Depends on how detailed your assumptions are. My intuition tells me that a rough estimate should be calculable on the back of a napkin. If I’m ready I’ll post it on peacefulscience.
But don’t hold your breath.
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So how does anyone prove you are correct ? Are you privy to genomic information from God?
Before anybody knew about genetic information Shroedinger was able to give a rough estimate of the amount of information stored in a then-hypothetical “nonperiodic crystal” inside the cell.
And how do we know Shroedinger was right? Arent you being rather circular?
Huh? Right about what? Read the article I sent you; or the wiki article at least
He was right about the existence of DNA and his rough estimate was in the right ballpark. But that’s a future project that I may or may not do, so please just focus on the op.
@Jety, you are the one discussing probabilities.
How does he know more about how genes work in a genome than anyone else?
Anyone can spout probabilities… what makes you think he’s got the right wild-butt guess?
Oh… I hate to go on wild goose chases… quote the sentence in the article, and I will read the article. No quote? No read.
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Yep.
If I’m wrong then future discoveries wil prove me wrong.
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What’s the point of bringing up a book written in the 1940’s?
“In the book, Schrödinger introduced the idea of an “aperiodic crystal” that contained genetic information in its configuration of covalent [chemical bonds] (Chemical bond - Wikipedia). In the 1950s, this idea stimulated enthusiasm for discovering the genetic molecule.”
DNA wasn’t even fully understood by anyone … and you think the author’s calculations of probabilities are worth discussing today?
The point is that one can give an estimate.
Just like Shroedinger was able to get at basic properties of the DNA,
we should be able to get at basic properties of Evolutionary Probability.
So if he was able to give estimates to the questions he was interested in, we should be able to do the same. It’s called arguing from analogy. I wasn’t proving anything, just giving some reasons why I think this shouldn’t be too hard to do.
When you say “give an estimate” you mean “give a good estimate”, right?
I think you need to re-read your responses. The short answer is “No”.
The long answer is “No, you can’t.”
And you certainly can’t prove your point by quoting from a book written before the DNA molecule was even understood.
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Many things are changing with increases in computational power and data. This is really, really not one of them.
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No, that does not follow at all. Being able to do Thing A does not mean we should be able to do completely different Thing B.
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I don’t see how the chemical properties of DNA can tell us anything about the enzymatic function of the proteins that come from that DNA. Can you please explain this? They seem like two unrelated problems to me.
I would say you aren’t very familiar with the world of protein chemistry. Predicting function from amino acid sequence is one of the hardest things to do in chemistry, and I have yet to see any serious progress towards having a reliable model to predict function. The best we have is models based on homology to known functions, but this model fails for novel sequences.
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That’s not how the term is used. Need implies that the species can’t live without it. This is obviously not the case since there are numerous fish species that don’t have the antifreeze gene and are doing just fine. You have also not shown that this gene is the only possible beneficial trait that could allow those fish to live in those cold environments.
It seems to be common in ID/creationist circles to assume that the traits that did emerge are the only traits that could have emerged. You seem to be making this same mistake.
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If I could try to summarize your question: Is a back-of-the-napkin probability estimate possible and useful in dealing with the genetic data, to decide if evolutionary processes alone are a plausible explanation for all the complexity of life? This discussion has gotten into the weeds so I want to clarify what I think you are asking, which is the question I will attempt to answer here.
I think a similar approach was taken with the Drake equation. Before people knew what the values of certain parameters were, they gave a guess.
There are, as far as I can tell, two problems with this approach in dealing with the genetics. The first problem is, as others have pointed out, that there is an awful lot that we don’t understand. The second problem is that everyone who tries it finds the probability to be unreasonably small. And since scientific materialism dominates these days, the assumption is that the second fails because of the first problem.
Some have tried exactly what you are asking, and honestly pointed out that the numbers don’t work well. My expectation would be that others would help them figure out why and science would progress. But typically instead they are treated like pariahs and blacklisted. For example Hubert Yockey tried it and when he could not conclude that life was likely on its own he was accused of being a Creationist.
I recommend to you Michael Behe’s 2008 book Edge of Evolution. Be prepared that the book is a bit rambling, but the argument is sound and the numbers fair and based on real data. (He concludes that evolution can accomplish some things, but not the full suite of life as we know it.) But if you search the web for comments on the book, you’ll find diatribes and abject hatred for Behe from some in the scientific community. I have seen no critiques of Behe that fairly or adequately explain why his math is wrong.
I personally think the Drake equation became popular because it predicted life would be common in the universe (a prediction which, I think, is increasingly suspect). Since the numbers you are asking for do not tend to work in favor of evolutionary processes explaining everything, people argue that we just don’t know enough with the assumption that when we do know enough, the numbers will work.
So while you seem to be asking a simple question, I think you are pushing against a cultural resistance to asking questions that may lead to the “wrong” conclusions, and these make some people uncomfortable. If guesses at the math predicted that evolution was likely adequate on its own, that would be trumpeted. The lack of positive results in this area, and the attempt to prevent people from even asking the question, speaks loudly.
Marty
Do you concur that Behe embraces the default position that whatever evolution cannot accomplish without God’s help, God guides Evolution to accomplish what it cannot do?
For example, his famous example of the flagellum… obviously there are one celled creatures powered by flagella … and so God enables evolution to accomplish the really complicated designs of life. < Would you agree with this idea @Marty?
His math might be fine but he cherry-picked his starting data and made quite dubious assumptions big time making his results be worthless. There are any number of websites detail Behe’s failure in this regard. Dr. Arthur Hunt (who sometimes posts here) has written quite a bit on the topic
Behe and the Limits of Evolution
There’s a good reason Behe has never submitted any of his popular press ID-Creationist propaganda to any peer reviewed science journals for vetting and publication.
Real scientists know there’s not anywhere near enough data to make any even semi-accurate probability guesses. ID-Creationists love to make up their bogus "it’s too improbable!!’ calculations just to sway scientifically untrained laymen, not to produce any good science.
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From the pdf file linked to above:
A full discussion of the bearing of statistical physics on all the facts I am recalling -or perhaps, I ought to say, of the bearing of these facts on the use of statistical physics in the living cell will follow later. But let me draw attention at this point to the fact that 300 A is only about 100 or 150 atomic distances in a liquid or in a solid, so that a gene contains certainly not more than about a million or a few million atoms. That number is much too small (from the /v point of view) to entail an orderly and lawful behaviour according to statistical physics -and that means according to physics. It is too small, even if all these atoms played the same role, as they do in a gas or in a drop of liquid. And the gene is most certainly not just a homogeneous drop of liquid. It is probably a large protein molecule, in which every atom, every radical, every heterocyclic ring plays an individual role, more or less different from that played by any of the other similar atoms, radicals, or rings. This, at any rate, is the opinion of leading geneticists such as Haldane and Darlington, and we shall soon have to refer to genetic experiments which come very near to proving it.
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