RE: Need some help refuting this creation argument...
October 12, 2012 at 12:42 pm
(This post was last modified: October 12, 2012 at 12:46 pm by DaveSumm.)
Blown away by the rapid responses, thank you so much.
@teaearlgreyhot: I'd been searching for a specific refutation like that, so thanks for that link.
Essentially, I knew that the key was in the multitude of organisms across the globe all with the opportunity to mutate/reproduce, but then it sounds like he's attempting to address this in this paragraph:
.....but he uses such a bizarre number of estimates (100 seconds? Half a second? A billion? They're so erratic I don't know where to start...) that I can't quite wade through it far enough to actually pinpoint where this all goes wrong. If it was ever right, which I doubt.
....that quote is made difficult to follow by the fact that the "to the power" signs haven't copied, sorry. I didn't think that the Earth was 1014 sq ft.
@teaearlgreyhot: I'd been searching for a specific refutation like that, so thanks for that link.
Essentially, I knew that the key was in the multitude of organisms across the globe all with the opportunity to mutate/reproduce, but then it sounds like he's attempting to address this in this paragraph:
Quote:The evolutionist might react by saying that even though any one such mutating organism might not be successful, surely some around the world would be, especially in the 10 billion years (or 1018 seconds) of assumed earth history. Therefore, let us imagine that every one of the earth's 1014 square feet of surface harbors a billion (i.e., 109) mutating systems and that each mutation requires one-half second (actually it would take far more time than this). Each system can thus go through its 200 mutations in 100 seconds and then, if it is unsuccessful, start over for a new try. In 1018 seconds, there can, therefore, be 1018/102, or 1016, trials by each mutating system. Multiplying all these numbers together, there would be a total possible number of attempts to develop a 200-component system equal to 1014 (109) (1016), or 1039 attempts. Since the probability against the success of any one of them is 1060, it is obvious that the probability that just one of these 1039 attempts might be successful is only one out of 1060/1039, or 1021.
.....but he uses such a bizarre number of estimates (100 seconds? Half a second? A billion? They're so erratic I don't know where to start...) that I can't quite wade through it far enough to actually pinpoint where this all goes wrong. If it was ever right, which I doubt.
....that quote is made difficult to follow by the fact that the "to the power" signs haven't copied, sorry. I didn't think that the Earth was 1014 sq ft.
