[orionblamblam]

>>[Schroeder's] math is silly and ridiculous.
>In what way, orionblamblam?

The origina quote: "a typical protein is a chain of 300 amino acids and that there are 20 common amino acids in life which means that that the number of possible combinations for the protein would be 20^300 or 10^390."

There's lies, damned lies and statistics. Where this math falls down is when it keeps the math too simple. Amino acids won't all line up any which way in any length. Only some combinations work. Those small combos that work build upon themselves. Those that don't work either fall apart, or never happen in the first place.

Take a look here: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/addendaB.html

[js1138]

major bump

[Waywardson]

Amino acids won't all line up any which way in any length. Only some combinations work. Those small combos that work build upon themselves. Those that don't work either fall apart, or never happen in the first place.

---

Not to mention that there are right handed and left handed chains and that right handed amino acids are toxic to life forms, thus the chain would have to include zero right handed sequencing. Understand that so much as 1 of these billions of odds coming up right not left is death to the potential organism.

Random chance for life at the 300th power would be the same as flipping a quarter that many times and getting heads every time sequentually without so much as 1 tails. Not only improbable, but ludicrous.

[Alamo-Girl]

Er, if you don't mind, I am compelled to straighten something out.

Orionblamblam, your argument is that Gerald Schroeder's statement is false because it is a combination which is precisely what I observed in my original post back at 17. It is time to end this shell game.

Metaphysical naturalists (atheists) cannot have it both ways - decrying combinations here and then using combinations to aver that this universe is equally possible in a field of 10⁸⁰. If you want to go Bayesian to reduce the field wrt the protein, then you must do the same wrt the big bang.

Probability is like the complexity argument. Select a method and stick with it.

And I really don't care which mathematical model you choose (as long as it is mathematical and not descriptive) --- just be consistent.