whiskey the hedonist

Lee, lee, lee.... you are denying the truth completely about babylon. I'm really concerned that you are so spiritually bereft that you take everything so literally... how can you possibly handle the whole "kingdom of heaven" thing if you don't learn to think symbolically! It doesn't MATTER what the walls are MADE of, what matters is the RECREATION of the HISTORIC babylon in symbolic TRUTH! What Griffith did was to rebuild Babylon In SPIRIT! And this falsifies the prophecy much more than a city on a particular spot could, because Griffiths babylon was THE SAME as the biblical Babylon! Whereas a new babylon would just be some city in the desert, Griffith rebuilt a whole WORLD of pagan idolatry. There were whores walking the streets and selling their wares, and the worship of false gods. You can't deny that Griffith's recreation of Babylon captured the SPIRIT of ancient babylon and therefore its essence and its genuine truth, which was rebuilt!

Even if you were completely right--and I will leave it to others to poke holes in your origins ramblings--about how life appeared and the likelihood of the event, are you honestly trying to tell me that it is MORE likely that a flying spaghetti monster reached out his noodly appendage and created a mountain, a tree, and a midget?

whiskey the hedonist

To recap: First, assuming that only earth like planets can evolve life, and estimating the number of earth-like planets in the universe, we arrive at 6.25x10^19 simultaneous planetary trials. Then, we have to remember that there are multiple trials occurring on each planet, so there are... oh, lets say 1x10^50 simultaneous trials (based on the size of the ocean and a moderate chemical dilution therein.) So that gives us 6.25x10^69 simultaneous trials, not your 10^74. Chemically, we know that the number of usefull combinations in a strand of RNA is 2.5x10^112, so lets multiply your numbers by that instead of by your arbitrary 10^3. Now the probability is 10^6080 / 2.5 x 10^109, or about 1 in 10^55. Given 6.25 x 10^69 trials, I think that it is clear that the probability of life SPONTANEOUSLY appearing on some planet in a given year is actually greater than one.

John A. Broussard

Finally. You admit that Babylon doesn't have to be rebuilt in order to destroy the prophecy and thus demonstrate that the bible contains at least one lie.

Thank you.

John A. Broussard

But then you'll insist that it be pronounced with a silent T on the end, or that only a Navajo code speaker can say it, or that "you" means a supernatural being, or that there has to be a wall around the blibbit speaker, or that...

The tragedy, lee, is that you have absolutely no idea of what "evidence" consists of, of what "proof" consists of, of what a "hypothesis" is, of how a "prophecy" differs from a "prediction" or of how to conduct a rational discussion.

lee_merrill

Hi everyone,

Yes, and the Bible even says this will happen more completely, Babylon will return in spirit, see Revelation (notably chapters 17 and 18). Yet the prophecies about rebuilding must mean real buildings, a real city, and the prediction about reinhabitation must mean real people.

Well, no, I am subscribing to Orgel and Crick's and Flew's perception of the utter improbability of abiogenesis from a chemical soup. I also recommend to Orgel and Crick the conclusion Flew arrived at! And the conclusion I hold, even more so than Flew, a being with some evidence, as in fulfilled prophecy, a being called God, instead of unknown aliens.

The problem here is that the estimate of the number of earth-like planets is getting really small! I was being most generous to say one in a million, here is Hugh Ross' estimate, "However, the nineteen listed in Table 1 in themselves lead safely to the conclusion that much fewer than a trillionth of a trillionth of a percent of all stars will have a planet capable of sustaining life." Ross does say here that there are about a trillion galaxies, though, and I did seem to make a mistake in my arithmetic, so here is the edited conclusion of my new back-of-the envelope, "if we have a trillion galaxies with 100 billion stars each, with 1/1,000,000 chance of a proper planet in each star, that's 10^17 planets, and lets allow 10 billion years, with 10^50 interactions per year on each planet. Then the probability is 10^77 / (2 * 10^6080), or about 2 in 10^6003."

But this would mean that there are 10^112 possible completely different, interchangeable proteins for each designated protein in my estimate. But by this, I meant a protein that had the same function! We can't conclude that any useful RNA combination can do a given function.

Actually, the there are two predictions, so overturning either one of them would show that the Bible is not perfect, either one failing would disprove divine inspiration.

Eh, "he who throws mud is losing ground"..

Regards,
Lee

John A. Broussard

I lost you somewhere.

What are these two predictions?

Since they seem to have something to do with Babylon, I'm sure you won't mind mentioning them again.

Thank you.

whiskey the hedonist

What? Where does it say that in the prophecy? Were the actors not real people? Are you some kind of anti-thesbian bigot? I don't get it, man. I mean, on the one hand, you have the tyre prophecy, which isn't to be literally interpreted cause it would just flat out fail, right, but they you are insisting on this literal interpretation of the babylon thing. And then there is the kingdom of heaven bit, which is symbolism... it just seems really weird that you can only invoke symbolism to prove the bible right, you know, as if the game is rigged somehow.

And what do you mean, some unknow alien? HE is not an alien, he is a trancendental being of Pasta, completely different from your "god". I am asking, is it MORE likely that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created, in the beginning, a Mountain, a tree and a midget, or is it more likely that life is a natural chemical phenomena? I do not speak of your false jesus-god, i am talking about the true god, the Pasta God, who has touched me with his noodly appendage. DO YOU DENY that HE is MORE likely than natural chemistry?

And finally, you miss the point. There are at least 2.something x 10^112 chemical combinations that are usefull for life in any RNA molecule. Plus, you can substitute pretty much any protein in any given slot, so that makes it even more, and you don't even need RNA to have life, neccessarily, the whole thing could be silicon based instead.

Besides, I thought I was allowed to just make numbers up without regard to actual chemistry or a realistic abiogenetic scenario.

ComestibleVenom

I especially like the claim that there will always be a jewish people.

The spiral arm of the galaxy is 100 million years away. The clock is ticking.

lee_merrill

Hi everyone,

That Babylon will never be rebuilt or reinhabited, sorry, I had thought I had made that clear.

Erm, what I meant was "real" as opposed to "spiritual," you had just said Babylon was restored in spirit, so I was insisting that the prophecy meant not a spiritual restoration of Babylon, but a physical one, with actual buildings, and also the inhabitants also would need to be restored, not spiritually, but with actual people living there.

It's "thespian," not "thesbian," by the way...

I actually hold that the Tyre prophecy was literally fulfilled, too.

I seem to have gotten mixed up, was it the Pasta God that predicted that Babylon would never be rebuilt or reinhabited? Well, whichever one did this, has something on the ball, and a credible claim to being real...

But what on earth do you mean by "useful for life"? And I was not making RNA, I was making a gene product required for life, of which about 250 are needed, are you saying I can substitute at will, and I only really need one gene product?

And here is a more formal estimate, I think Hubert Yockey is saying that 250 different gene products are needed:

"Biophysicist Hubert Yockey has calculated the probability of forming a single gene product (one that is functionally equivalent to the ubiquitous protein cyctochrome C) as one chance in 10^75. Given this probability, Yockey calculated that if the hypothetical primordial soup contained about 10^44 amino acids, a hundred billion trillion years would yield a 95% chance for random formation of a functional protein only 110 amino acids in length (a single gene product). The universe is about 15 billion years old. This means that less than one trillionth of the time has passed that would be needed to make even one of the 250-350 gene products necessary for minimal life, or one of the 1500 gene products necessary for independent life."

How so, though? We need some probabilities here...

Certainly any such prophecy is impossible naturally, so then the continued fulfillment will eventually require the supernatural. But let us remember the various attempts to erase all Jewish people. And how they all failed...

Regards,
Lee

whiskey the hedonist

Fine. Were they real people or not? Are you an anti-thespian bigot?

So when was tyre scrubbed to bare rock without a building standing? And it never was rebuilt? Ever? Why didn't anyone tell the inhabitants?

And the archeologists and diggers who "pitch their tents" on the ruins of babylon for months at a stretch, none of them are arabs? And again, babylon has been rebuilt twice in the last hundred years...

You have posited more than one completely unrealistic scenario for abiogenesis, are creating chemicals at random with no regard for the laws of chemistry, and you want the odds of silicon life evolving from ME?

It doesn't matter what the odds are, the point is that your are demonstrating the odds for ONE particular scenario, but there are MANY scenarios. But even for your scenario, a different interpretation shows that the chances of life evolving are better than 1!

Get thee to a pasta house before it is too late. You still haven't answered whether the Flying Spagetti Monster is more likely to exist than for life to spontaneously arise. Your little distractions to your false prophecies and cooked book bible will not work.