[Osx-nutters] The separation of church and state.

[Patrick Coskren]

My first thought was... wait, this is a *biologist* using this  
argument??  So I looked.  And he's an astronomer; surprise[1].  And  
here's why that matters:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levinthal_paradox>

Basically when your ribosomes spit out a new peptide chain (the  
pattern for which is read out from your DNA), it assembles itself  
into a fully formed ("folded") protein with a very specific, and  
often functionally critical, shape.  There are so many possible  
shapes into which a protein could fold, though, that even if you  
tried out one shape per picosecond, you'd wait for the universe to  
die before the protein achieved its folded state.  Therefore,  
according to Hoyle here, there must be some mysterious something  
guiding it.

But it doesn't really mean that.  All it means is that certain  
configurations are far more likely to occur than others, for whatever  
reason.  Maybe there's some wacky "Eros" guiding it, or maybe it's  
just the electrophysical forces between different peptides that wind  
up producing the right shape.  Guess which one the biologists  
believe.  Hoyle's argument is just a rephrasing of the Levinthal  
paradox in a different context, and the lesson is simply that all the  
different configurations of biological chemicals are not sampled with  
equal likelihood in the evolutionary process.  Which, considering the  
way life works, isn't very surprising.

-Patrick

[1] And a science fiction author, no less!

On Dec 4, 2007, at 1:22 PM, Stefano Mori wrote:
>
> On 2007-Dec-04, at 06:56, Mark Smith wrote:
>
>> On 03.12.2007, at 22:28, Stefano Mori wrote:
>>
>>> The one point where the ID people have a valid criticism, is the
>>> question of whether the universe is old enough for so much
>>> "creativity" to have happened with only a series of minor Oopses.
>>
>> There is nothing valid about this whatsoever. At what rate would one
>> expect your "creativity" to occur ? How many many oopses would be
>> required ? etc. etc. etc.
>>
>> You are falling into the creationists trap. This is how they win the
>> hearts and minds of folks who are insufficiently "scienitifc".
>
>
> I don't know if Sir Fred Hoyle is insufficiently scientific?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle
>
>
> Published in his 1982/1984 books Evolution from Space (co-authored  
> with Chandra Wickramasinghe), Hoyle calculated that the chance of  
> obtaining the required set of enzymes for even the simplest living  
> cell was one in 1040,000. Since the number of atoms in the known  
> universe is infinitesimally tiny by comparison (1080), he argued  
> that even a whole universe full of primordial soup would grant  
> little chance to evolutionary processes. He claimed:
> The notion that not only the biopolymer but the operating program  
> of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial  
> organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.
> Hoyle compared the random emergence of even the simplest cell to  
> the likelihood that "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might  
> assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein." Hoyle also  
> compared the chance of obtaining even a single functioning protein  
> by chance combination of amino acids to a solar system full of  
> blind men solving Rubik's Cube simultaneously.[1]
>
>
> And this is despite him being an Atheist.
>
> I don't know if he's right, just that he's thought about it and  
> there is some merit to the argument.
>
> Stefano


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