ODDS AGAINST EVOLUTION (You listenin', t.o.?)

Mike Painter wrote:

"Ross Langerak" wrote in message
ink.net...

snip

I see. So Hoyle and Wickramasinghe were trying to calculate the odds
against the formation of the first self-replicating organism? It's
my understanding that the first self-replicating organism was most
likely a simple RNA molecule. It's also my understanding that such a
molecule has been produced in the lab. Since no enzymes were
required, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe's calculations are bogus.
snip
It should be noted that Hoyle was an astronomer (and fair sci-fi writer).
I'm not sure what Wickramasinghe was but neither were biologists.

Though Fred Hoyle was almost certainly wrong more than once in his
career, it was still
an illustrious one -- surely moreso than yours or mine. It was Hoyle
who worked out the
mechanism for the production of heavier elements inside supernovae:

"Hoyle's 1953 prediction that an excited form of carbon-12 would be
produced
within stars was soon proved correct by the observations of William
Fowler.
Together with Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge, Hoyle and Fowler published
their
theory of nucleosynthesis in 1957. The astronomical community was
shocked
when Fowler alone received the 1983 Nobel Prize for this groundbreaking
work."

I wouldn't discount his knowledge so quickly.

Jack

"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.

"Jack Crenshaw" wrote in message
...


Mike Painter wrote:

[snip]

The more complex answer is that we don't know exactly but we do
know that
there is far more than chance involved.
There is chemistry and chemistry follows strict laws.
(Except for the myth of titration, there is no pink)

Which laws did you have in mind? Are there some I'm not aware of --
also neither Hoyle
nor Wickramasinghe -- that restrict the possible assembly of amino
acids
into more complex
molecules?

Jack has a point here. The formation of amino and nucleic acids is
determined by the laws of chemistry, and was demonstrated by the
Urey-Miller experiment. But as far as I know, the order that nucleic
acids can be strung together to form RNA is not determined by any laws
of chemistry. One sequence is just as valid as any other.

[snip]

"Ross Langerak" wrote in message link.net...

There are about 6 million humans on the Earth today

where'd all the others go?!


--
Nick Keighley

Nick Keighley wrote:

"Ross Langerak" wrote in message link.net...

There are about 6 million humans on the Earth today

where'd all the others go?!

ROFL!!! How did I miss that one? I guess we all (except you) just
automatically
read "billion" where we knew it should be.

Jack

Nick Keighley wrote:

"Ross Langerak" wrote:

There are about 6 million humans on the Earth today

where'd all the others go?!

There's these two spaceships. One of them contains telephone
sanitisers...
--
John Wilkins wilkins.id.au
For long you live and high you fly,
and smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
and all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be

Ross Langerak wrote:

"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's clearly something that I'm missing here. First, how did we find
ourselves talking about
hemoglobin? I don't recall mentioning it before, nor seeing anyone else
do so.

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.

Ok, I think I'm beginning to see the problem. You're assuming that life
already existed, and
had not only billions of individuals to use as "chemical factories," but
millions of species
to add variation to the mix. In your latest, you seem to be narrowing
your focus to the
spontaneous generation of one specific protein -- hemoglobin -- given
billions of "monkeys at
typewriters" trying to do so.

That's all very interesting, but it's a strawman. It has nothing to do
with the point of Hoyle
and Wickramasinghe's original computation, which was the probability of
that first life, given
an environment completely devoid of life, as a start.

It seems to me an absolute given that life is prolific (hence the shared
root word), and that,
in the words of the "Jurassic Park" mathematician, "Life will find a
way." There is virtually
no place we go on this earth, including Antarctica, deep coal mines, and
oceanic thermal vents,
that we don't find some form of life, and usually in staggering
abundance. No one -- well, at
least no one in this discussion -- is questioning the notion that, once
life gets a foothold, it
will proliferate if at all possible.

The interesting question, and the one Hoyle and Wickramasinghe sought to
deal with, was how that
first life got started in the first place. That's the one I was
addressing, anyhow. If, by coming
into the discussion late, I missed the point, my apologies, but I'm
pretty sure that's the question
they sought to answer.

You can disagree with their math all you like. If you don't think their
starting assumptions were good
ones, feel free to offer improved ones. If you don't agree with their
math, feel free to offer your own
estimates. I'd love to see them; I've been asking questions on this
topic for decades, with no good
answers.

All I ask is that your corrections to their math be correct. What you
offered a few days ago was not.
It sort of reminds me of the book, "How to make a million dollars in one
month." The secret? Start
with two million.

For the record, some years ago I put out a question on the old
CompuServe science forum, "How many base
pairs does it take to make the smallest self-replicating molecule?" The
reason was the same one I thought
we were discussing here; to estimate the probability that life could
form by random chance. I got lots
of answers, but none of them was much help.

Most of the answers ran along the lines of "The probability is nearly
one" (with exactly zero proof), to
"It must be one, because we're here." Most of the rest accused me of
not understanding math, or of being
a closet fundie. If all else fails, resort to ad hominems.

Then there were the replies with a philosophical bent: "Define life."
Those discussions tended to deteriorate
into the nature of snowflakes.

The best answers I got were at least honest: "We don't know." Now,
_THAT'S_ an answer I can accept.
Then we can talk about how we can reduce our ignorance.

Admittedly, my question was naive, but it's the only one I was smart
enough to ask. It was based on the
assumption that the first life used DNA as the replication mechanism; I
now know that it's unlikely that
DNA was, in fact, the mechanism, because it requires such a large cast
of supporting actors. In retrospect,
it was probably also naive to assume that the first self-replicating
molecule was also a short one. More
likely, it was unnecessarily long and complex, and later replaced by
more efficient mechanisms.

Even so, it's the only game in town. Lacking more knowledge about what
completely unknown mechanism led
to first life, we can only try to bracket the problem based upon
mechanisms we do know. If you've got
a better approach, I'm all ears.


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?

See above. Perhaps they really don't. But it's the best approach that
some very smart people have been
able to come up with. H & W came up with their theory of panspermia
precisely because they felt that the
probability of life forming on Earth, so soon after its formation, was
vanishingly small. You, like the
rest of us, are free to correct and/or improve their mathematics. But
not to simply reject it or to
ignore it by changing the subject.

Personally, I don't think much of the panspermia idea. It merely pushes
the solution off to another place,
and another time. The problem of how that first life got started doesn't
go away, it just gets relocated
to another planet. Even so, H & W's observation that spontaneous
generation seems unlikely, is a valid one.


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.

On that point, we agree. As I mentioned a couple of messages ago, I
suspect that the RNA/DNA
mechanism replaced earlier, more archaic, and more inefficient ones.
The fundamental problem is
that once an ecosystem gets started, all those hungry little critters
eat up all the competition,
including all traces of earlier and more inefficient mechanisms. I'm
not sure we can ever overcome
that problem to the extent that we'll ever be able to determine what
came before RNA/DNA.

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.

Yes.


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.

I'd _LOVE_ to know more about that. Also about what other gadgets --
ribosomes, enzymes --
are needed to help "self-replicating" molecules self-replicate. The
problem with my question from
years ago, concerning the length of self-replicating molecules, was the
naive assumption that if
a molecule had the ability to self-replicate, it would do so. I now
understand that DNA molecules
do _NOT_ do so on their own. In fact, a DNA molecule is one of the most
stable organic molecules
known to man. Hence the fact that serious scholars can even think about
such things as retrieving
bits of DNA from dinosaur fossils dead for millions of years.

If you put a glop of DNA in a test tube, it doesn't self-replicate at
all. It just sits there like
a fool. To make it "self-replicate," you have to put it in an
environment like the liposome amplification
environment mentioned elsewhere in this thread. Or, of course, the
innards of a living cell.

So perhaps a more reasonable answer to the question, "How short can one
make a self-replicating molecule,"
is another question: "Define 'self-replicating'." How many supporting
chemicals must be present?


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.

I was under the impression that you sought to correct their calculations
by introducing millions of
individual chemical factories, otherwise known as living organisms. In
any case, suggesting ain't the
same as proving.


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.

Welcome to the club. I guess we're all limited by how much effort we're
willing, or able, to put
into researching our answers.

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 there's one thing certain about this discussion, it's probably that
we now have information
about how biochemistry works, that H & W didn't have access to. I'd
certainly be willing to
participate in an effort to refine their estimates. I just don't think
dismissing them with
an arm-waving argument is very productive.


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.

Ok, that may have been your question. It was not mine, because I think
the question is -- with respect --
silly. No one is questioning whether evolution can produce a certain
organism, given lots of other
organisms busily producing organisms for their own selfish reasons (we
humans do it for the sheer fun
of it). It seems to me that you are assuming the existence of the very
thing that H & W sought to
explain. That's begging the question, is it not? The question is not,
"Which came first, the chicken
or the egg?", but rather, "How do you get an egg if there's no one to
lay it?"


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.

Sorry, I don't see that terms like "life started by looking for one
enzyme that would work" as adding
anything useful to the discussion. You have anthropomorphized "life"
into an intelligent entity,
seeking to create itself before it ever existed. Not only seeking to
create itself, but doing so with
a consciously defined goal or payoff function called "working." Such
concepts seem about as far removed
from impersonal and unguided evolution as one can possibly get.

Fact is, the image of life tinkering around with chemicals using its
home chemistry set smacks a lot of
another intelligent entity called "g_d." Only the names have changed.

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?

So what assumptions do you think we should use? I'm up for just about
any assumptions except
"To make life, start with life."

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.


Ok. I accept your criticism of their assumptions, but don't find yours
to be an improvement.

Jack

(Pavil Natanovich) wrote in message . com...

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?

Self replicating RNA molecules have arisen via natural means in the
lab.

Not that I doubt you, but please cite the reference. I am interested
to know if there were any limitations to this claim (say, only 12
ribonucleotides faithfully replicated, or the like).

Dave

In article ,
(Nick Keighley) wrote:

"Ross Langerak" wrote in message
link.net...

There are about 6 million humans on the Earth today

where'd all the others go?!


*
Didn't you catch the news this morning?

"At midnight, around 4.994 billion people vanished from the face of
the earth. Details at eleven."

earle
*

"Jack Crenshaw" wrote in message
...


Ross Langerak wrote:

"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's clearly something that I'm missing here. First, how did we
find
ourselves talking about
hemoglobin? I don't recall mentioning it before, nor seeing anyone
else
do so.

Some creationists like to use hemoglobin as an example of something
that could not evolve by chance. They typically make the same error
that Hoyle and Wickramasinghe did, in that they calculate the odds
against a particular sequence of residues occurring, rather than the
odds against producing a protein or enzymes with the desired
characteristics. I am not familiar with any enzymes, so I used
hemoglobin as an example instead. Presumably, the results would be
similar.

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.

Ok, I think I'm beginning to see the problem. You're assuming that
life
already existed, and
had not only billions of individuals to use as "chemical factories,"
but
millions of species
to add variation to the mix. In your latest, you seem to be
narrowing
your focus to the
spontaneous generation of one specific protein -- hemoglobin --
given
billions of "monkeys at
typewriters" trying to do so.

That's all very interesting, but it's a strawman. It has nothing to
do
with the point of Hoyle
and Wickramasinghe's original computation, which was the probability
of
that first life, given
an environment completely devoid of life, as a start.

Hoyle and Wickramasinghe's calculation assumed that the first
self-replicating organism would require 2000 enzymes averaging 200
residues in length. I pointed our three errors in this assumption.

First, no biochemist working on the origin of life is suggesting that
the first organism was anywhere near that complex. One theory
suggests that the first organism was probably a simple
self-replicating RNA molecule. No enzyme required. Other theories
propose equally simple organisms. So their calculation does not
apply.

Second, producing an organism that uses 2000 enzymes does not require
that all 2000 enzymes come into existence at the same time. The first
species to use enzymes probably started with one. Assuming that
enzyme worked, they could have added another, experimenting with
different enzymes until they found another that worked. Do this 1998
more times and you have 2000 enzymes.

Third, even if we were required to assemble an organism with 2000
enzymes in one step, the odds against it aren't nearly as bad as Hoyle
and Wickramasinghe suggested. Their calculation was based upon the
assumption of 2000 enzymes each with a specific sequence or residues.
But the sequence of residues in a protein or enzyme can vary
extensively while still performing the required function. So Hoyle
and Wickramasinghe's assumptions don't represent a realistic scenario.

It seems to me an absolute given that life is prolific (hence the
shared
root word), and that,
in the words of the "Jurassic Park" mathematician, "Life will find a
way." There is virtually
no place we go on this earth, including Antarctica, deep coal mines,
and
oceanic thermal vents,
that we don't find some form of life, and usually in staggering
abundance. No one -- well, at
least no one in this discussion -- is questioning the notion that,
once
life gets a foothold, it
will proliferate if at all possible.

The interesting question, and the one Hoyle and Wickramasinghe
sought to
deal with, was how that
first life got started in the first place. That's the one I was
addressing, anyhow. If, by coming
into the discussion late, I missed the point, my apologies, but I'm
pretty sure that's the question
they sought to answer.

And I answered that question. Life most likely began as a simple
self-replicating RNA molecule. No enzymes were required, so Hoyle and
Wickramasinghe's calculation does not apply.

You can disagree with their math all you like. If you don't think
their
starting assumptions were good
ones, feel free to offer improved ones. If you don't agree with
their
math, feel free to offer your own
estimates. I'd love to see them; I've been asking questions on this
topic for decades, with no good
answers.

I am not challenging their math. I am sure they were quite competent
mathematicians and astronomers. But they were not biologists. As a
result, they calculated the odds against something that had nothing to
do any realistic scenario proposed by any competent biologist.

All I ask is that your corrections to their math be correct. What
you
offered a few days ago was not.
It sort of reminds me of the book, "How to make a million dollars in
one
month." The secret? Start
with two million.

I made no corrections to their math; I made corrections to their
assumptions.

For the record, some years ago I put out a question on the old
CompuServe science forum, "How many base
pairs does it take to make the smallest self-replicating molecule?"
The
reason was the same one I thought
we were discussing here; to estimate the probability that life could
form by random chance. I got lots
of answers, but none of them was much help.

Most of the answers ran along the lines of "The probability is
nearly
one" (with exactly zero proof), to
"It must be one, because we're here." Most of the rest accused me
of
not understanding math, or of being
a closet fundie. If all else fails, resort to ad hominems.

Then there were the replies with a philosophical bent: "Define
life."
Those discussions tended to deteriorate
into the nature of snowflakes.

The best answers I got were at least honest: "We don't know." Now,
_THAT'S_ an answer I can accept.
Then we can talk about how we can reduce our ignorance.

Admittedly, my question was naive, but it's the only one I was smart
enough to ask. It was based on the
assumption that the first life used DNA as the replication
mechanism; I
now know that it's unlikely that
DNA was, in fact, the mechanism, because it requires such a large
cast
of supporting actors. In retrospect,
it was probably also naive to assume that the first self-replicating
molecule was also a short one. More
likely, it was unnecessarily long and complex, and later replaced by
more efficient mechanisms.

Actually, we have produced self-replicating RNA that was only a couple
dozen nucleotides in length. Presumably, the first self-replicating
organism would have been similar.

Even so, it's the only game in town. Lacking more knowledge about
what
completely unknown mechanism led
to first life, we can only try to bracket the problem based upon
mechanisms we do know. If you've got
a better approach, I'm all ears.

The origin of life is a very difficult subject to study. We have no
rocks or fossils from that time, so we don't have any direct physical
evidence to tell us how it actually happened. What we do have is
evidence that suggests what the early Earth may have been like. Given
all of this uncertainty, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe's calculation is
pointless. It makes no sense to try to calculate the odds against the
origin of life, when we don't really know what that life looked like.

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?

See above. Perhaps they really don't. But it's the best approach
that
some very smart people have been
able to come up with. H & W came up with their theory of panspermia
precisely because they felt that the
probability of life forming on Earth, so soon after its formation,
was
vanishingly small. You, like the
rest of us, are free to correct and/or improve their mathematics.
But
not to simply reject it or to
ignore it by changing the subject.

I have not ignored their calculation or changed the subject. I have
directly addressed their assumptions.

Personally, I don't think much of the panspermia idea. It merely
pushes
the solution off to another place,
and another time. The problem of how that first life got started
doesn't
go away, it just gets relocated
to another planet. Even so, H & W's observation that spontaneous
generation seems unlikely, is a valid one.

I agree, but it isn't necessary to move the problem off the Earth when
the odds are not nearly as bad as Hoyle and Wickramasinghe have
suggested.


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.

On that point, we agree. As I mentioned a couple of messages ago, I
suspect that the RNA/DNA
mechanism replaced earlier, more archaic, and more inefficient ones.
The fundamental problem is
that once an ecosystem gets started, all those hungry little
critters
eat up all the competition,
including all traces of earlier and more inefficient mechanisms.
I'm
not sure we can ever overcome
that problem to the extent that we'll ever be able to determine what
came before RNA/DNA.

I agree. We may eventually find a way that life could have
originated - which would answer the creationist challenge - but we
will probably never be able to determine how life actually began.

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.

Yes.


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.

I'd _LOVE_ to know more about that. Also about what other
gadgets --
ribosomes, enzymes --
are needed to help "self-replicating" molecules self-replicate. The
problem with my question from
years ago, concerning the length of self-replicating molecules, was
the
naive assumption that if
a molecule had the ability to self-replicate, it would do so. I now
understand that DNA molecules
do _NOT_ do so on their own. In fact, a DNA molecule is one of the
most
stable organic molecules
known to man. Hence the fact that serious scholars can even think
about
such things as retrieving
bits of DNA from dinosaur fossils dead for millions of years.

If you put a glop of DNA in a test tube, it doesn't self-replicate
at
all. It just sits there like
a fool. To make it "self-replicate," you have to put it in an
environment like the liposome amplification
environment mentioned elsewhere in this thread. Or, of course, the
innards of a living cell.

So perhaps a more reasonable answer to the question, "How short can
one
make a self-replicating molecule,"
is another question: "Define 'self-replicating'." How many
supporting
chemicals must be present?

It was my understanding (again, notice the qualifiers) that the
self-replicating RNA only required the presence of the appropriate
nucleic acids. Basically the same environment that was there when the
molecule first formed.


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.

I was under the impression that you sought to correct their
calculations
by introducing millions of
individual chemical factories, otherwise known as living organisms.
In
any case, suggesting ain't the
same as proving.

I was referring to the first self-replicating organism. If it was a
simple RNA molecule, then no enzymes were required. Since Hoyle and
Wickramasinghe's calculation was based upon the number of enzymes
required, using their calculation, the odds against the formation of
life was 1:1. You see, changing the assumptions alters the result of
their calculation drastically.


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.

Welcome to the club. I guess we're all limited by how much effort
we're
willing, or able, to put
into researching our answers.

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 there's one thing certain about this discussion, it's probably
that
we now have information
about how biochemistry works, that H & W didn't have access to. I'd
certainly be willing to
participate in an effort to refine their estimates. I just don't
think
dismissing them with
an arm-waving argument is very productive.


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.

Ok, that may have been your question. It was not mine, because I
think
the question is -- with respect --
silly. No one is questioning whether evolution can produce a
certain
organism, given lots of other
organisms busily producing organisms for their own selfish reasons
(we
humans do it for the sheer fun
of it). It seems to me that you are assuming the existence of the
very
thing that H & W sought to
explain. That's begging the question, is it not? The question is
not,
"Which came first, the chicken
or the egg?", but rather, "How do you get an egg if there's no one
to
lay it?"

Using your chicken analogy, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe were calculating
the odds of building a chicken. I was simply pointing out that it is
easier to build an egg, and let it grow into an egg.

Likewise, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe calculated the odds against getting
an organism with 2000 enzymes through random combinations of 2000
enzymes. I was simply pointing out that it is easier to get 2000
enzymes if we start with 1 enzyme. Certainly you would agree that the
odds against getting 1 enzyme are much lower than the odds against
2000.

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.

Sorry, I don't see that terms like "life started by looking for one
enzyme that would work" as adding
anything useful to the discussion. You have anthropomorphized
"life"
into an intelligent entity,
seeking to create itself before it ever existed. Not only seeking
to
create itself, but doing so with
a consciously defined goal or payoff function called "working."
Such
concepts seem about as far removed
from impersonal and unguided evolution as one can possibly get.

Come on, Jack! I'm not writing a textbook here. Certainly you could
have seen that I was just using an expression? By "looking for one
enzyme that would work", I simply meant that through random mutation,
early life stumbled upon an enzyme that preformed a useful function.
No purpose or intelligence required.

Fact is, the image of life tinkering around with chemicals using its
home chemistry set smacks a lot of
another intelligent entity called "g_d." Only the names have
changed.

Or random mutation and n_t_r_l s_l_ct__n.

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?

So what assumptions do you think we should use? I'm up for just
about
any assumptions except
"To make life, start with life."

Assume the first self-replicating organism was an RNA molecule with 20
nucleotides.

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.


Ok. I accept your criticism of their assumptions, but don't find
yours
to be an improvement.

So if my assumptions aren't any better, that means that Hoyle and
Wickramasinghe's conclusion is valid?