Oooh, a real live debator!

A colleague got a solicitation from a Jehovah’s Witness recently, and invited me to join them for lunch for a discussion.  He is agnostic, while I classify myself as at least a strong atheist, with tendencies toward anti-theism.

Oh, didn’t we have a nice lunch.  Our theistic friend, Frank, was an affable enough guy.  Of course he wasn’t alone.  They never are.  I don’t remember his wife’s name, but she didn’t say much.

First, this was an initial visit.  We agreed to meet again in a month.  It is a different skill set to be able to debate in person than it is to do it in writing.  I  made a few good remarks during our little meeting, but mostly I just listened.   I wasn’t about to get into a tit for tat verbal argument with one of these Witnesses.  They’re very well trained in the art of the silver tongue.  It’s how they have survived so long.

His main point of discussion for this meeting was in defining chance, then going on to demonstrate how, mathematically, it is virtually impossible for the microbiology of living cells to have developed by chance.  He kept returning to how the probability of an average functioning protein, made up of some 200 amino acids, was one out of a number larger than the number of atoms in the universe.

It sounded fishy to me, on more than one level.  One thing I commented on was that he was stuck on a serial event.  One chain of events leading up to a functioning protein.  It turns out I was correct on that point.  In fact, on earth alone, there were some damned big numbers of compounds, all combining in various combinations, in parallel, at the same time.

I found a wonderful page on a website called TalkOrigins.org.  What a great site that place is!  Everything you ever wanted to know about biogenesis, evolution, and creationists’ canards regarding the same.  The page that discussed the problem I faced last Friday was titled:  Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics and Probabilities of Abiogenesis Calculations.

In summary:

Problems with the creationists’ “it’s so improbable” calculations

1) They calculate the probability of the formation of a “modern” protein, or even a complete bacterium with all “modern” proteins, by random events. This is not the abiogenesis theory at all.

2) They assume that there is a fixed number of proteins, with fixed sequences for each protein, that are required for life.

3) They calculate the probability of sequential trials, rather than simultaneous trials.

4) They misunderstand what is meant by a probability calculation.

5) They seriously underestimate the number of functional enzymes/ribozymes present in a group of random sequences.

Anyone curious about this particularly devious creationist canard should go read this really well written and referenced article.  I intend to crush Frank’s article next month.