Posted on 10/19/2006 6:25:16 AM PDT by Grig
the mistake here is that the 'grammar rules' discussed are learned rules. They are not. The authors have discovered new chemistry rules with respect to peptide based antibiotics and 'grammar' is an analogy used to explain these rules to lay people. The intelligence to absorb and understand these rules is our own, not that of the bacteria nor that of the polypeptides involved. At that level, it's just chemicals doing what they do.
Is this really true? Do they actually mutate? Or is it the case that the antibiotic simply wipes out those bacteria that don't have resistance to it, leaving only those that have resistance to multiply? Are we simply doing with bacteria what we do with domesticated plants and animals, selecting for breeding those that have the most of the characteristics we want (except with the bacteria, we are selecting for the characteristics we don't want?
A large part of my previous posts have tried to make the case that there is a lot more than randomness at play. Wasted, apparently.
As part of the quest to synthesize life, research was directed in an attempt to find how few genes it took for a successful bacterium. The answer? 182. Now, I don't think this is quite right because this bacterium is symbiotic, and therefore cannot live without its host. But I'll not complain too loudly on this minor point.
That's a good call on your part, because there are viruses with 4 genes, that also require a host to "live". (Actually, I don't think viruses are "alive" but if they are, they are symbiotic just like the example bacterium above.)
Life is either the result of random events or a deliberate design.
Flase dilemma. There are non-random forces that alter the odds of "survival" of some molecules over others, just like there are forces that alter the odds of survival of some animals over others. This is a part of "molecular evolution" and can be studied in lab.
If science is able to create a living, functioning, bacterium, they will say to creationists: see, you were wrong, we were right. If science is somehow unable to get the bacterium to work, they will never say they were wrong. They will only say they need more time to make it work.
Can you fault them for this? How long should we give them, before faulting them for being unable to explain what happened maybe once only, in all the oceans, over billions of years? Another year or two? Ten? A hundred?
To a person who believes that an outside, sentient, power created life as a deliberate act, how will they react if science is successful? Some will give up that belief. Others will point to the highly improbable nature of the event occurring outside of the determined and ideal lab setting for DNA to spontaneously appear.
I'm not sure you grasp how big the earth is, how long it has been around and therefore how improbable a thing is nevertheless likely to occur. Molecules vibrate about 10^12 times a second, and there are ~3 10^7 seconds in a year, so you have 3 10^9 molecular vibrations in a year. The oceans have been around for ~3 10^9 years, so each water molecule has had the opportunity for ~10^19 vibrations. Now let's go for how many there are. There are 6 10^23 molecules of water in a mole, which occupies 55 mls, A cubic meter has 10^ 6 ml, or 2 10^4 moles, which means about 10^28 molecules in one m^3. But wait, the earth is 70% covered with oceans, about three km deep, and has a radius of ~3000 km. So the area of the earth is 4 Pi r^2, or ~12 x 9 x 10^6 km^2, or about 10^8 km^2. So the volume is this times 3 km deep, x .7 coverage, or about 2 10^8 km^3. Since 1 km^3 is 10^9 m^3, there are 2 10^17 m^3 of water, which are 10^28 molecules each. This means the oceans have about 2 10^45 molecules of water. Now, since each molecule has had ~10^19 vibrations, we're talking about a total of 2 10^64 water-vibrations in all the oceans. That's about how many times molecules have bumped into one another. This number is about 2^212, so to put it in perspective, if you had 212 coins and flipped them all at once, there would be a good chance that ALL of them have come up heads or tails once or twice. Now, admittedly water isn't what makes up DNA, so even if you consider a dilution of a million, a billion, or a trillion for interesting molecules compared to water, there is still an incomprehensibly gigantic number of times these molecules could interact with each other, even a few at a time.
They will point to other issues as well: to the question of matter and energy, to the fact that radioactivity proves there was no past eternity for matter.
It only proves there is no past eternity for the radioactive matter, anyway, but the origin of radioactive elements is known - supernovas.
Both, the reason there are different variants is because they mutate. You can use a single non-resistant bacterium to found an entire colony of which some may be resistant. So when you come to kill em off some may be resistant enough to survive
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