In what way, orionblamblam?
Maybe it didn't. Maybe it developed gradually over many generations. Indeed, many other animals exhibit some levels of consciousness.
>>[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
"In what way, orionblamblam?
Sorry to interrupt, but there are a number of things wrong with calculations such as Schroeder's.
- He makes an assumption that 300 is the minimum size to support life because he takes his numbers from extant bacteria. The origin of life would not have been the same as any current organism, in fact we have no idea the minimum necessary.
- He makes the assumption that only one combination and order of AAs will support life. The probability calculation he uses does not take into consideration that there may be a large subset of all combinations possible that will work.
- He makes the assumption that the first trial must be successful, instead of considering the number of concurrent trials possible.
- He also ignores the number of sequential trials possible.
- He assumes that given an initial AA that the probability of every other AA being next is equally likely.
Now in spite of the initial conditions I just listed, my belief is that since we do not have accurate numbers for any of them any calculation at all is a waste of time.