"Jack Crenshaw" wrote in message
...


Ross Langerak wrote:

"Jack Crenshaw" wrote in message
...
Ok, here's the problem with your mathematics. Say -- just for
argument's sake -- that Hoyle and
Wickramasinghe got it right, and the odds against life arising
spontaneously really are 10^(10,000).

Your argument goes: but there's 6 billion people on earth.
Let's
include all people who ever lived,
and make it 10^10 people. Now the odds drop "dramatically," to
10^9990.

Same with your other points. Take off "several orders of
magnitude."
How many is that? 10? 20?

Ok, now we're down to 10^9970 against.

I guess you can see how this is going to go. Use up all the
possible
alternative DNA sequences you
mention, and all the ones no one has thought of yet, and you're
still
not going to make much of a dent
in that enormous number.

In that case, I should have started with the possible variations
of
proteins.

Yes.

That alone would remove most of the zeroes in Ed's
argument. Then, given the number of species and the number of
individuals to work with, the production of something is almost
inevitable.

Almost _INEVITABLE_? How does that follow?

Assuming hemoglobin requires 11 of it's residues to be specific (that
is at the high end according to my information), the odds of getting
those 11 correct in one shot are 1:2*10^14.

There are currently about 300 million species on the Earth. If we go
back in Earth's history to a time when there was no hemoglobin, I do
not think it would be unreasonable to suggest that one million of the
species existing at that time could have made use of a molecule that
transported oxygen. Furthermore, we could assume that each species
was populated by one million members, and that they reproduced on a
yearly basis. If we give them just one million years to produce
hemoglobin, that would be 10^18 opportunities. You can quibble about
the exact numbers if you'd like, but clearly the production of a
particular protein is not nearly as unlikely as creationists would
have us believe.

This is not to mention the small little problem that your
assumptions
don't really fit the case, anyhow.
H & W weren't trying to compute the odds of the spontaneous
occurrence
of a Jack Crenshaw or a
Ross Langerak; They were computing the odds of a DNA molecule
capable
of self-reproducing. It's already
a given that, given a population of 6 billion humans, it's not
that
hard
to create a few more. But that's
not the question asked, is it?

I see. So Hoyle and Wickramasinghe were trying to calculate the
odds
against the formation of the first self-replicating organism?

That was my understanding.

It's
my understanding that the first self-replicating organism was most
likely a simple RNA molecule.

AFAIK there is little or no agreement as to _WHAT_ that first
organism
was, or
how it worked.

If that is the case, then how can Hoyle and Wickramasinghe's
calculations have any significance whatsoever?

Most likely, the mechanism by which it replicated was
several
generations removed from the mechanism of DNA. I think the best
likelihood is that
_SOME_ mechanism (layers of clay have been suggested) kicked things
off
and got life
started, and then more efficient mechanisms such as RNA and DNA
evolved
and took over
We don't see the Adam molecule today, because it would be quickly
gobbled up by all
those more efficient little boogers.

I don't think there is a consensus that the first life was RNA.
Some
have pointed out
that it's almost certainly not DNA, since the replication of DNA
only
occurs inside a
cell and requires a host of supporting players like enzymes,
ribosomes,
etc. -- all of
which would have to be in place _FIRST_ before the DNA could
reproduce.

Because of the problems with DNA, RNA has been suggested. It also
makes
a modicum of
sense, since it is a simpler molecule of sorts. Only problem: The
reproduction of
RNA requires an even _BIGGER_ cast of supporting characters. In
nature,
RNA only
reproduces as in viruses, which need a host cell to provide the
"infrastructure."

My information suggests that is not true. Some RNA molecules can
reproduce without outside support. Your example makes reference to
RNA that is the result of billions of years of evolution. There is no
reason to believe that modern RNA would retain the ability to
self-replicate, especially when the conditions to do so no longer
exist.

Perhaps it's not possible to figure out what really was the first
self-replicating
organism. Perhaps it's so far removed from RNA and DNA that there
is no
recognizable
similarity. Still, it would be nice to _KNOW_, wouldn't it? Seems
to
me, doing the
research to figure it all out is a lot more worthy endeavour than
sitting on a newsgroup
looking for fundies to toy with.

We get our jollies where we can find them.

It's also my understanding that such a
molecule has been produced in the lab.

So it's been said. It's true, there are people working to create
such
things. But it's always
struck me as a particularly odd thing to do. No one disputes the
fact
that designer molecules,
like designer genes, can be created. So what? That's a bit like
saying, given two
purebred, licensed Great Danes, I can produce a litter of them. It
doesn't say much at all about
what can happen by chance, does it? To me, setting out to assemble
a
molecule of known design
can be done, given enough ingenuity (which is considerable) on the
part
of the people who make the labs and their equipment, proves nothing
at
all about what happened In The Beginning.

It's my understanding that the self-replicating RNA molecules are
rather short, a couple dozen nucleotides at most.

Since no enzymes were
required, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe's calculations are bogus.

Oh, Ok. Why didn't you say so in the first place?

Actually, I think I did when I suggested that, according to Hoyle and
Wickramasinghe's calculations, the odds of producing a
self-replicating organism using no enzymes would be 1:1.

The real question is: What is the complexity of a simple
molecule --
simple enough to form spontaneously,
complex enough to be self-reproducing -- constructing itself
through
random chance?

It's my understanding that a self-replicating RNA molecule has
been
produced using only a couple dozen nucleotides.

I'd like to know more about that. Can you give me a citation?

No, I can't. I'm taking this from my memory of something I read years
ago, thus the qualifiers in some of my statements.

I don't think either your or I know enough to answer that
question.
I've been trying for years to get
folks to tell me how many base pairs they think it takes to
create a
self-reproducing DNA molecule, but
so far, no answer. Probably, it will be a long time before
molecular
biologists can really answer that
question.

I don't know of anyone who is suggesting that the first
self-replicating molecule was DNA. RNA is far more likely, as RNA
can
also function as an enzyme.

Assuming -- again for the sake of argument -- that H & W got
this
right
also, and 2000 enzymes of 200
amino acids is what is needed, one could pose the question this
way:

Given all the possible combinations of 2000 enzymes of 200 amino
acids
each, how many sets of those
combinations produce anything useful?

Since the first self-replicating organism was most likely a simple
RNA
molecule, the question is pointless.

Not true. RNA uses the same nucleotides as DNA. It only has a
single
helix, though.

RNA doesn't use the same set of nucleic acids, but the point is
irrelevant. RNA doesn't face the same restrictions that DNA does.
RNA doesn't need to be split apart before it can be duplicated, and
RNA can act as an enzyme. These two characteristics overcome the two
major objections to DNA as the first self-replicating organism.

And, again, I don't think there's general agreement that it _WAS_
RNA.

There have been other options proposed. Does that make it more or
less likely that the first self-replicating organism required 2000
enzymes?

If however, you are asking how the first organism requiring 2000
enzymes could have been produced, it isn't that difficult once our
self-replicating RNA molecule develops the ability to produce one
enzyme. Once it can produce one enzyme, it isn't that difficult
to
produce a second, and then a third and a fourth until it hits 2000
enzymes. If at any point an enzyme is added that is not
beneficial,
it is removed from the population. So you see, life didn't have
to
produce 2000 working enzymes all at once. Instead, it produced n
working enzymes + 1 more, with n = 0 to 1999. With each advance,
it
added one more working enzyme to a list of existing working
enzymes.

Of course. Just as it's possible to generate more Great Danes (or
two-legged Danes),
given an initial population of Danes. The question, though, is how
that
first molecule
got assembled from its parts.

No, the question was, how could evolution produce an organism with
2000 enzymes of 200 amino acids when so few combinations would produce
anything useful? The answer is, it starts with one enzyme and adds
one at a time.

I don't know, and I doubt you do either. Presumable it's more
than
one
set. But how many more? Also
presumably, not a large percentage of the set of total
possibilities.
In any case, whatever the number
is, one has to presume that a scientist of the stature of Fred
Hoyle
knows how to compute permutations
and combinations, and wasn't so dumb as to assume that only one
combination would work.

In short, they got the math right the first time, so all your
arm-waving
is moot.

They may have gotten the math right, but it didn't represent a
realistic scenario for the origin of life. Life didn't start by
looking for a combination of 2000 enzymes that would work. Life
started by looking for one enzyme that would work, and then adding
to
it a second, and then a third and a fourth. Adding one more to an
existing combination isn't that difficult.

Define "work."

Work: perform a useful function.

You are obviously free to discount Hoyle and Wickramasinghe's
assumptions and their
math. In fact, you are free to believe that the first life was
assembled by the
proverbial Pink Bunny Rabbit. However, if you assert -- as you just
did
-- that
their mathematics is all wet, isn't it sort of incumbent upon you to
provide
an alternative?

I thought I did. You know, that whole RNA thing we were talking
about? And I didn't think their math was wrong, but their assumptions
were wrong. You know, GIGO?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, right?

I've never liked that phrase. Extraordinary claims require the same
proof as any other claim. The problem is, extraordinary claims
usually aren't supported by the evidence. That is what makes them
extraordinary.

However, you implicitly accepted the original number by seeking to
modify the
1:10^10,000 number to something closer to 1:1. I was merely
pointing
out the
flaws in your modifications.

Given their initial assumptions, I am sure that Hoyle and
Wickramasinghe's calculations were correct. I was simply pointing out
that their assumptions were not valid, and that more realistic
assumptions make their calculation insignificant.