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"there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (10^20)^2000 = 10^40,000"

Hi Alamo-Girl

Did you read the criticism of Hoyle’s calculations that I posted earlier? Apparently, it’s a gross distortion of biogenesis. Good luck in your investigation.

BTW, do you still have your Clinton Deaths web site? Way back, I posted a link to you of a deaths list, probably in late 98 or early 99. I don’t know whether if was before or after you created your much more extensive one.

Thank you so much for your post and for the link!

As you requested, here are links to various Clinton administration death information on the Downside Legacy:

The Remembering the Dead Section
Ron Brown
Carlos Ghigliotti
The *Body Count* Research Project
I think most of the information you are seeking is in the last link.

On the link you provided, the author offered basically four rebuttals to Hoyle’s approximation which I paraphrase as follows:

(1) the anthropic principle
(2) that it assumes independence of variables
(3) that it assumes independence of trials
(4) absence of information

The first and fourth are heavily influenced by worldviews. It is as dismissive to appeal to the anthropic principle as it is to say that God did it, and to many of us the absence of evidence is evidence of absence – to others that is not the case. IOW, I suggest that the first and fourth rebuttals are not a matter of right/wrong but personal worldview.

If what Hoyle offered were any more than an approximation I would be concerned about points 2 and 3. Nevertheless, others who approached the same problem – Yockey, Rocha, Wolfram etc. - all seem to narrow in on the same issues – in particular that since the universe had a beginning, the amount of time available for abiogenesis anywhere is not infinite.

It appears the most popular mechanism to explain it is the theory of autonomous biological self organizating complexity.

That theory however comes with a price for the atheist because it means evolution is not a directionless walk. Moreover, a bootstrap for such a process in an RNA world requires toggling between states which are stable to carry information, and not to be reactive (Rocha).