What do Atheists and Evolutionists say to this?

Question

Chandra Wickramasinghe, professor of applied mathematics at the University of Cardiff, Wales, told his readers that the statistical probability of forming even a single enzyme, the building block of the gene, which is in turn the building block of the cell, is 1 in 10 to the 40,000th power. This is hard edged science and doesn't seem to point to random evolutionary processes over billions of years. Where did it all start anyway?

Answer 1

Of course it was a very small chance.  That's why we've yet to discover life on other planets; the occurrence is so rare (though I do believe there could be plant or bacterial life elsewhere).  But the chance that a highly advanced organism already existed to create the universe is much more far-fetched.  He would have had to be made out of highly advanced matter, and for one extremely advanced organism to exist while no others did is MUCH more far-fetched than evolution.

And to answer your last question, it started via electrical storms after millions-billions of years of cooling after the Big Bang.  Scientists formed enzymes (simple RNA molecules) with electricity about 50 years ago in Chicago.  Because we know for a fact that the atmosphere was filled of electrical storms during the Earth's early cooling stage, it's a very likely possibility.

Answer 2

Not knowing everything about how he came to this conclusion, I'd have to say perhaps he was saying that those are the odds of an enzyme forming spontaneously. However, enzyme formation would have come as part of a long chain of events, after the formation of other chemical building blocks, so the odds would probably be different.

And, this is the same guy who said that SARS may have come from space, so exactly how much credence should we give him?

Answer 3

And Chandra Wickramasinghe probably doesn't know what he's talking about, because a degree in 'applied mathematics' doesn't equal to a degree in a more relevant field, biology.  

Answer 4

The odds may be very long, but it only has to happen once to start life.  Long odds don't mean an impossibility.

Also, I know Chandra Wickramasinghe to be an atheist and a believer in evolution, not creation; I am certain that this quote is taken out of context, and that he must have included some qualifying information that was purposely left out in order to make it look like a respected scientist was refuting evolution.

Religious people do this ALL THE TIME.  Richard Dawkins, Eugenie Scott, and Charles Darwin have all been similarly "selectively quoted" to make it seem like they're anti-evolution.  Ridiculous!

Answer 5

"the statistical probability of forming even a single enzyme, the building block of the gene, which is in turn the building block of the cell, is 1 in 10 to the 40,000th power"

Enzymes are NOT the building blocks of the genes!

An enzyme is a protein, while the building blocks of genes are (surprise, surprise!) DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acids.

This is kind of soft-edged for hard-edged science, I would say.

Answer 6

Wow, if this guy really said that then he has absolutely no clue about basic cell structure at all.

Enzymes aren't the building blocks of genes and genes aren't the building blocks of cells.  What I assume you mean is that.. no, even that doesn't work.  The building blocks of genes are nucleotide bases which can form naturally in environments containing montmorillonite clay.  

Actually I assume that you're talking about proteins which are indeed rather complex and require a semi-specific layout to function correctly.  Unfortunately for you, basic life does not need proteins to self-replicate.  Life forms that exist today that do require it have demonstrated several times that new proteins can, and do arise from chance mutations.  Proteins that. coincidentally, bestow better ability to survive in their current environment, just as the theory of evolution predicts.

This is nothing to do with having an open mind or not, it's to do with basic facts.  There is nothing that prevents proteins from arising spontaneously in a llife formthat doesn't use them given enough time, and then that llife formadapting to require those proteins later.

Besides all that, stating that a modern protein that exists today would have little chance of arising spontaneously from just random chemicals is stupid.  Nobody suggests that these proteins formed spontaneously, it is basic life that developed the ability to produce proteins by chance.  Your figures are irellevant.

Answer 7

I would have thought a professor of applied mathematics would be aware that this is not a valid application of mathematics.  Of course there's a good chance this just never happened, or that it has been taken out of context.  Probabilities predict trends based on incomplete information by assuming factors we do not know are random.  You can't use a statistical model of an event which has already happened to say how likely or unlikely it is that the event has happened.  That's just silly.

Think about flipping a coin.  Because you don't know all the details involved (the precise weight of the coin, the force and angle of the flip, the distance it is allowed to fall, etc.) we just generalise and say that there is a 0.5 chance it will land heads.  But if you flip a coin and it does land heads, you can't then say that there is a 0.5 chance that the coin landed heads.  Once the event happens, the chance that it has happened is 1.

Answer 8

This from a guy who claimed SARS was from outer space. Yeah, it's really shaking my belief in evolution. *rolls eyes*

Just for your information, the subject you're talking about is NOT evolution. Evolution deals only with life once it has evolved. The subject of creating  the first life is called Abiogenesis. You may want to read up on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

Answer 9

Now factor in all the stars and all the planets and the vast amount of time involved, and it doesn't seem so improbable, does it?

Answer 10

1) source

2) she is a math expert, not scienece

3) enzymes are in no way the building blocks of "genes".  If by genes you mean DNA, then nucleotide bases are the building blocks of DNA. And there are 6 of those. Amino acids are also important in DNA synthesis. But enzymes are never "building blocks", they are catalysts to reactions.

Answer 11

Good point but most evoution diehards censor info like this...

and refuse to acknowledge it ...especially all information taht shows the extreme unlikelihood of evolution ever happening...

Its the cult like stuff of evolution , and the self denial that makes me glad I reject it long ago.

former evolutionist.

keep up the good work of exposing the fraud of evolution theory.

Answer 12

"This is hard edged science.."

No, it's mathematics. You just said that. Quit trying to twist it around.

Come back again when a biologist says the same thing. Because they won't, they know better.

By the way, I can tell you don't know about evolution because you call it a "random process"-- evolution is anything but.

Answer 13

The statistical probability of my life for the past 34 years leading up to me reading this boring tripe by someone who doesn't understand statistics or probability  calculations is an even bigger number, yet since it happened, the chance is 100%.

After the fact probability is always 100% - as it happened.

Answer 14

But the religious alternative is even more absurd - an all powerful being (which, incidentally, there has been no evidence of for thousands of years) suddenly caused the universe to happen and then disappeared again.

The thing is with probabilities, once something has happened, it doesn't matter how massive the probability, it has happened.

And you are confusing abiogenisis with evolution.  Plus evolution is NOT random, it's shaped by environmental pressures.

Look at this link.  It explains why Chandra & Hoyle's assumptions about abiogenesis are in error

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob...

Answer 15

It is an axiom of mine that when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes)

All because something is improbable doesn't make it impossible.

Deist with a B.A. in Anthropology (Archaeology)

Evolution is a scientific theory and a fact.

Answer 16

I say that if the prof said that, he may be a good mathematician but he sucks at biology. Labs all over the world have already created amino acids in their test tubes. It's the next step that requires something they haven't yet duplicated.

Answer 17

Brilliantly beautiful fact!

Also: Laminin and Snake Venom (Vipera lebetina venom contains two disintegrins inhibiting laminin-binding beta1 integrins)

Laminin acts as the glue for the body. Google images-->Laminin=do it

Viper Lebetina Venom works to destroy Laminin.

Answer 18

Give a source please. It is impossible to investigate further unless I have access to his claim and the reasoning behind it. This may be just another case of creationist quote mining (a very common tactic indeed) or the bogus probability calculation. You can make anything seem ridiculously improbably by how you define the initial conditions.

In your last sentence where you assert a "random evolutionary processes" this conveys a vague understanding of how evolution works. In what sense do you mean random? Evolution by natural selection is the non-random selection of randomly varying genotypes.

Answer 19

that it's significan that this person is a mathematician. She doesn't understand the role of selection in the process of evolution. She can do math (hopefully), but never studied biology. Her lack of knowledge in biological science does not allow her to make an accurate model of evolution.

It's exactly like physicists saying that its impossible that a bumble bee can fly. Bumble bees can fly and it was insufficient knowledge about insect flight which made physicists say that according their model bumble bees can't fly. They calculated according to the wrong model.

And this is as far away from the hard edge of science than a boiled egg is from being a razor blade.

Answer 20

Do you know the odds of that particular speck of dust landing on your eyelash at that exact moment?

billions upon billions to one, right?

Can't happen, right?

Answer 21

Listen, you people (who call yourselves intelligent atheists and evolutionists).  If you are intelligent answer intelligently.  This is not just one person's opinion.  Professors, who are not statisticians and who may very well be atheists and evolutionists, say these things all the time (at least in my liberal non-Christian Bible-eschewing college) so don't get too touchy.  You have the name of the professor and what he/she said.  All you need to do to verify the information is use google to search for the name of the professor or the key words from the quotes. Pubmed is also good for finding articles that have been published by many scientists so you can search for the professor's name using that website also.  It will also give you links to people who publish on the same topics.  Otherwise ask the professors of cell biology and biochemistry at your local college.

Trust me, you will not convinve anyone, particularly Christians to agree with you with that kind of attitude.

Don't attack the asker.

Asker, good point.

One other thing, some professors of cell biology will agree.  This quote does not disprove or prove the theory of evolution so why are people dissing the professor?

Answer 22

Since there is no baseline to these "statistical probability", the entire claim is moot.  This is certainly not "hard edged science".

Edit:  Upon further investigation, this whole thing looks suspiciously like a quote mine.  What is the original source of this nonsense?

Answer 23

Yet perhaps the most significant single difficulty associated the the neo-Darwinist view of life is that microorganisms are far too complicated. When bacteria were created, or accomplished, or formed as the case might be, it is true to say that 99.99% of the biochemistry of higher life was already discovered. Some 2000 or so enzymes are known to be crucial over a fairly wide spectrum of life ranging from simple micro-organisms all the way up to Man. The variation of amino acid sequences in these enzymes are, on the whole, rather minor. In each enzyme a number of key positions are occupied by almost invariant amino acids. Let us consider how these enzymes sequences could have been derived from a primordial soup containing equal proportions of the 20 biologically important amino acids. At a conservative estimate say 15 sites per enzyme must be fixed to be filled by particular amino acids for proper biological function. The number of trial assemblies needed to find this set is easily calculated to be about 10 ^40,000 —a truly enormous, super astronomical number. And the probability of discovering this set by random shuffling is 1 in 10 ^40,000. This latter number could be taken as a measure of the information content of life as reflected in the enzymes alone. The number of shufflings needed to find life exceeds by many powers of 10 the number of all the atoms in the entire observable Universe.

Answer 24

Maybe you should read more sciences, and evolutionary process is random and this points to it because it is a tiny random chance that the enzyme could be created in the probability of not knowing. Also, you forget about genetic mutation's being as an imperfect science, because if we were able to figure all of that out the we would know when to next find a genetic mutation. I prefer not to believe in fantastical stories told by humans and focus on factual information. I also happen to believe that if anchient  humans were not christians of catholic what makes you think it would be the right answer? What about eastern religions?

If your is not the most ancient  it more than likely isn't true.

Answer 25

a)source please

b)look at planets out of the millions there are only a few can sustain human life, God?no chance, if everybody in the world flipped a coin someone would probably get heads 1000 times in a row, they would think they were special but they weren't because 4. odd billion other people tried and didn't so they were lucky.

Answer 26

That assumes that the enzyme is formed through completely random processes. It wasn't. That's not how it works. It was randomness with natural selection, hence the probability is much higher. And given billions of years, even unlikely things will happen.

Answer 27

Chandra is an expert in mathematics- evolution is biology. His knowledge of numerology is no doubt flawless but I doubt if the same can be said for his knowledge of biochemistry and the processes involved in the formation of enzymes.

Answer 28

Math and biology aren't the same thing, silly. Chandra works in the field of studying variables, statistics and probabilities, not in examining molecular structures or cellular formation or any other biological process. Two completely different areas of study. One may relate to the other in some distant way, one may help the other at times, but neither negates the other by one simple calculation or observation.

Answer 29

If you think about it, there's been a lot of time passed since the Big Bang... wouldn't that be enough to overcome a statistical probability?

And BTW, that's math, not "hard edged science".  By a mathematician.  That's like a foot doctor performing open heart surgery.

Answer 30

Source please.

And at the very basic level, it may seem impossible. But they aren't taking into account the chemical properties of the atoms. Thousands of hydrophobic water molecules will join together in water. Without describing the environment or the properties at play, you could say it's statistically impossible for these thousand moleucules to join together.

So there.

Answer 31

Yes he's right.

About individual probabilities (not about cell biology).

Now remember that during the time of abiogenesis there were untold  trillions upon trillions of amino acids covering the vast majority of the surface of the earth, each with  those astronomical odds of combining.

To wrap your head around this idea, consider how unlikely it is to get a winning lottery ticket, and yet someone wins almost every week.  How?  Because there are millions upon millions of tickets each with that chance, and it only takes one to win.

Same thing - billions of years and trillions of possible combination amino acids each with that 1 x10 to the 40000th