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From: emjej@uokvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: If You've Got the Time... - (nf)
Message-ID: <8300061@uokvax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 25-Jul-84 12:19:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: uokvax.8300061
Posted: Wed Jul 25 12:19:00 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Jul-84 09:05:57 EDT
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Nf-From: uokvax!emjej    Jul 25 11:19:00 1984

#R:akgua:-89600:uokvax:8300061:000:1749
uokvax!emjej    Jul 25 11:19:00 1984

/***** uokvax:net.religion / akgua!rjb /  6:01 pm  Jul 20, 1984 */

...We could expect, on the average, to hit the winning combination
at about 4 E+27 combinations (about half).  As you can see, we are
still about 10 orders of magnitude away from our probable "hit"
and our time is up.

When you move up to a more complex chemical entity like hemoglobin
(135 E+165 combinations) [2] the time situation becomes even more
astronomically improbable. 

Note that my source on this combination data (Asimov) is not a
creationist or religious person.

What do you say ?         

****************************

Bob Brown {...ihnp4!akgua!rjb}
/* ---------- */

I say that I wish apologists would learn the difference between
a priori probability and conditional probability, so I (and others)
don't have to post these explanations over and over. Many events that
occur every day are, if one considers them a priori, extraordinarily
unlikely, yet they happen. To use the above vocabulary, the winning
combination isn't the particular protein/hormone/self-replicating
molecule that happens to be in use currently, but the entire set of
such molecules. If you tell someone to pick a real number at random,
then the probability that they'll pick any particular one is zero,
but they are sure to pick one of them. (Actually, this is even a
better analogy than one might first suspect, because just as the "laws"
of chemistry and physics make the combinations of atoms non-random,
you can be pretty sure that most humans you ask will pick a rational
number, or even an integer (apart from the occasional wise guy who'll
say "pi" or "Euler's constant," and even those will only give a couple
of the most famous irrationals or transcendentals).)

						James Jones