Now that we have established what needs explaining (biological information, and the origin and functional interrelatedness of cellular machinery) and the scientific method biologists employ to formulate an explanation, we turn our attention to the four possible explanations for life’s origin: (1) Chance; (2) Necessity; (3) Combination of chance and necessity; (4) Intelligent agency. In this post I will examine the possibility that life can be explained in terms of chance processes alone.
Just like the lottery, specific probabilities can be assessed for the origin of life by chance. To illustrate how probabilities are assessed, consider a combination lock. What are the chances of someone guessing the correct combination of a lock with four dials containing 10 digits each? To determine the chances one must multiply the number of digits on each dial (10) by itself four times (because there are four dials): 10 x 10 x 10 x 10 = 10,000 different possible combinations. The chances of guessing the correct combination, then, are 1 in 10,000. If one more dial was added to the lock, it would decrease the odds by a factor of 10 (1 in 100,000). If one is given only one try, the odds of getting the right combination are overwhelmingly against him—so much so that if the lock opened everyone would suspect that his selection was not random, but based on intelligence, or that the lock was faulty. The odds of cracking the combination increase, however, as one increases the number of attempts. If one is given 100,000 tries to guess the combination, then the odds are that he will eventually guess the combination through random attempts alone (if each try took 10 seconds, you could crack the 4-dial code in about 28 hours, and the 5-dial code in about 11 days).
Because the addition of every new part increases the odds exponentially, when you get into sufficiently complex objects like proteins and DNA, the odds of them forming by chance alone are effectively 0. Why? Because there is not enough time for even half of the possible “combinations” necessary to form a single protein to have been tested by chance alone.
The simplest living cell is Mycoplasma genitalium, a bacteria with 580,070 nucleotide base pairs, and 517 genes that code for 482 different proteins. Scientists, however, think it may be possible for a cell to function with less DNA, and as little as 250-400 proteins.[1] This marks the minimal complexity for life. So what are the chances that 250 functional proteins could arise by chance to form the first living cell?[2] To determine this we need to first establish the chances of forming even one protein by chance.
Some of the shortest functional proteins in the cell consist of at least 150 amino acids. The chances of getting those amino acids to assemble themselves in the right sequence by chance alone is 1 in 1074. To complicate matters, amino acids come in both left-handed and right-handed varieties (in equal amounts). Life, however, only uses amino acids of the L-handed variety. So in addition to the problem of sequencing the amino acids in the right order to form a meaningful biological “sentence,” protein formation on the pre-biotic Earth would have also faced the difficult problem of getting L-handed—and only L-handed—amino acids to bond with one another, for as soon as a R-handed amino acid bonded to a string of L-handed amino acids, protein formation would cease.
The problem facing protein formation is similar to the problem of having to spell “I am going to Disney Land in California next Saturday with some friends and family who will be coming to stay with me for a couple of weeks from the venerable city of Venice, Italy” by randomly pulling letters out of a large pot one at a time. Inside the pot, however, is an equal number of English letters and Chinese characters. If I pull out an English letter that is not appropriate for the sequence, whatever portion of the sentence I was able to form purely by chance has to be discarded. Likewise, if I pull out a Chinese character from the pot, whatever portion of the sentence I was able to form purely by chance has to be discarded. The chances of being able to pull out the exact English letters in the exact sequence without ever pulling out a Chinese character is nearly impossible. And yet that is what would be required for even the simplest life form to begin.
What, then, is the likelihood that 150 L-handed amino acids would bond together without a single R-handed amino acid interfering, when there are an equal number of L-handed and R-handed varieties available? It is equal to the odds of flipping a coin and it coming up heads 150 times in a row: 1 in 1045. Add to this the odds of sequencing the 150 L-handed amino acids into a biologically meaningful/functional order (1 in 1074), as well as the odds of forming only peptide bonds between amino acids (1 in 1045), and we discover that the odds of forming a single, small protein are reduced to 1 in 10164 (a 1 followed by 164 zeros).[3] That’s 1 chance in 100 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion. To put this in perspective, there are only 1080 number of protons in the entire observable universe! That means the chances of finding a specified particle in the observable universe are a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion times greater than the chances of producing a functional protein consisting of only 150 amino acids. And these are the odds of forming just one protein. Since the simplest living cell requires at least 250 different proteins, the chances of forming the necessary proteins by chance alone is 1:1041,000!
But wait, you say, given enough time, couldn’t the odds be met? No. Given a liberal estimate, there have only been 10139 events in the entire universe since the Big Bang.[4] So even if every event in the history of the universe was devoted to building a single functional protein, the number of sequences produced thus far would be less than 1 out of a trillion trillion of the total number of events needed to give it even a 50% chance of success! And that’s just one protein! The other 249 would still need to be accounted for. Anyone who believes chance can succeed with these odds is being irrational.
Random chance cannot explain the origin of life, but what about necessity? Can natural law explain it? We’ll take up this possibility next time.
[1]Using knock-out experiments, the scientists who mapped the genome of M. genitalium concluded that 381 of the 482 genes/proteins are essential to its survival. Of extant cells, then, the minimal complexity for life is 382 genes/proteins.
In even the simplest of cells approximately 20 proteins are needed to transcribe DNA, more than 100 proteins are needed to translate RNA into proteins, and more than 30 are needed for replicating DNA during mitosis.
[2]The chances of forming a protein by chance are roughly equivalent to the chances of forming the gene that codes for the protein by chance (the information content is equal as well), but most OOL researchers choose to calculate the odds of forming proteins because it is simpler.
[3]This figure does not take into account additional factors such as the odds of all 20 amino acids being produced in enough quantities and being in close enough proximity to form a protein.
One might wonder why the odds of forming a functional sequence of 150 amino acids is not 1:10195 since that is the sum of 20 multiplied by itself 150 times. While that number does represent the odds of obtaining a specific amino acid sequence, we are only interested in the odds of obtaining a functional protein (and there are a number of sequences that will lead to a functional protein). The odds of obtaining a sequence of 150 amino acids that can perform a biological function, while astronomical, are considerably better than the odds of obtaining a specific amino acid sequence.
[4]William Dembski calculated this figure by multiplying together the number of elementary particles (1080), the number of seconds since the Big Bang (1016), and the number of particle interactions per second (1043).
Thinking to Believe 
December 20, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Let’s say there’s a lottery that will randomly pick one out of a billion people. One is selected. Joe Lucky is selected says “it couldn’t have happened by chance, the odds are too low.”
Yes, the odds of life existing on earth exactly as we know it are quite tiny. Whatever the result, the odds of that particular result would be tiny. But there would have been some result. The error is assuming that the ultimate outcome was inevitable.
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December 26, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Got the book for Christmas, four chapters into it and the historical background leading up to the discovery of the structure of DNA is worth the price of admission.
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December 28, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Arthur,
The problem with your lottery analogy is that you are failing to distinguish Shannon information from functional information. As I have written for an upcoming post: “When it comes to explaining the origin of life, one must explain more than just the origin of the biological components of the cell—-one must explain how they came to be arranged in such a manner that they perform a biological function. There are many ways to arrange chemicals—-and all of them are equally improbable—-but there are only a select number of ways to arrange chemicals so that they bear and communicate biologically relevant and functional information. The difference between a random arrangement of chemicals and a functionally significant arrangement of chemicals is the difference between shooting an arrow blindfolded and having it landing anywhere, versus shooting an arrow and it hitting a target. When it comes to life, the specification of the arrangement, rather than the presence of the chemical constituents makes all the difference.”
Unlike the lottery, someone doesn’t have to win in the game of life. A more apt analogy is as follows. Suppose you have a vat of marbles. Inside the vat are 100 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion marbles. All of the marbles are red, except for one marble which is white. To win you have to pull out the white marble on the first try. While the chances of pulling out any particular marble is very low, the chances of blindly pulling out the white marble on the first try is even more improbable. And for this analogy to be applicable to the origin of the first cell, you would have to repeat your success another 249 times in 249 other vats containing the same number of marbles. The chances of you pulling out the while marble from each vat on the first try 250 times in a row is equal to the chances of life forming by chance on the early earth. Anyone who thinks these odds can be met is being irrational.
To say the odds are “quite tiny” is an understatement. In fact, calling it an understatement is an understatement. They are not even “quite tiny.” They are so low that they are effectively zero. Did you not read the numbers? No one in their right mind would think life could just spring into existence in a mere 500 million years or so when the odds are 1 in 10 to the 41,000th power. And they can’t appeal to the existence of life as proof that the odds were met, for this only begs the question in favor of materialism. Yes, life is here, but the question remains as to how it got here. Thinking that chance processes brought it into being is irrational because the odds are overwhelmingly against it being possible. Remember, even if every event in the universe for the past 14 billion years was working toward building a single protein, the number of sequences produced thus far would be less than 1 out of a trillion trillion of the total number of events needed to give it even a 50% chance of success! There is simply not enough time for chance alone to build even a single protein by chance, yet alone the 250 required for a minimally complex cell (and that doesn’t even include the other systems required for cellular life).
Jason
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January 2, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Did you not read the numbers? No one in their right mind would think life could just spring into existence in a mere 500 million years or so when the odds are 1 in 10 to the 41,000th power.
Certainly you don’t believe that the intelligensia are collectively not in their right mind? Scientists overwhelmingly believe that life arose on earth without any supernatural cause. If the argument as you present it is untenable, then perhaps it’s your understanding of their argument that is wrong?
And they can’t appeal to the existence of life as proof that the odds were met, for this only begs the question in favor of materialism. Yes, life is here, but the question remains as to how it got here. Thinking that chance processes brought it into being is irrational because the odds are overwhelmingly against it being possible.
As a great theologian once said, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
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January 5, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Arthur,
Certainly you know intelligent people can be mistaken. If the history of science tells us anything, it is that a lot of smart people believed wrong things for a long time. In some cases they believed it with little evidence, while in other cases they believed it with (what seemed at the time) good evidence. But eventually the ideas were shown to be false. Think of the aether, the eternal universe, and Newtonian physics. These were standard scientific beliefs, and yet wrong.
You have to ask yourself why certain scientists believe life arose by purely naturalistic, chance processes. Is it because the mathematical odds favor it? Clearly not. Is it because the experimental evidence makes it likely? Absolutely not. The experimental evidence has only highlighted the problem. At best it has demonstrated the necessity of intelligent intervention.
The reason so many scientists believe life arose by purely naturalistic processes is because the reigning philosophy of science requires naturalism. If your discipline requires that you limit yourself to purely naturalistic causes, then one has no option but to believe that life originated by purely naturalistic processes. The real question is why science should be arbitrarily constrained by naturalism. If the goal of science is to discover the truth about the physical world, then it should be seeking after the actual causes of natural phenomenon (whether natural or intelligent), rather than just a certain kind of cause (a materialistic one). If the empirical evidence points to the involvement of an intelligent cause, scientists should not be prohibited from drawing the conclusion that an agent was involved simply because of some a priori philosophical commitment to naturalism (or at least methodological naturalism).
Thinking that science can only explain physical effects in terms of naturalistic causes makes as much since as telling a coroner that they need to determine the cause of someone’s death, but they cannot conclude it was a homicide—only natural causes are permitted as a valid explanation. What if, when the coroner examines the body, he finds stab wounds in the back? Should he be prohibited from concluding that this was murder based on some arbitrary definition? Clearly not. And yet this is what is happening in the field of biology in particular, and science in general. The rules are set in advance: no intelligence allowed. Even if no material causes are adequate, and the evidence points to an intelligent agent, the modern, reigning definition of science prohibits the design conclusion. Scientists need to determine whether they are interested in finding the right kind of answers (philosophically acceptable ones), or the right answers. As atheist philosopher Bradley Monton has written “that rejection of the supernatural should not be a part of scientific methodology. … Scientists should be free to pursue hypotheses as they see fit, without being constrained by a particular philosophical account of what science is. … If science really is permanently committed to methodological naturalism, it follows that the aim of science is not generating true theories. Instead, the aim of science would be something like: generating the best theories that can be formulated subject to the restriction that the theories are naturalistic. … Science is better off without being shackled by methodological naturalism. … ID should not be dismissed on the grounds that it is unscientific….”
Jason
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January 5, 2010 at 4:43 pm
Arthur,
I thought I would supplement what I said above with quotes from origin-of-life researchers who readily admit that they don’t know how life originated.
Andy Knoll, biology prof at Harvard admits, “If we try to summarize by just saying what, at the end of the day, do we know about the deep history of life on Earth, about its origin, about its formative stages that gave rise to the biology we see around us today, I think we have to admit that we’re looking through a glass darkly here. We don’t know how life started on this planet. We don’t know exactly when it started, we don’t know under what circumstances.”
Antonio Lazcano, president of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life admits that “precisely how the first genetic machinery evolved also persists as an unresolved issue,” and “the exact pathway for life’s origin may never be known.”
Biochemist Klaus Dose admitted that 30 years of OOL research has led to “a better perception of the immensity of the problem of the origin of life on Earth rather than to its solution. At present all discussions on principal theories and experiments in the field either end in stalemate or in a confession of ignorance.”
Franklin M. Harold, Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Colorado State University wrote the following concerning the origin of life: “I do not mean to disparage serious scholars who are doing their level best to crack the hardest nut of all. Quite the contrary: I would argue that, if our purpose is to understand life, the origin of life is the most consequential question in all of biology. It holds the key to understanding the relationship between the living and the inanimate, the quick and the dead. Each new bit of evidence strengthens our belief that organisms obey the laws of chemistry and physics; and scientific investigations have turned up no traces of a vital force to nurture the wellspring of life. We assume, then, that cells are material systems that arose by some sort of evolutionary process four billion years ago here on earth (or conceivably, someplace else). I share this premise, but feel obliged to note that, in the absence of evidence as to how this came about (or even of a plausible hypothesis), this explanation is merely a belief–a leap of faith. … Of all the gaps in our understanding of life, this one is the widest. Until we bridge it, we cannot lay to rest lingering doubts as to whether science has read nature’s book of biology correctly.”
And again, “Life arose here on earth from inanimate matter, by some kind of evolutionary process.” But he admits that “this is not a statement of demonstrable fact, but an assumption….”
Cell biologist Stuart Newman writes, “The creationists, for their part, have smaller fish to fry. The presence and operation of highly complex, nanoscale molecular ‘machines’ within the cell present additional challenges to neo-Darwinian incrementalist scenarios that are not obviously soluble by either classic chemistry or the physics of macroscale chemically active materials discussed above. Even Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, was not convinced that the conditions on the prebiotic Earth were compatible with the chemical evolution of the genetic material, suggesting instead scenarios of ‘panspermia,’ the seeding of the Earth by life forms from other sites in the Universe. This, of course, is question begging of the first order. But in the quarter-century since Crick first confronted these difficulties, increased knowledge of the complexity of the nanomolecular systems within the cell has only made the question of origination and innovation at this level more puzzling.”
Lelsie Orgel wrote, “It must be recognized that assessment of the feasibility of any particular proposed prebiotic cycle must depend on arguments about chemical plausibility, rather than on a decision about logical possibility. … Each proposed metabolic cycle, therefore, must be evaluated in terms of the efficiencies and specificities that would be required of its hypothetical catalysts in order for the cycle to persist. Then arguments based on experimental evidence or chemical plausibility can be used to assess the likelihood that a family of catalysts that is adequate for maintaining the cycle could have existed on the primitive Earth. … Almost all proposals of hypothetical metabolic cycles have recognized that each of the steps involved must occur rapidly enough for the cycle to be useful in the time available for its operation. It is always assumed that this condition is met, but in no case have persuasive supporting arguments been presented. Why should one believe that an ensemble of minerals that are capable of catalyzing each of the many steps of the reverse citric acid cycle was present anywhere on the primitive Earth, or that the cycle mysteriously organized itself topographically on a metal sulfide surface? The lack of a supporting background in chemistry is even more evident in proposals that metabolic cycles can evolve to ‘life-like’ complexity. The most serious challenge to proponents of metabolic cycle theories—the problems presented by the lack of specificity of most nonenzymatic catalysts—has, in general, not been appreciated. If it has, it has been ignored. Theories of the origin of life based on metabolic cycles cannot be justified by the inadequacy of competing theories: they must stand on their own. … If a complex system of evolvable nonenzymatic cycles that did not depend on residue-by-residue replication could be shown to be feasible, it would mark a breakthrough in origin-of-life studies. What is essential, therefore, is a reasonably detailed description, hopefully supported by experimental evidence, of how an evolvable family of cycles might operate. … Without such a description, acceptance of the possibility of complex nonenzymatic cyclic organizations that are capable of evolution can only be based on faith, a notoriously dangerous route to scientific progress. … [S]olutions offered by supporters of geneticist or metabolist scenarios that are dependent on ‘if pigs could fly’ hypothetical chemistry are unlikely to help.”
What about the idea of a prebiotic soup in which life supposedly formed? Chandra Wickramasinghe wrote, “The emergence of life from a primordial soup on Earth is merely an article of faith that scientists are finding difficult to shed. There is no experimental evidence to support this at the present time. Indeed all attempts to create life from non-life, starting from Pasteur, have been unsuccessful.”
Physicist Hubert Yuckey wrote, “The ‘warm little pond’ scenario was invented ad hoc to serve as a materialistic reductionist explanation of the origin of life. It is unsupported by any other evidence and it will remain ad hoc until such evidence is found. Even if it existed, as described in the scenario, it nevertheless falls very far short indeed of achieving the purpose of its authors even with the aid of a deus ex machina. One must conclude that, contrary to the established and current wisdom a scenario describing the genesis of life on earth by chance and natural causes which can be accepted on the basis of fact and not faith has not yet been written.”
Stuart Kauffman wrote, “Further, it was supposed, simple organic molecules in the atmosphere, along with other more complex ones, would be expected to dissolve slowly in the newly formed oceans, creating a prebiotic soup. From this soup, it was hoped, life would somehow form spontaneously. This hypothesis continues to have many adherents, though it suffers from considerable difficulties. Chief among them is the fact that the soup would be extremely dilute. The rate of chemical reactions depends on how rapidly the reacting molecular species encounter one another–and that depends on how high their concentrations are. If the concentration of each is low, the chance that they will collide is very much lower. In a dilute prebiotic soup, reactions would be very slow indeed. A wonderful cartoon I recently saw captures this. It was entitled `The Origin of Life.’ Dateline 3.874 billion years ago. Two amino acids drift close together at the base of a bleak rocky cliff; three seconds later, the two amino acids drift apart. About 4.12 million years later, two amino acids drift close to each other at the base of a primeval cliff…. Well Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
NYU chemist, Robert Shapiro wrote, “Different accounts leading to the origin of the replicator could be constructed, using other experiments published in the literature. Some would be less spectacular than the above one, but all would share the same general defects. Many steps would be required which need different conditions, and therefore different geological locations. The chemicals needed for one step may be ruinous to others. The yields are poor, with many undesired products constituting the bulk of the mixture. It would be necessary to invoke some imagined processes to concentrate the important substances and eliminate the contaminants. The total sequence would challenge our credibility, regardless of the time allotted for the process.”
What about the RNA World hypothesis? RNA World proponent, Leslie Orgel, wrote, “The precise events giving rise to the RNA world remain unclear. As we have seen, investigators have proposed many hypotheses, but evidence in favor of each of them is fragmentary at best. The full details of how the RNA world, and life, emerged may not be revealed in the near future.”
Robert Shapiro wrote, “Walter Gilbert proposed that life began with an “RNA World.” Life started when an RNA molecule that could copy itself was formed, by chance, in a pool of its own building blocks. Unfortunately, a half century of chemical experiments have demonstrated that nature has no inclination to prepare RNA, or even the building blocks (nucleotides) that must be linked together to form RNA. Nucleotides are not formed in Miller-type spark discharges, nor are they found in meteorites. Skilled chemists have prepared nucleotides in well-equipped laboratories, and linked them to form RNA, but neither chemists nor laboratories were present when life began on the early Earth.”
And again, “We shall see that the adherents of the best known theory [RNA World] have not responded to increasing adverse evidence by questioning the validity of their beliefs, in the best scientific tradition; rather, they have chosen to hold it as a truth beyond question, thereby enshrining it as mythology. In response, many alternative explanations have introduced even greater elements of mythology, until finally, science has been abandoned entirely in substance, though retained in name.”
Eugene Koonin writes: “Despite considerable experimental and theoretical effort, no compelling scenarios currently exist for the origin of replication and translation, the key processes that together comprise the core of biological systems and the apparent prerequisite of biological evolution. The RNA World concept might offer the best chance for the resolution of this conundrum, but so far cannot account for the emergence of an efficient RNA replicase or the translation system.”
Need I go on? I think it should be clear that the notion that life originated by purely naturalistic means is a faith commitment required by a particular philosophy of science that isn’t backed up by the empirical evidence. The empirical evidence points decidedly away from chance naturalistic processes and to an intelligent agent as the cause of life’s origin.
Jason
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January 5, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Let me go back to your comment #4 again and address your second point. In response to my point about naturalists using circular reasoning to conclude that life must have originated by naturalistic processes you wrote, “As a great theologian once said, ‘Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.'”
What is impossible? I don’t know what else you could be referring to other than God. But why think God’s involvement is impossible?
Jason
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January 6, 2010 at 12:03 pm
Jason,
You may already know this but on PBS.org at this link http://video.pbs.org/video/1372073556/ you can watch this documentary entitled, “What Darwin Never Knew”. I disagree with much of it’s content but it doesn’t present some interesting information. I noticed they never once bring up OOL. The speak of Darwin’s tree of life. The present evolution as an obvious fact and they hype it a little but never even attempt to dig deep to bring up the roots of Darwain’s supposed tree of life.
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January 6, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Here’s a response to your probability argument:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html
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January 6, 2010 at 2:09 pm
I’ll summarize the argument in a nutshell:
The low odds number assumes that there is only one attempt being made at any time. The odds of one person flipping a coin and getting 20 heads in a row is pretty slim. But if you have 10 billion people flipping coins simultaneously, and given billions of years, the odds are not bad at all.
So how does this shape up with the prebiotic Earth? On the early Earth it is likely that the ocean had a volume of 1 x 1024 litres. Given an amino acid concentration of 1 x 10-6 M (a moderately dilute soup, see Chyba and Sagan 1992 [23]), then there are roughly 1 x 1050 potential starting chains, so that a fair number of efficent peptide ligases (about 1 x 1031) could be produced in a under a year, let alone a million years. The synthesis of primitive self-replicators could happen relatively rapidly, even given a probability of 1 chance in 4.29 x 1040 (and remember, our replicator could be synthesized on the very first trial).
Assume that it takes a week to generate a sequence. Then the Ghadiri ligase could be generated in one week, and any cytochrome C sequence could be generated in a bit over a million years (along with about half of all possible 101 peptide sequences, a large proportion of which will be functional proteins of some sort).
Although I have used the Ghadiri ligase as an example, as I mentioned above the same calculations can be performed for the SunY self replicator, or the Ekland RNA polymerase. I leave this as an exercise for the reader, but the general conclusion (you can make scads of the things in a short time) is the same for these oligonucleotides.
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January 7, 2010 at 3:11 pm
[…] Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science Leave a Comment As a result of the failure of the chance hypothesis to explain the origin of life, Dean Kenyon and Gary Steinman proposed a novel solution: life’s […]
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January 8, 2010 at 5:46 pm
Arthur,
I already took the probabilistic resources issue into consideration. The chances of a simple cell consisting of 250 proteins arising by chance is 1:10 to the 41,000 power, and yet there have only been 1:10 to the 139th power number of events throughout the history of hte universe. You can’t perform more than the maximum number of events in the history of the universe, and yet the number of chances required for a simple cell to originate by chance are tens of thousands times more than that. As I noted in footnote 4, William Dembski calculated the number of possible events in the universe by multiplying together the number of elementary particles, the number of seconds since the Big Bang, and the number of particle interactions per second. Since the number of events required for a simple cell to appear are orders of magnitude greater than the number of events in the universe, it is statistically impossible.
Jason
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January 9, 2010 at 8:26 am
Arthur,
I want to take another stab at communicating what I attempted to communicate in my last comment. In order to produce the complexity and specificity required of a simple cell by chance alone, one would need 10 to the 41,000th power number of tries. Of course, when it comes to the odds we all know that the ability to meet the odds depends on the number of players and the number of opportunities available. The most liberal estimate of the number of opportunities that have been available is Dembski’s: 1 in 10 to the 139th power. That number represents the number of events that have transpired over the course of the universe’s history, down to particle interactions! So if you need 10 to the 41,000 tries to have a good chance of creating life, and yet there has only been 10 to the 139th number of events in the total universe, then it is utterly implausible to think that chance processes alone would have produced life.
As I wrote in the post, even if we reduce the number by ½ to give life just a 50% chance of forming, it still “exceeds the total number of events in the universe by more than 24 orders of magnitude (a trillion trillion times). So even if every event in the history of the universe was devoted to building a single functional protein, the number of sequences produced so far would be less than 1 out of a trillion trillion of the total number of events needed to even give it a 50% chance of success. ”
If you can believe that it’s plausible to think life could have evolved with so few chances (in only 1 billion years on Earth), then you shouldn’t think it implausible for someone to blindly pick the only white marble from a vat of 1 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion red marbles on his first attempt. After all, that’s only a drop in a gigantic bucket compared to the number of tries needed to form life. Surely if someone accomplished this feat you would immediately suspect that he was cheating. His “luck” was too improbable to be luck. You would infer design. So why don’t you infer design when it comes to the OOL given how utterly implausible the naturalistic explanation is, given the fact that we know intelligent agents routinely create specified complex things, and given the fact that you already believe in the existence of an intelligent designer? It’s understandable when atheists adamantly oppose theistic conclusions (contrary to the best evidence), but it’s a whole other thing when theists do so.
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January 10, 2010 at 10:31 am
Here is TalkOrigins on Dembski’s probability arguments, from his book No Free Lunch:
Dembski has proposed a method of inference which, he claims, is a rigorous formulation of how we ordinarily recognize design. If we can show that an observed event or object has low probability of occurring under all the non-design hypotheses (explanations) we can think of, Dembski tells us to infer design. This method is purely eliminative–we are to infer design when we have rejected all the other hypotheses we can think of–and is commonly known as an argument from ignorance, or god-of-the-gaps argument….
Dembski claims to have made major contributions to the fields of statistics, information theory and thermodynamics. Yet his work has not been accepted by any experts in those fields, and has not been published in any relevant scholarly journals.
No Free Lunch consists of a collection of tired old antievolutionist arguments: god-of-the-gaps, irreducible complexity, tornado in a junkyard, and cosmological fine-tuning. Dembski attempts to give these old arguments a new lease of life by concealing them behind veils of confusing terminology and unnecessary mathematical notation. The standard of scholarship is abysmally low, and the book is best regarded as pseudoscientific rhetoric aimed at an unwary public which may mistake Dembski’s mathematical mumbo jumbo for academic erudition.
http://www.talkorigins.org/design/faqs/nfl/
Arthur
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January 12, 2010 at 3:26 pm
Arthur,
You did not address my points. And quoting a bunch of assertions and red-herrings is not going to help here.
The only thing Dembski is relevant to is the number of events in the history of the universe. He calculates them to be 10 to the 139th power. Even if I agreed that Dembski was an idiot, Dembski’s estimate is the most liberal you’ll find out there! So it’s not as though I’m referencing some crackpot to skew the numbers in my favor. If anything, I’m skewing the numbers in favor of the materialists. And yet even then, the number of chances necessary for a simple cell to form by chance alone are astronomically and miserably short. You’ve got to account for the fact that the probability of a simple cell arising by chance is 1:10 to the 41,000th power, and yet there have only been 1:10 to the 139th power number of events in the history of the universe. The mathematical odds of life forming by chance are effectively zero, and anybody who can continue to believe it is possible with such odds is simply exercising blind faith in materialism.
Jason
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February 5, 2010 at 1:25 pm
[…] for design from his new book, Signature in the Cell. Past posts can be found here: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and […]
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February 23, 2010 at 11:40 am
[…] This post will conclude my review/summary of Meyer’s book. Links to the entire series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, […]
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May 30, 2012 at 1:44 am
Hi,
Great site and great information.
I wanted to ask if you could send me the math on how you arrive at the odds for the 2 items:
1) Add to this the odds of sequencing the 150 L-handed amino acids into a biologically meaningful/functional order (1 in 10^74).
2) As well as the odds of forming only peptide bonds between amino acids (1 in 10^45)
Thanks
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July 5, 2012 at 1:21 am
Great question Ken.
There are 20 amino acids, so for each amino acid you add to a protein chain, you multiply the possible combination by 20. To calculate the odds of getting one particular 150 count amino acid sequence , you would multiply 20 by itself 150 times = 1 chance in 10195. Of course, that number represents the total number of possible amino acid sequences. Since more than one sequence is functional, the odds of forming a functional protein are greater. Based on experimental data, Douglas Axe has calculated the odds of forming a functional protein consisting of 150 amino acids to be close to 1:1074.
But then there is the bonding problem. Each amino acid must form a peptide bond if they are going to be able to fold into a protein chain (there are other kinds of bonds that form in nature, but those bonds do not allow for protein folding). In nature, however, such bonds only form by chance half of the time. So for every amino acid you add to the sequence, the probability that the next bond will be a peptide bond drops precipitously. In a 4 amino acid chain protein the odds of forming all peptide bonds is ½ x ½ x ½ x ½ = 1 chance in 16. In an 8 amino acid protein the odds of forming all peptide bonds is ½ x ½ x ½ x ½ x ½ x ½ x ½ x ½ = 1 chance in 128 (1:102). So the chances of forming a protein of 150 amino acids in which each amino acid is joined by a peptide bond is ½149, or 1:1045 (this is the number you get if you multiply 2 times itself 149 times).
On top of this, every amino acid comes in a L- and R-handed versions. Only L-handed amino acids produce functional proteins. Since both versions occur in equal amounts in nature, it is just as likely that a R-hand version would be used in forming a protein chain as a L-handed version. Since there are two different possibilities for every spot in the protein chain, the odds of getting all L-handed amino acids is ½150 (the power is 150 rather than 149 as it was in the peptide bonds because the number of bonds will always be one less than the number of amino acids since the first bond requires two amino acids), or 1:1045. To calculate the chances of getting a 150 amino acid sequence with all L-handed amino acids and all peptide bonds, we simply add together the odds of both (1:1045 + 1:1045 = 1:1090). To this number we add the odds that all those 150 L-handed amino acids with their 149 peptide bonds will be ordered in a proper way so as to create a functional protein (1:1074), and we arrive at the odds of forming a functional protein by chance alone = 1:10164. And that’s just one protein. The bare minimum number of proteins required for the simplest of life is at least 250 proteins, so the odds of the first life forming are 1:1041,000.
But it gets worse. Most protein chains are longer than 150 amino acids. Furthermore, it’s almost certain that the first life form had a lot more than 250 proteins. Any organism with 250 genes would have to be a parasite, meaning it cannot survive on its own; it requires a host organism to fulfill all of its metabolic functions. Since there would be no other life forms present prior to the origin of life, the first living organism would have to have been able to survive on its own, and this requires a much larger genome size: approximately 1500. Given a minimum protein size of 150 amino acids, the chances of forming such an organism are an astonishing 1:10225,000!
Jason
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April 23, 2014 at 9:46 am
[…] good example of this is the origin of life (Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6). We have plenty of knowledge about how life works, the minimum requirements for life, […]
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November 5, 2017 at 12:40 pm
[…] https://theosophical.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/signature-in-the-cell-part-4-assessing-the-chance-hypo… […]
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November 30, 2017 at 4:34 am
[…] is the probability of something like that happening by random […]
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April 6, 2018 at 8:01 am
[…] If you would like to examine the actual probability of simple life beginning by chance I would highly recommend you view the following discussion (including all of the comments) at the following link: https://theosophical.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/signature-in-the-cell-part-4-assessing-the-chance-hypo… […]
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June 26, 2018 at 11:25 pm
[…] If you would like to examine the actual probability of simple life beginning by chance I would highly recommend you view the following discussion (including all of the comments) at the following link: https://theosophical.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/signature-in-the-cell-part-4-assessing-the-chance-hypo… […]
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July 31, 2018 at 5:37 am
[…] If you would like to examine the actual probability of simple life beginning by chance I would highly recommend you view the following discussion (including all of the comments) at the following link: https://theosophical.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/signature-in-the-cell-part-4-assessing-the-chance-hypo… […]
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May 6, 2020 at 9:35 pm
[…] Signature in the Cell, Part 4: Assessing the Chance Hypothesis for the Origin of Life […]
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July 18, 2020 at 4:52 am
[…] https://theosophical.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/signature-in-the-cell-part-4-assessing-the-chance-hypo… […]
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