Fundies Will Be Shitting Bricks

[Statler Waldorf]

Science is a tool, it cannot win or lose. Darwinism can win or lose.

And Evolution(not "Darwinism") is part of that science.

Not your bible and its fables about great floods and talking snakes and the like.

No matter how hard you try.

I assume when you say "Evolution" you mean Darwinian Evolution and no it is not "part" of that tool. It is a theory developed by that tool. So are many theories developed by the Creation community. Stop making category errors.

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

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Sarfati used different numbers than Hoyal.

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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.

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I disagree. It has to be a singular point because the arrangement required for survival and self replication is very specific. We have actually spotted you lots of points because we have completely ignored the obvious chemical problems associated with abiogenesis (necessary monochirality, entropy associated with the presence of oxygen etc). So the numbers in all honesty would be even worse for you. Remember, amino acids have zero natural tendencies to arrange themselves, so the numbers Sarfati uses are completely legitimate. You seem to forget just how knowledgeable he is in these things.

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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.

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First of all, I am not just arguing against unlikely events happening, I am arguing against the the likelihood of statistically impossible events from happening. Your analogy is completely false though. First of all, we know that sperm uniting with eggs produce humans naturally. We have never observed amino acids to naturally align without the presence of DNA. So that alone makes abiogenesis just a form of storytelling. Secondly, you have retroactively defined yourself as the necessary outcome after you already knew it happened. If I told you an event happened in the past but you knew the probability of this event actually occurring was 1 in 10^600 you’d be crazy to take my word for it. I mean if we are going to play this game we can just believe anything.
“I don’t believe in big foot.”
“Oh really why not?”
“Well I just think the chances of a creature of that size never leaving any testable physical evidence is just too small.”
“Are you fallaciously arguing against the occurrence of unlikely events? Let me give you an analogy about sperm my friend!”
In your world DNA evidence would never be accepted in a court of law because the chances of it being one of the other 5 people on Earth with similar DNA is far greater than 1 in 10^600! Maybe defense attorneys need to just start giving the jury your little sperm analogy, somehow I get the feeling it would convince them about as much as it convinced me.
Come on, get real man : - )

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Doesn't the fact that scientists replicated in a lab mean that no form of magic was used to do it the first time? While the odds of conditions being right in nature, of everything going perfectly and simple amino acids eventually becoming multicellular organisms are astronomical, it is a big universe, with billions of permutations of planets and conditions. So to put it simply, if it did not happen here, in this ordinary solar system with it's ordinary star on this ordinary planet, it would have by sheer mathematical probability happened elsewhere, and we would be on another planet in another solar system discussing how something so complex could have happened on it's own.

Theists in general tend to stick to the notion that we are somehow unique, we are modeled after some creator, the end result of his workshop and tinkering before space was space and time was time. But natural processes dictate everything in the universe, natural processes keep us alive, not magic, removing the space god with superpowers theory. Creationism fails because magic doesn't exist in the real world.

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Well it’s a good thing Creationists do not believe in “magic” then huh?
You are making a category error by confusing mechanism with agency. Even if abiogenesis could happen (which it can’t), or even if it did happen (which it didn’t) this would by no means disprove God’s existence because it could have just been the mechanism He used.
Your “well given enough different worlds and attempts” argument has already been addressed. As I demonstrated earlier, even if you took all the interactions that have ever taken place through the history of supposed deep time in all of the universe and treated it as a trial- the odds of obtaining life are no greater than 1 in 10^4000. I think the odds of magic doing it are even greater than that haha.
This really just goes to show that unregenerate sinners will believe absolutely anything rather than admitting there is a God who owns them.