the universe and space....?

yes, this has been getting rather tedious;
with all the back and forths, somewhat raised voices (or should i say raised 'odds'), and endless repetition, you seem to be edging towards Franks 'insufficient unambiguous evidence' position; and that can't be a "good thing"!

Ican; your "The sixth stranger, 12 times during the 24 hour period, is dealt a hand containing 4 aces." is a ringer; you know that would never happen (yes, i realize that is your point!); and it doesn't happen in evolutionary history either; if someone/thing were 'stacking the deck', there are millions of things that would be better of 'different' from the chance results we are stuck with; an indication, most obviously, that no such manipulation is taking place.

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BoGoWo, It seems to me that only people with religious beliefs get hung up on that idea; that there's a prime mover outside of natural selection and random happenings.

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akaMechsmith wrote:

In conclusion, Ican is correct IMO. Random interactions probably would not result in humans in eight billion years. They probably would not even result in intelligence. But he is not correct in assuming that we are any sort of a goal. We do not KNOW if we are a goal. We do not have enough information to determine this. Any discussion of a goal is a guess, plain and simple. And a rather conceited guess at that.

Ok! It's a wrap! Smile

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Evolution
As i've said before on other posts, the idea that evolution of life must have taken many unlikely steps is true. The idea that these steps are TOO unlikely to have occured is bogus.
Think about it...there are over 250 billion stars in our galaxy alone. And it is estimated that there are over 200 billion galaxies. Thats approximately 50,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. Our star has 9 planets. some stars have no planets. Lets assume that on average there is ONE planet for every star. That means there are 50,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets. (for simplicity, i'll call this number 50 gregillions) So, there are 50 gregillion chances for life to have occured and evolved to a human level of intelligence. So even if the chances of our intelligence evolving on a planet is ONE in 50 gregillions.....here we are!!!! so the argument that it is too UNLIKELY is somewhat faulty.

Another claim often heard is that life and the universe is to complicated to have been created by chance. Something this complex must have been created by an intelligent creater. BAH!!! In my opinion, it is actually simplicity that argues intelligent design, not complexity. Think about it, if you picked up a handful of pebbles on the beach you would notice they are actually quite complex. They are composed of dozens of types of matter and impurities, their shape if very irregular with lots of dents and curves, and they even have a vary varied coloration. Now suppose you notice one pebble that is PERFECTLY round and PERFECTLY symmetrically dense throughout (in other words, very simple). Wouldn't you get the impression that the simple pebble was the man made one?? Of course.
So just because the earth is complex, doesnt mean its created by intelligence.

In fact, no argument I've ever seen anybody make so far impresses me that the universe has an intelligent designer. Its just a matter of Faith, by definition.

Greg

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Re: Evolution

skeptic wrote:

As i've said before on other posts, the idea that evolution of life must have taken many unlikely steps is true. The idea that these steps are TOO unlikely to have occured is bogus.

My idea is that these steps are too unlikely to have occurred by chance alone

The probability of the occurrence of any particular base sequence in a genome is less than a moogolth. I define a moogol = 1 followed by a million zeros. So a moogolth = 1/1 followed by a million zeros = 10^(-1,000,000). So even 10^99 chance genome edits multiplied by a moogolth still equals a very small probability = 10^(-1,000,000) x 10^99 = 10^(-999901).

We know that the history of evolution, as shown by the history of rock strata, includes environmental disasters that about a half-dozen times wiped out intelligent animal life that subsequently reevolved in new more intelligent forms. That bias is too great for that to have occurred only by chance. Something else, not necessarily an intelligent something else, contributed to that bias.

skeptic wrote:

Another claim often heard is that life and the universe is to complicated to have been created by chance. Something this complex must have been created by an intelligent creater. BAH!!! In my opinion, it is actually simplicity that argues intelligent design, not complexity.

The human brain is a tad more complex than non-human brains. A simple round stone out of thousands of not so simple non-round stones is a chance occurrence of the simple out of a possible large number of not so simple occurrences. The occurrence of the human brain is the Question

chance

occurrence of something complex out of a Exclamation

large number Exclamation

of less complex occurences.

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hi

Quote:

We know that the history of evolution, as shown by the history of rock strata, includes environmental disasters that about a half-dozen times wiped out intelligent animal life that subsequently reevolved in new more intelligent forms. That bias is too great for that to have occurred only by chance. Something else, not necessarily an intelligent something else, contributed to that bias.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Do you think that during these disasters ALL life was wiped out?? Not true. Some or most of life may have been wiped out. Evolution did not have to start over after these periods. Who survived? The animals that were most adapted to the new invironment. This is how evolutions works. Disasters actually PROMOTE evolution, they do not make it more difficult. The only BIAS needed here is survival of the fittest!

Quote:

The probability of the occurrence of any particular base sequence in a genome is less than a moogolth. I define a moogol = 1 followed by a million zeros. So a moogolth = 1/1 followed by a million zeros = 10^(-1,000,000). So even 10^99 chance genome edits multiplied by a moogolth still equals a very small probability = 10^(-1,000,000) x 10^99 = 10^(-999901).

This suffers some subtle but serious flaws. People who say that the chances of our genome forming are extremely low have forgotten one thing. They are assuming that our exact genome was the ONLY ONE possible for life to form. Not true. Millions or billions or maybe even "moogolths" of different gene patterns may still have formed life, it just would have been somewhat different than our own. This reduces your "moogolth" quite a bit. In fact it likely reduces it far into the realm of possibility. In light of all the numerous star systems that gave life so many chances to form...i think it even reduces it into the realm of PROBABILITY!

Greg

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That polar bears have survived the change, if any, from moderate temperatures to freezing shows how animals have adapted to their environment. It was also recently found that there are life forms where hot vulcanic activity occurs in the oceans. Those temperatures would burn most of us to death, but those creatures have adapted to those hot temperatures. It boggles my mind.

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True
Very true cicerone...life is amazing...
In fact there is alot of evidence that very hot places (some as hot as 3000 degrees celcius) is actually where simple life began! So maybe it was us that did the most amazing adapting by living in our climate!
Life is wierd.
Greg

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Skeptic, Back this thread up to about page 22. This is where we began wrapping it up.

You may be able to get a good idea of the arguement from there.
Previously we have discussed perceptions and definitions required.
Actually I'd reccommend that you read the whole thread. IMO it's one of the better ones. Probably should have been in science and mathematic.

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Re: hi

skeptic wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean here. Do you think that during these disasters ALL life was wiped out??

I did not refer to all living organisms. I referred only to the wiping out of all intelligent animal life; that is living organisms with brains more complex than those of bugs, bacteria, viruses, etc..

skeptic wrote:

Who survived? The animals that were most adapted to the new invironment.

The survivers were equivalent to bugs, bacteria, viruses, etc.. Repeatedly more intelligent living organisms evolved from them after each disaster despite the fact the more intelligent would be the least fit to survive the next disaster. Chance evolution of the same kind over and over again? Whatever caused it, it certainly wasn't chance alone.

The deck was stacked! If you were playing poker with six strangers, and one stranger was repeatedly dealt hands with four aces, wouldn't you suspect a bias influencing what was supposed to be a pure chance game? I certainly would!

The number of different species of living organisms hit a peak at about the same time humans evolved about 200,000 years ago. Ever since then the number of different species has been declining. You may want to attribute that solely to environmental changes. Possibly that is the sole cause of the decline. But previous environmental disasters favored the survival of the simpler organisms. In the last 200,000 years environmental changes favor the more complex. Curious Rolling Eyes

I'm betting that we will discover other factors influencing evolution besides undirected chance and natural selection.

skeptic wrote:

People who say that the chances of our genome forming are extremely low have forgotten one thing. They are assuming that our exact genome was the ONLY ONE possible for life to form. Not true. Millions or billions or maybe even "moogolths" of different gene patterns may still have formed life, it just would have been somewhat different than our own. This reduces your "moogolth" quite a bit. In fact it likely reduces it far into the realm of possibility. In light of all the numerous star systems that gave life so many chances to form...i think it even reduces it into the realm of PROBABILITY!

I've not communicated. I wrote that the probability of the occurrence of any one genome sequence was less than a moogolth. Evolution has repeatedly been biased toward the evolution of the more intelligent species of living organisms only to have these wiped out repeatedly by environmental disasters. Why is nature prone to repeatedly evolve those far more complex species (i.e., intelligent species) least likely to survive environmental disasters? Less complex species clearly more fit to survive these disasters are far more probable, if undirected chance was selecting what initially becomes a candidate for procreation? Undirected chance and natural selection cannot alone account for this bias. Such a randomly generated repeated bias like this is too unlikely to be credible.

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SUPPOSE ON EARTH

Genome edits (e.g., mutations) occurred at about the rate of 10^36 per second or 10^44 per year (i.e., trillion x trillion x trillion x 100 x million).

SUPPOSE IN THE UNIVERSE

There are 10^36 life evolving planets like our earth (trillion x trillion x trillion).

So the number of genome edits per year in the universe were 10^44 x 10^36 = 10^80 per year.

The universe is allegedly 15 billion years old and life started evolving in it about 10 billion years ago.

So the total number of genome edits per 10 billion years in the universe is 10^90.

But, whaththehell, let's say life has actually been evolving for 10 billion x billion years.

So the total number of genome edits in the universe over that time period is 10^99.

If the chance of any one genome sequence is 10^(-1,000,000), what would be the chance of intelligent species being evolved?

SUPPOSE THERE ARE

10^1000 different genome sequences for successfully procreating intelligent life. Then the chance of intelligent life would be 10^99 x 10^1000 x 10^(-1,000,000) = 10^(-901).

[Note: 10^(-100) = 1/googol = a googolth.]

ANALOGY

The probability of any particular 5 card poker hand being dealt from a randomly sequenced deck is 7/2,598,960 in a seven person game. While you would probably think something other than chance was influencing the repeated dealing of hands with 4 aces, to a particular person, you refuse to acknowledge that probability when it comes to evolution.

You might rightfully observe that there is no natural selection process affecting what hands are dealt. But what if there were a natural selection process affecting what hands you actually were allowed to see? 4-Ace hands continue to dominate your vision even while repetition of other specific hands continues to be rare. However, after a certain number of deals, the person repeatedly receiving 4-Ace hands was always replaced (e.g., shot). Shocked

So much for natural selection in a 24-hour poker tournament. Rolling Eyes

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sceptic;

you will find ican goes a little 'over the top' with his "evidence" when he has a sensitive personal belief to support.
He means well, but the math and terminology are, while highly entertaining, shall we say a touch 'severe'.

And ican; (now that i'm finished patronizing you, couldn't resist) i am reading a book you would love; Canadian science fiction by Robert Sawyer, called "Calculating God". It's about aliens who come to earth in order to follow up their theories on 'divine interference' which are close to yours. And of course they choose Canada in which to land, so they can be treated like intelligent entities, not freaks (all our 'aliens' come from space, not other parts of this planet).

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hi
actually, ican is not quite accurate in alot of his statements.
When disasters occur it does not completely wipe out the more intelligent species. It wipes out most of the MEMBERS of a species. The ones still alive were best adapted to survive and pass on their genes.
Ican seems to think that each time a disaster occured evolution has to start from more primitive animals and work its way up again.
Simply not true.
The more intelligent animals also survive. Thier numbers are just reduced.

Regarding the math in his last pose. It amounted to nothing more than numberous suppositions "suppose this..." that were designed to argue his case.
I could just as easily say"
Suppose that there are actually 10^99 possible combinations of DNA bases that could create intelligent life. Or suppose there are 10^(10^99) possible combinations. It means nothing. Just as ican's suppositions meant nothing.

My guess is that there are alot more combinations of gene bases that could have eventually made life than we think.

Quote:

Skeptic, Back this thread up to about page 22. This is where we began wrapping it up.

From the conversation i've been reading in the last few posts, I'd dont think this has been "wrapped up" at all.

Greg

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BoGoWo wrote:

you will find ican goes a little 'over the top' with his "evidence" ... the math and terminology are ... a touch 'severe'.

HOW SEVERE IS SEVERE?

The PROBABILITY of the occurrence of an event is generally computed as a NUMERATOR, which is equal to the number of trials, divided by a DENOMINATOR which is equal to the number of possibilities.

I severely enlarge the size of my numerators and severely decrease the size of my denominators in order to compute the probability that undirected chance plus natural selection are sufficient, appear larger than it actually is. So the more severely I enlarge the numerator and the more severely I decrease the denominator, the bigger the probability I compute. But I have a severe problem. Despite my severe efforts to date, I am unable to increase the probability to even a googolth that undirected chance plus natural selection are sufficient. In other words, it looks like it is practically impossible for undirected chance plus natural selection to be sufficient. Crying or Very sad

...

BoGoWo wrote:

i am reading a book you would love; Canadian science fiction by Robert Sawyer, called "Calculating God". It's about aliens who come to earth in order to follow up their theories on 'divine interference' which are close to yours. And of course they choose Canada in which to land, so they can be treated like intelligent entities, not freaks (all our 'aliens' come from space, not other parts of this planet).

Canada? Is that any where near Alaska? :wink:

"Calculating God" may go far beyond my current limited imaginings. I'm merely calculating the probability that undirected chance plus natural selection are sufficient causes for the evolution of life in our universe. If it turns out that it is practically impossible for undirected chance plus natural selection to be sufficient, then I must decide whether adding a flawed/finite something else can achieve practically certain sufficiency.

Is God really necessary? Shocked

I don't even have sufficient data to warrant a guess what a valid definition of God is, muchless guess whether God exists or not. Confused

I realize that some folks think it's a pure dichotomy: undirected chance plus natural selection versus God. Well as severe as this may seem,

Quote:

There are more things in heaven and earth,

Bogowo,

Quote:

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

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Re: hi

skeptic wrote:

When disasters occur it does not completely wipe out the more intelligent species. It wipes out most of the MEMBERS of a species. The ones still alive were best adapted to survive and pass on their genes.

According to the history of the rock strata there were several long epochs which left zero fossils in the strata. Of course, zero fossils, don't equate to zero life. But they do equate to a wipe out of anything capable of being fossilized. That includes but is not limited to intelligent life.

skeptic wrote:

Ican seems to think that each time a disaster occured evolution has to start from more primitive animals and work its way up again. Simply not true.

Of course it is not true. I don't think that! I did not write that "each time a disaster occurred" there was a restart. I wrote that there were about a half-dozen environmental disasters following which there was a restart of evolution from more primitive life.

skeptic wrote:

I could just as easily say"
Suppose that there are actually 10^99 possible combinations of DNA bases that could create intelligent life. Or suppose there are 10^(10^99) possible combinations. It means nothing. Just as ican's suppositions meant nothing.

My guess is that there are alot more combinations of gene bases that could have eventually made life than we think.

Not "made life", made intelligent life in particular is the point; in particular, made humans, or could have made other beings equally intelligent or more intelligent than humans. But, by all means keep on guessing!

akaMechsmith wrote:

Skeptic, Back this thread up to about page 22. This is where we began wrapping it up.

I'll provide a brief summary of the calculations covered previously in detail in this forum.

I'll limit the calculation to the evolution of humans from the common ancestor of mice and humans (i.e., our clade).

The genes of both mice and humans have been sequenced. It has been discovered that there are 300 genes in the human genome not found in the mouse genome. There are alleged to be more than 300 genes in the genomes of humans not found in the common ancestor genome. The average human gene sequence contains 9000 codons. A codon consists of 3 bases. There are 4 different kinds of bases.

Each codon can specify any one of 20 amino acids or any one of 44 non-amino acids. It is the sequence of amino acids that specifies protein configurations.

So the number of different possible base sequences among those particular 300 genes in the human genome is equal to:

((4^3)^9000)^300 = 4^8,100,000 > 10^4,876,685 > 10^1,000,000 = a moogol.

Greg, of those sequences in those 300 genes, how many do you think are capable of specifying that sequence of amino acids which specifies that part of the protein configuration of the human brain not found in the mouse brain; or, could specify something else with similar or greater intelligence than the human brain?

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I'm still with y'all but I am afraid we are just reiterating the same arguement. When Icans math (which is far superior to mine) shows that random chance is not enough to account for the number of successful mutations (evolving mechanisms) then we (mutually) agree (d) that this is unlikley as far as explaining "how we exist".

But when I went back further and further from the complex organisims that we all agree we are, I found organisms that are impossible to describe as living or dead.

Some prions fit this description, and a very few viruses. They are not capable of being killed. ( If you cannot kill it, is it alive?) In one experiment that I read about it is even possible to crystallize this "compound". You could use it as sand in your cement block house if you wanted. BUT when you "reconstitute" it it is still capable of reproducing (infectous), given the proper environment.

In reading about "Mad Cow Disease", "Kuru" ,"AltzheimersDisease", and "Krutzfeld-Jacobs Disease the infective agent does not seem to be capable of being killed, at best it can only be rendered dormant. (if it was injected into a human what do you think would happen?" This is the basis in fact of the problem with Britains beef cows. Many children were vaccinated with viruses grown in a "beef based medium".) ( If you want to scare yourself, think about blood transfusions and Altzheimers)
Is dormant, capable of being "resurrected" actually dead. If capable of being resurrected is it capable of evolving? If capable of evolving is it our ancestor?

Personally, I think so. Life itself carries the intelligence necessary to select chances. Life, with its umbiquitous presence, has the ability to drive evolution. AND "life", a purely natural response to existing conditions, has the "ability" to throw an extra Ace in any hand it happens to come upon. Life doesn't want this ability, doesn't really need it to survive. BUT to survive better (in other than its specific ecological niche) it needs to change somewhat. (Skew the odds a bit)

This gives you "greed",religion, "jealousy" "competiveness" "free will" and all the other attributes you need to become human.

As I have asked before, I need some other indication of a Supreme Intelligence". Should One exist it should (IMO) exist outside of pure, ineveitable physics. So far thats all we've got. I don't think One exists Exclamation

There is no evidence, so far, of one. Sad

Read back, IMO it's worth it. Smile

M.

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Hi
About "mad cow disease" and Krutzfeld-Jacobs disease...they are both caused by what's known as a "Prion". It is not alive. It is just an altered form of a brain protein. In our bodies we have millions of different types of proteins that do millions of functions. When a specific one of them undergoes a chemical change that causes its shape to change it attaches to receptors in our brains and causes bad effects. But it is by no means alive.
So this argument can really not be used.

Still Ican, your math is useless because there is no way to know how many different gene sequences could have lead to intelligent life. And we have no way of knowing how many chances this intelligent life had to form. Its just pure speculation hidden behind complex math. NOthing more.

Intelligent life could very easily have developed naturally, without any "intelligent" help or any "bias".

Greg

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Re: Hi

skeptic wrote:

Still Ican, your math is useless because there is no way to know how many different gene sequences could have lead to intelligent life. And we have no way of knowing how many chances this intelligent life had to form. Its just pure speculation hidden behind complex math. NOthing more.

Intelligent life could very easily have developed naturally, without any "intelligent" help or any "bias".

Greg, my math is not useless merely because of the existence of alternate possibilities. I personally find it difficult to prove to a certainty that anything is absolutely impossible. Oh, I can do it if I start with a suitable assumption or assumptions, but that doesn't really count, because I cannot prove that assumption or those assumptions true to a certainty. I'm currently making a probability argument. The value of my argument rests on whether I or someone else can come up with a more probable argument. You haven't chosen to do that yet.

You claim there is no way of knowing how many different gene sequences could have lead to intelligent life. Well according to their literature, there are a great many evolutionary biologists making great progress decoding genome sequences in terms of what part of the sequence specifies what part of the human and mouse bodies. Once they figure that out, they can at the very least begin to determine what in the two genome sequences specifies the mouse brain and the human brain. I understand that you posit the notion that it is possible that other protein configurations might provide the same or better brain as the human one. When those biologists complete their work, you will be ready to estimate the probability of that possibility.

You also claim we have no way of knowing how many undirected random chances our intelligent life had to form. It is true that we don't have even a reasonably approximate number for that. But it is also true that we have an easily calculated upper bound (granted, not least upper bound) for that. That upper bound is 10^99. Shocked

That number is probably less and highly probably not greater. That number of chances is shown by me to probably be insufficient unless those chances are influenced by something (e.g., laws of physics, laws of chemistry, laws of biology, or simply the nature of our universe).

I grant you that it is possible that you are correct. I think the evidence already available shows that you are probably incorrect.

If you have it, please give me evidence for thinking otherwise.

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Let me ask all of you who think that "intelligent life coming about randomly is not possible" a question.

Chances of winning the lottery are very low.

So let's say you actually win the lottery, would you proceed to say, "Well the chances of me winning the lottery were very low, so I must not have won."

I ask that because that is exactly what you are saying about intelligent life.

Just because the chances were very very low doesn't mean it didn't happen. If you think that way then the whole idea of probability and statistics is worthless in anything that is unlikely to happen because when it does you might as well say "It was highly unlikely so it didn't happen."

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hehehe, well said hodgepodge.
Hey...I was just thinking that.
hmmmmm
adele

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the universe and space....?

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