Richard Carrier

Hello, theists and atheists, creationists and evolutionists, ID fans and opponents all:

I am working on an article for publication on the Argument from Biogenesis (which basically says "a natural origin of life is too improbable therefore there must be a God"). Though my article is critical, it delineates what it would take to make such an argument succeed. To that end it uses material I have provided here on the Secular Web and in the NCSE newsletter.

The subject has gone quiet on the internet lately, but new books and articles have surely come out that use the argument in some form. I am only concerned with versions that actually attempt to calculate a statistic as proof, and only arguments actually in print.

To that end I'd like to resubmit my general call before I conclude my article for publication: if any of you out there are aware of any "statistics" purportedly proving the natural origin of life impossible, ones which I do not already discuss in my paper "Are the Odds Against the Origin of Life Too Great to Accept?," please contact me at rcarrier@infidels.org with all the information you can provide (I will eventually need: the statistic cited, summary of the argument and premises used to derive that statistic and how it is used, citation of who uses it and where, with page numbers, and you should also check the sources cited in support of the argument or statistic, since often these are just borrowed from other authors whom I have addressed already).

I don't want to leave any version of the argument unexamined. I thank everyone for their help in this matter.

One such "new item" that inspired my general call here is Dembski's latest book No Free Lunch which looks like something that should discuss a new statistic that I should add to the article (or else it quotes ones I already address--which is even more worth mentioning in my article).

So, regarding this book in particular:

Does anyone here happen to have a copy? I'm planning a library trip in a few weeks anyway, but it could be quicker if someone has the book on hand, just to give me a heads up on whether I should bother, or whether the info I need is simple enough to convey in email for inclusion in my article.

But besides that case, I'd also like to hear about any examples that I'm not aware of.

Thanks again.

Spaz

I don't get probability for this, it's irrelevant. If out of all the planets in the universe there was a probability that on one of them life could exist, how would you know you weren't the one? No matter how improbable something is that doesn't mean it can't happen. I guess I just don't get it.

Kevbo

Most "odds of abiogenesis" calculations I've seen are farcical mockeries of chemistry in that they do something absurd like trying to calculate the odds that just the correct random molecules will spontaneously align out of random movement into a self-replicating organism. A better "odds" calculation would be something along the lines of, "what are the odds of a reaction occurring when chemical X is introduced to chemical Y given conditions Z?" For instance, the probability of a reaction between Na and H2O at STP is virtually 1. The atoms involved in chemical reactions are not luckily running into each other in the precise way they need to in order to cause the reaction, they are subject to powerful nuclear/electromagnetic forces.

RufusAtticus

Simply put we don't know what the first replicator was right now and/or the exact conditions in which it arose. Therefore, it is impossible to determine any sort of probability that it would arise at this time. There is further difficulty in determining the probability that life arises naturally; we only have a sample of one!

Valentine Pontifex

You might find the following useful:

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

The evolution deniers get their silly stats via some really bad assumptions:

1) Single step production/evolution of the proteins in question.

2) There is only one possible amino acid sequence that will do what any particular protein will do. This is contrary to experimental and theoretical evidence as well as the observation of countless version of the same protien doing the same thing in nature.

3) Even if x protein did not evolve, why could not some other solution been found?

4) Calculation assume one shot at forming the amino acid sequence. In reality the number of "attempts" availiable is extremely large. Think about just how big is a mole.


5) The creationists assume in their calculations that it was nothing but a random process. Natural selection is not completely random. Neither are the laws of chemistry.

lpetrich

And even if there was a "designer", that entity may be the "wrong" kind of entity, like time travelers from our future that wanted to ensure that they would come into existence.

monkenstick

serial multiplication of irrelevant figures to produce big numbers

Baloo

LMAO - usually, when somebody posts a thread entitled - Help: (insert theistic argument here), it's a discussion-board-newbie atheist getting hammered on a subject s/he isn't overly familiar with... So when I first read the thread title, then the author, my heart skipped a beat... "Richard Carrier, having trouble with THAT argument???"


Anyway, the most recent calculations along these lines that I've run across are presented in Lee Strobel's "The Case for Faith" (please don't ask what the hell I was doing reading it). Basically, Strobel spent a chapter presenting the numbers in an interview format with Dr. Walter L. Bradley, and they rang of the same fallacies (if not the exact same figures - I didn't compare them number for number) already addressed by Carrier in the "Walter Bradley and Charles Thaxton" section of the aforementioned article. Nevertheless, if Mr. Carrier is still interested, I can provide more detailed citations.

beausoleil

It's moot anway, since the size of the universe is unknown.

Bill

Not quite "unknown," but certainly "unproven."

If inflation theory proves to be true (and it is widely accepted as true), then there are about 100,000 regions in the universe the size of our own.

And what, you might ask, is "the size of our own" region? Well, it is a sphere with a radius (distance in light years) equal to the age of the universe, which is about 13.7 billion years. Thus, each of the "about 100,000 regions in the universe the size of our own" is just such a sphere with a radius of about 13.7 billion light years.

The creationists frequenly omit that factor of 10-to-the-fifth-power in their own calculations of probability because, after all, we can't see, and therefore can't prove the existence of, those other 99,999 such regions of the universe. And then they get on our case for refusing to believe in their invisible diety....

== Bill