Re: How old does the universe have to be for evolution to "work"?


johnfromberkeley@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Hi, I am not a biologist, or a scientist of any type, but I do trust
the integrity of the scientific community at large with regards to
evolution.

My friend, however, believes in "intelligent" design. He believes there
is anomalous math with regards to the number of years required for
species to evolve to their current state of development. I am looking
for opinions on the following assertion:

"to get from a one-celled organism to a human with at least 1 trillion
cells there would have to be many changes. if you limit necessary
mutations to 1000 and half are beneficial the odds against getting them
in the right order is 21000 in decimal form about 10301 this is far
beyond the capacity of the universe to generate during its lifetime so
far. the universe would have to be a trillion quadrillion [9 more
quadrillions] old."

It's nonsense. The trick, where he puts the pea under a shell and
makes you lose track, is when he says "in the right order". There is
no "right" order. There is only what actually happened. And no matter
what happens, in hindsight it was absurdly improbable that that
particular event would happen.

Let me illustrate. Take twenty decks of cards. Shuffle them all
together thoroughly, all 1040 cards. Now look at them, one at a time,
in order.

The odds against getting the resulting order of cards is significantly
smaller than one in 2^1000, so it is beyond the capacity of the
universe to generate that card order during the entire lifetime of the
universe. It's so unlikely to get *that particular ordering* as to be
essentially impossible.

Yet you will hold it in your hands.

Try another, easier one. The odds that the *one particular sperm* and
*one particular egg* that resulted in your genes coming together as
they did were positively astronomical. Yet here you are. But if it
wasn't you, it would be somebody else.

Understand now why what he says is nonsense?

eyelessgame

.

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