(March 18, 2016 at 8:37 pm)AJW333 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.
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.
Can I just ask- in a question that I'm literally asking off the top of my head and yet blows your contention out of the water anyway- why you're assuming that Hemoglobin came out in "a precise, usable form"? Rather than, say, being derived from an earlier, simpler compound? Or from one or more neutral mutations that were still not sufficiently harmful to have been selected out of the population?
... You are aware that pointless or useless mutations can persist in a population simply by dint of not being actively harmful to the point of being fatal, right?
"YOU take the hard look in the mirror. You are everything that is wrong with this world. The only thing important to you, is you." - ronedee
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