(March 17, 2016 at 12:29 am)Esquilax Wrote:OK let's talk numbers. Changes to the DNA code are brought about by random mutations - they are not a result of the organism's ability to consciously change its DNA. Epigenetics allows for variation in expression of the genes but when it comes to evolving into a different species, the requisite major changes to the code are randomly generated mutations.(March 16, 2016 at 10:22 pm)AJW333 Wrote: Odds always matter. If the chances of something happening are extremely remote, why would that not matter?
Because if you happen upon any given phenomena, crying "that's so improbable!" doesn't actually make the phenomena not be happening. The odds don't exert any influence over events that have already occurred. You pointing out the improbability of an event will not cause that event to cease to exist: if the evidence for a given conclusion points one way, then that is where your conclusion should lie, no matter how improbable. Did you forget that "improbable" is still a positive probability? We live in a vast universe: there is enough chance for every improbable thing to happen.
... Not that you've bothered to demonstrate how you determined the odds in this case, anyway. You've made a claim that you seem content to provide no justification for, like you somehow suspect we'll just take your unqualified assertion as fact. Can you actually justify your conclusion?
Haemaglobin did not exist in primitive life. At some point, there was a genetic mutation that gave rise to its existence. This would have been random and at the time, pointless. Haemaglobin has no use without a myriad of supporting systems, eg the respiratory system and the circulatory system (and interestingly, neither of these systems can function without haemaglobin).
So what are the chances that haemaglobin randomly generated itself in a precise, usable form? The body uses 20 amino acids and so it would be one in twenty, multiplied by one in twenty, 574 times. So the likelihood of randomly producing the correct sequence is about 10 to the power of 650. Bear in mind that 10 to the power of 50 is considered absurd. Now the human body produces around 100,000 proteins. Some more complex than haemaglobin and some less so. So what are the chances of randomly generating the DNA code to produce all of these proteins that work together to make human life possible? Well that would be an even more absurd figure than 10 to the power of 650.
To give you an idea as to how unlikely this is, there are only 10 to the power of 90 atoms in the universe and it is only 10 to the power of 10 years old. So is the progressive mutation of the DNA from pond slime to humanity even possible? The numbers say no.
