. I betcha there's something crawling under a lot of rocks on a lot of planets in the universe.

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  27. It's only when those puzzle pieces rain down on a hospitable planet with a sun and water that you get chemical evolution resulting in full-blown life.

    But that only pushes the puzzle back a space or two.

    Adam.

    Adam, Adam, everywhere.

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  28. 2164th: Yet, if you pointed to the Ford and told someone it just happened to be there by random selection, they would laugh at you.

    The basic flaw in your analogy, Deuce, is that that parts in a Ford don't have electromagnetic forces which cause them to organize into specific patterns, like atoms and molecules do. For example, there's two different kinds of atoms, and three total atoms, in every molecule of water. So if you put hydrogen and oxygen atoms in a box and shake them until they clump together in threes you should get eight different things, and only one would be water:

    O-O-O
    O-O-H
    O-H-O
    O-H-H
    H-O-O
    H-O-H --Water
    H-H-O
    H-H-H

    But you don't. You get water every time. This is because hydrogen can only accept one electron, and oxygen can accept two, on account of how their shell valences work. So you can see in chemistry that certain reactions are inevitable and others are forbidden, so the process is "guided". This greatly alters the simple probability calculations that are found in so many arguments for intelligent design.

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  29. But you don't. You get water every time.

    And thankfully too, else we wouldn't be here talking about it. It does seems the laws were aimed to make us, so we have a responsibility not to blow ourselves up, which this wetter fears we may do.

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  30. All CatholicTaoists recognize an aim and certain drift to the universe.

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  31. Ekijah: Elijah said...

    "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down"

    - Darwin


    "Consider. I drive a car, and you drive a car. I do not know exactly how an engine works. Perhaps you do not either. And it may be that our hazy and approximate ideas of the workings of an automobile are in conflict. Must we then conclude from this disagreement that an automobile does not run, or that it does not exist? Or, if our senses force us to conclude that an automobile does exist and run, does that mean it is pulled by an invisible horses, since our engine theory is imperfect?" -- Isaac Asimov

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  32. I don't have anything to do with attaching the bedwetting meme to any EB'er.

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  33. John Lennon's sons and widow, Yoko Ono, are suing the filmmakers of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" for using the song "Imagine" in the documentary without permission.

    Lennon recorded the song in 1971 and in 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked it No. 3 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, according to the lawsuit.

    Ono, her son Sean Ono Lennon, and Julian Lennon, John Lennon's son from his first marriage, along with privately held publisher EMI Blackwood Music Inc filed suit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan seeking to bar the filmmakers and their distributors from continuing to use "Imagine" in the movie.


    Yoko Ono Sues

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  34. The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower


    The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
    Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
    Is my destroyer.
    And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
    My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

    The force that drives the water through the rocks
    Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
    Turns mine to wax.
    And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
    How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

    The hand that whirls the water in the pool
    Stirs the quicksand;
    that ropes the blowing wind
    Hauls my shroud sail.
    And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
    How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

    The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
    Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
    Shall calm her sores.
    And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
    How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

    And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
    How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

    Dylan Thomas



    There are African statues, where death, or life, or both together are sculpted as a beautiful young maiden on one side, and an old withered face of maggots on the other.

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  35. Teresita said:

    "This greatly alters the simple probability calculations that are found in so many arguments for intelligent design."

    This is a glib observation, Teresita. I also think it is insincere.

    You are playing both sides of the street here. If you believe in an interventionist God, and you claim to, then you must believe in Intelligent Design. But at the same time you can't resist taking a cheap shot at creationists.

    So, come clean, Teresita, do you believe that life came about because of chance? Do you think that intelligence had any bearing on the formation of life?

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  36. Costco (COST: 69.60, +1.52, +2.23%), the nation's largest warehouse retailer, said yesterday that it had seen increased demand for basic food staples as well like rice and flour. The company had a two 50-lb limit on rice purchases as well to keep people from hoarding and reselling the rice.

    Jordan Mandelberg of FOX Business said a San Francisco-based Costco has basically sold completely out of its supply of rice. Only one pallet of white rice was left by the late morning in California.

    Joe Morris of the California Rice Commission said the supply concerns stem from imported long-grain rice, not the domestic medium-grain rice grown here in the states.


    Supply and Demand Concerns

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  37. OT--but Whiskey 199 says very clearly what I think we all in our hearts fear to be the case...

    whiskey_199 said...
    If Iran is able to take casualties akin to the Iran-Iraq War (which is the stated policy of Khameni and everyone else) then yes they can destroy Israel.

    As Ahmadinejad has said repeatedly.

    A surprise attack, which is quite possible, would leave Israel only minutes to respond. It's quite possible for less than 100 missiles to destroy Israel's land and air based nuclear retaliation.

    Leaving Mediterranean based diesel subs with cruise missiles the only way to retaliate (after most of Israel is dead). Iran can kill most of Israel's 5 million Jews, and in response all Israel can do is kill perhaps a million or so in Qom, Tehran, a few other major cities.

    Iran will go on. Israel will be dead.

    Israel knows this. Yet it will not act. It can't. It clings to the same fantasy that Jews did in Warsaw, or Berlin, or Paris did. The alternative is just too horrible to contemplate.

    The CIA will testify that the North Koreans were operating a plutonium weapons plant in Syria that Israel bombed. We know the danger to ourselves. We refuse to act also.

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  38. To Everyone

    This piece was posted earlier than planned. I have a car to prepare for a car show this weekend and won't be available for commenting until Monday. If anyone wishes we can take up the conversation again.

    I plan on writing a part 2. It will be about the role of intelligence in guiding evolution. This will not be a defence of I.E. theory as it now stands. I won't say more except to say that I will try to reason a path from before creation to the present.

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  39. Viktor Silo: So, come clean, Teresita, do you believe that life came about because of chance? Do you think that intelligence had any bearing on the formation of life?

    I don't know. The universe seems to be arranged to permit life to arise easily. The Earth seems to be uniquely protected and positioned to permit life to flourish. So there could have been an intelligent agency at the very beginning, but it is not necessary for one to guide life to more complexity in every time and place. This corresponds to the deist God of Thomas Jefferson. My own religious beliefs, if any, are not on the table.

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  40. So, come clean, Teresita, do you believe that life came about because of chance?

    She can't, without contradicting so many of her previous statements over the years.

    But I think we have problems with words like chance, creation, and so forth. They sometimes seem like petty, poor words, up against an overwhelming fact. Maybe we need a new language.

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  41. Good inaugural post Vic. We all look forward to more. No excuse about the car show.

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  42. at the very beginning

    But, the argument is, there never was any 'very beginning'.

    Which does not deny creation, which goes on all the 'time.'

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  43. Back on topic, dig yourself a pond and watch how it evolves. I find it to be one of the most interesting thing that I have ever done.

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  44. A creation-centered graduate school that wants to grant degrees in Texas has its hopes pinned on a Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board vote today.

    It experienced a setback Monday when a board committee recommended that the board not approve the Institute for Creation Research as a degree-granting institution in Texas, according to an agency news release.

    The institute, formerly based in California, offers courses in traditional sciences like chemistry and physics, but also offers creationism studies courses.


    Board Vote

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  45. :)

    Well talking about ponds, and I have to get some sleep, it is just that I am fascinated with this topic, I have a perfect place to build a little dam, and make a pond, but the wallet is thin, and the folk at Farm Services say the money isn't there now. We used to have a good cost sharing program, to help the wildlife.
    But I may try to do it anyway, it would be great for ducks, and I could sit there, laptop in lap, and argue argue with T. as the ducks come in 'on extended wings'.

    Goodnight.

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  46. You need donors, Bob. Or a partner.

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  47. For the first time, Democratic loyalists not necessarily committed to Clinton are wondering whether the party's system for picking a nominee is the problem. If all caucuses were eliminated and only primaries used in picking nominees, Obama's lead of 130 in delegates would become an advantage for Clinton of 45 delegates.

    The bigger problem is proportional representation replacing the winner-take-all system that enabled Republicans to get their nominee on Feb. 5 Super Tuesday. Without the "reforms" enacted by Democrats during the decade following the party's 1968 fiasco, Clinton might have clinched the nomination by now.

    Such regret does not affect the 2008 election, and no significant procedural changes are likely for the future. Democratic politicians today see no viable alternative to Barack Obama as their nominee.


    Democratic Dilemma

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  48. Vic, sorry about the early post. Think of your posts as a cherry pie. if you leave them on the counter and don't want anyone to take a slice, leave a large note.

    It just looked so tasty.

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  49. Interesting discussion,
    philosophy, morality, chemistry and taste of mathamatics.

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  50. Life on Earth is a mystery. It's a long way to go from simple amino acids to self replicating nucleic acids to living life forms. No one (that I'm aware of) has yet demonstrated, even under perfect lab condition, how it is done.

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  51. Metuselah: Life on Earth is a mystery. It's a long way to go from simple amino acids to self replicating nucleic acids to living life forms. No one (that I'm aware of) has yet demonstrated, even under perfect lab condition, how it is done.

    That's because...uh...people can't watch the test tube for 4.55 billion years.

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  52. 2164th: Good inaugural post Vic. We all look forward to more. No excuse about the car show.

    Welp, Deuce, if you ever feel you need to hire some experienced help to keep the bar going when you don't have the time to craft a post, you know where to look.

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  53. Instead of arguing about abiogenesis, we might as well get to the crux of the matter: Why the laws of physics the way they are? Why is the gravitational constant exactly [i]so[/i]? The value of the planck constant? The arrangement of universal forces such that atoms exist, and that chemical reactions can take place at all?

    Is there actually a higher power behind it all? Beats me. I'm going to be honest and say, I really don't know.

    But you know what? It doesn't matter whether there is or not, because if there isn't, we shouldn't worry about it, and if there is, the head honcho isn't likely to worry about [i]us[/i].

    So, get on with our lives. That's what's important.

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  54. Deuce

    No apology needed; you're right about the cherry pie:-)

    I would love to respond to these posts; the discussion is starting to get interesting but, it's 7:16 am PST, and I have to get to work.

    I will respond on Monday, if warranted. What I'm really eager to do is get to work on Pt. 2.

    Pt. 1 was the easy part. Many people have made the probability calculations but, I think, my method of calculating the max. no. of events in the universe is original.

    Pt. 2 will be heavy lifting. I went into the study of evolution believing in God (albeit barely). Forty+ years later, I came out believing in God strongly. But the God of my youth is not the God of my advanced years. My conception of God has undergone a massive evolution.

    One clue I will let out in advance of Pt. 2 is that I intend to present a bullet proof arguement about the non-existence of the supernatural or alternate universes. It was only after I developed that arguement that my line of reasoning could advance.

    I believe in the laws of physics. I believe they are God's laws and using these laws will lead to a better understanding of His nature. "His" being a figure of speech, of course.

    Oh, oh, it's 7:35. Gotta go.

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  55. This is really dumb. There are two problems with it, a minor one and a major one. First the minor one. You assume that success for evolution is producing exactly the three billion base pairs that produce human beings. Now that's ridiculous. Let's suppose that to be "successful" evolution should produce some complex sapient species. There are going to be all sorts of genetic patterns that lead to that. Indeed, this point is made even stronger as most dna is so called "junk dna" which doesn't even contribute to the organism. So waiting around for humans to evolve, looking at the result, and saying gosh how improbable that something with exactly this genetic pattern would evolve is almost as stupid as playing a card game where you're dealt 13 cards, looking at your hand, and saying, gosh the odds against me getting this particular hand I've just been dealt are astronomical! It's true they are astronomical, but you had to be dealt some hand.

    So that's the minor objection. I'm saying minor because even though the odds of selecting a bunch of genes at random and getting an intelligent life form is far far far greater than what you estimated by insisting that we match all three billion base pairs in a human, it's still ridiculously small.

    But the thing is, evolution does not work by throwing a bunch of genes together and hoping we can get an intelligent life form, and no reputable biologist says it does. It's a long pattern of take a particular life form, have it reproduce, creating many more progeny than can survive, select the survivors that are best suited to fit their environment. Repeat over billions of years.

    Now the following is not an accurate metaphor by any means, it's just to give an idea of why using random mutation and a selection mechanism is not the same as trying to produce a complex organism in one go. Imagine you roll 20 dice. Pick one of the dice at random; if the result is an improvement, take the improvement, otherwise stick with the original roll. Repeat this over and over and over again. After a few thousand repetitions of this, you should be able to get 20 sixes. But of course you could roll all 20 dice until the universe collapsed and you'd still never get 20 sixes. Cumulative selections among large populations where small changes are made is not the same thing as throwing a bunch of genes together over and over and hoping for the best. Evolution biologists are not stupid, if it were that simple they would have figured it out for themselves.

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  56. "That's because...uh...people can't watch the test tube for 4.55 billion years."

    You're obviously a biochem major. I'll leave it at that.

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  57. Rick Taylor: ...as stupid as playing a card game where you're dealt 13 cards, looking at your hand, and saying, gosh the odds against me getting this particular hand I've just been dealt are astronomical! It's true they are astronomical, but you had to be dealt some hand...

    Bravo, excellent argument Rick.

    It's a long pattern of take a particular life form, have it reproduce, creating many more progeny than can survive, select the survivors that are best suited to fit their environment. Repeat over billions of years.

    And that environment is always changing, partly from climate or tectonics, but also because it is filled with other critters who are also evolving. So it's totally dynamic, and I think it actually demeans the Creator, if there is a Creator, to say he has to keep tweaking his creation to keep it going. How about he created the system of evolution, and that's what he uses to issue "patches"?

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  58. Rick Taylor,

    What I am trying to do is make sense of that tangled mass of verbiage you have dropped on me.

    I've read it several times to look for a glimmer of logical argument. Most of what you say cannot be refuted. That is because you deal in very vague terms: "all sorts of genetic patterns", "most dna is so-called "junk dna"."

    If it's not inconvenient, Rick, could you put some numbers to these examples? Most DNA is junk, Rick? Would that be 50 percent+1 or 99.99 percent? If it were the latter, Rick, that would still leave 300,000 base pairs. The chance of that happening by random selection are 1 in 10^30,000.

    Now, Rick, that's a big number; a really, really big number. Remember, the universe only has 10^80 particles in it. If the universe were 10 times as big it would have 10^81 particles. If the universe were a trillion times as big it would have 10^92 particles. Do you understand these numbers, Rick? Every number added to the exponent is an increase of 10. Can you wrap your head around that?

    For Pete's sake, there are only 10^140 possible events since the beginning of creation!

    You also said, Rick, "the odds of selecting a bunch of genes at random." You really said that, Rick. "A bunch of genes", when I read that I nearly blew snot out of my nose.

    I liked this one, too, Rick,
    "evolution does not work by throwing a bunch of genes together and hoping we can get an intelligent life form." Hey, check out the brain on Rick.

    Rick comes through, though, in the final paragraph:
    "Imagine you roll 20 dice. Pick one of the dice at random; if the result is an improvement, take the improvement, otherwise stick with the original roll." (Rinse and repeat, just kidding) Rick, I challenge you to write this stuff out mathematically.

    But the real kicker here is "if the result is an improvement, take the improvement, otherwise stick with the original roll."

    Pray tell, Rick, what would be an "improvement" unless you knew the objective? And, indeed, who or what would be doing the knowing?

    Notwithstanding my comments, Rick, I appreciate your efforts unlike those of your intellectually lazy admirer.

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