I didn't realize you were defending creation.
"—What do you based the assertion on that “that only one specified order will do”?"
Science demonstrates that specified order is ubiquitous in the physical laws of the universe and in life.
"Unless you can base that on something, you are committing the fallacy of thinking that because that’s the way things are that that’s the way they HAVE to be."
Feel free to propose sets of universal physical laws other than the ones we observe and explain how they would support life. Feel free to propose random, racemic amino-acid chains and explain how those support life. We observe specified order throughout the physical laws of universe and in life.
"As I mentioned in my first response “unless one sees that ONE particular configuration as special, there’s no reason to view getting that particular order after a shuffle as “lucky””."
Which we see in everything from the physical laws of the universe to individual amino-acid sequences in proteins. Absolutely everything we observe wrt life is 'lucky'.
“I didn’t realize you were defending creation.”
—Why would this discussion necessitate defending either?
“Feel free to propose sets of universal physical laws other than the ones we observe and explain how they would support life.”
—I have no idea how many other sets of laws may produce life, do you?
“Feel free to propose random, racemic amino-acid chains and explain how those support life. We observe specified order throughout the physical laws of universe and in life.”
—I couldn’t tell how the vast majority of known proteins support life. I could produce a random string of amino acids, but neither I nor you would have a clue as to whether it may be useful to life or not. We don’t all produce the same proteins - each of us produce variations of proteins, and other species produce other variations and other completely different proteins.
This is why all the arguments about the odds of *A* particular protein forming are silly and irrelevant. None of us have any idea how many “useful” proteins could potentially exist, or what the odds are of producing such a protein.
Science demonstrates that specified order is ubiquitous in the physical laws of the universe and in life.
That's nice. Now would you care to actually answer the question that was asked?
Oh, wait, I know why you dodged it with a lame non-answer -- it's because the assertion that "only one specified order will do" IS BLATANTLY FALSE and thus can't be defended.
Anyone with even a basic knowledge of biology (which as we've seen leaves out the vast majority of anti-evos) knows that vast numbers of protein sequences are functionally equivalent, it's not like nature has to hit upon *one* single possible sequence or else nothing works right.
This is how different species manage to survive just fine even though most have *different* protein sequences than other species for basic functional proteins. The cytochrome-c sequence in fish for example differs from mammalian cytochrome-c by about 13%, for example, and yet still functions just fine. There is not only ONE cytochrome-c sequence that works, there are a VAST number that work.
The claim that "only one specified order will do" IS DEMONSTRABLY WRONG, and yet anti-science yahoos keep trying to pretend that this is the case, as in the idiotic "deck of cards" analysis presented by AndrewC in this thread. Sure, the odds of ONE given sequence of the deck of cards is very remote, but THAT'S NOT HOW BIOLOGY WORKS, so his analysis is a straw man fallacy of the highest order. Biology is very flexible, vast numbers of alternative sequences are functionally equivalent, and even more greatly vast numbers are partially functionally equivalent (and thus a basis for evolutionary refinement).
Yockey for example showed in 1977 that 3.8 x 10^61 proteins of length 100 are functionally equivalent to cytochrome-c. Are the anti-evo people 32 years behind on their reading, or are they just very dishonestly pretending that this isn't the case when they leave this factor out when making grossly fallacious "probability arguments" that (by leaving out key facts) *falsely* make it appear that evolution is unlikely? Please explain.
Furthermore, the laughable "deck of cards" post by AndrewC also leaves out other key features of actual biological evolution, which makes his analogy completely invalid as any kind of accurate analogy to evolution. 1. There's only a single deck of cards in his goofy example -- in biology there are vast numbers of simultaneous "card decks"; in case AndrewC hasn't noticed, there is not only ONE organism/genome in the world. 2. The deck gets completely reshuffled in each "trial" in his laughable example -- in biology, in case AndrewC hasn't noticed, the genome does not get completely reshuffled every generation. 3. The deck does not get replicated (i.e. have children) in his childishly simplistic analogy -- in case AndrewC hasn't noticed, genomes in nature replicate and this is a key point in the evolutionary refinement of genomes. 4. The deck is not subject to selection in AndrewC's silly post -- in case AndrewC hasn't noticed, biological genomes are "tested" against nature and the ones that are a better "fit" to their environment survive more often to reproduce while the poorer matches tend to get weeded out and eliminated. 5. As previously mentioned, AndrewC's fallacious post left out the fact that vast numbers of arrangements are still the "right" answer -- in case AndrewC hasn't noticed, life on Earth works just fine despite countless sequence differences between species in the basic proteins of life.
Any attempted analogy to evolution must include these features (and more) in order to be any kind of meaningful comparison to actual evolution, but AndrewC left them all out. His analogy was childishly inadequate. Perhaps he should leave analysis of evolution to those who actually know anything about it and how it works. Watching anti-evos attempt to analyze evolution is like watching pigeons try to play chess. They crap on the board, knock the pieces over, then fly back to their flock to declare that they won the game.
This is why the anti-evos keep getting laughed at -- they think that something they came up on their lunch break without having a good knowledge of the field is going to be accurate and devastating to 150+ years of research in evolutionary biology, *and* is going to be something that all the scientists in the field never once thought of already, much less examined and tested in their field of study and already resolved. The hubris is mind-boggling, and more than a bit funny.
Many people on the anti-evo side fail to take into account why a process which includes variation, reproduction, and selection is very different from mere card-shuffling, and is capable of much more.
If you're going to make an analogy, make sure it's a valid comparison.