Fundies Will Be Shitting Bricks

[lilphil1989]

Actually it was a direct quote from Dr. Sarfati's book, nothing to do with Hoyal.

Fred Hoyle made the exact same argument, so it seems likely that's where Sarfati got it from.

Did you even read the post? Even taking into account all the particle interactions in the universe throughout the history of time (which would certinaly include parallel trials silly) you odds are no better than guessing a 4000 digit pin number.

What you're calculating is this:

If I randomly throw 20*357 amino acids together 10^110 times, what is the probablility that they'll form into one specific arrangement.

So you're forming the phase space, but erroneously concluding that the relevant part of the phase space for the problem is a single point.

The actual idea is that there is a step-by-step process, formation of amino acids -> formation of proteins -> simple protein structures -> more complex protein structures.
So what you need to do for a more reasonable calculation, is to form conditional probabilities for each step given the previous one.
And you also need to consider the correct amount of the phase space by summing over all possible permutations for each step i.e. there are lots of ways to form an amino acid from a given set of atoms and lots of different amino acids, lots of ways to form a protein from a set of amino acids, and lots of different proteins, etc.


Will the number still be small? Probably, although not nearly as small as you claim.

Finally, you're fallaciously assuming that unlikely things cannot happen.
To illustrate the point, let's imagine we're in the year 1911, and want to compute the probability of lilphil1989 existing in 100 years time.
Firstly, one particular sperm of my great-grandfather's has to impregnate my great-grandmother.
Next, a particular one of my grandfather's sperm has to impregnate my grandmother, and similarly with my father and mother
There are ~100million sperm per ejaculate for a human male, so that the probability of my existence is 1 part in 100,000,000^3 = 1 in 10^24. Tiny, I'm sure you'll agree.

But why stop there? Let's imagine we're 2000 years in the past and want to calculate the probability of my existence. Assuming four generations of ancestors per century (or, average age of parents at birth 25), the probability is 1 part in 10,000,000^(20*4) = 1 in 10^640.

What about the probability of you existing too?
Also 1 in 10^640.

What about the probability of both of us existing?
1 in 10^1280

The exponent is now of the same order of magnitude as that which came out of your calculation.
And that probability is so small, it's much more reasonable to think that we weren't the product of sperm making their way to eggs, but rather that you and I were placed on the earth just as we are. The idea of our births following our fathers' births, following our grandfathers' births is an idea that you'd be silly to believe, just look at the probabilities!

And poof! Our respective ancestries (to (mis)quote Douglas Adams) disappear in a puff of logic.


I hope this demonstrates that just because the a priori probability of something happening is very small, that doesn't in any way mean that it can't happen, or suggest that it's unreasonable to think that it could.