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To: Southack
The "environment" in question (i.e. that I initially responded to above that got you to quote me out of context) was a hypothetical, fabricated water world in which EVERYTHING changed rapidly.

Wrong again.

It was *our* world, *our* oceans, in which I applied the *actual* rate of chemical reactions.

I'm not surprised this wasn't obvious to you, though.

Since you've managed to misunderstand it several times, let me restate the purpose of the example in a nutshell:

Your "typing monkeys" example attempted to demonstrate that a 41-character sequence could not practically be produced by chance in a timespan of less than countless billions of years.

So I demonstrated that this was false by moving the "trials" to a more appropriate location (the oceans), a more appropriate realm (the molecular level) and a more appropriate reaction rate (the actual speed of chemical reactions), and showing that under *those* conditions, your "impossible character string" could be produced in about ten years.

It proves that the "size" of the problem isn't out of the question for the molecular realm. This demolishes your original conclusions about the monkeys. Period. Deal with it.

Clearly more than water molecules was involved in the original formation of life. But then more than typing monkeys were required too. The water molecule example, JUST LIKE YOUR MONKEYS, is intended only to get a grasp for the size of the task (which you arbitrarily set at "41 characters") and its feasibility (or not).

Monkeys aren't practical producers of mind-boggling numbers of long chains of random sequences. Molecules *ARE*, because there are mind-bogglingly large numbers of them, and they react very quickly.

*NOW* do you get it?

601 posted on 12/10/2002 2:43:39 PM PST by Dan Day
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To: Dan Day
"Clearly more than water molecules was involved in the original formation of life. But then more than typing monkeys were required too. The water molecule example, JUST LIKE YOUR MONKEYS, is intended only to get a grasp for the size of the task (which you arbitrarily set at "41 characters") and its feasibility (or not)."

Your water world example gives a false sense of mathematical possibility/probability, however.

It presumes that hitting upon the correct sequence, if valid even for only the tiniest possible fraction of a second, will accurately demonstrate that the scope and scale of such a low-percentage occurance is realistic.

Sure, if you have that many molecules vibrating and reacting with each other on such a massive scale, and if every possible position and potential reaction of those molecules can be considered to be both valid data as well as a valid guess for the random probability under discussion, then of course DNA could be sequenced/programmed without intelligent intervention.

So on the surface, your hypothetical water world does indeed give a false sense of mathematical probability.

But having the correct DNA sequence exist for NO LONGER than the tiniest possible fraction of a second is clearly not going to establish DNA from whole cloth in a completely inanimate, unintelligent process or environment.

Sure, water molecules can vibrate a great number of times, but that doesn't even give us the BINARY data that you require for your water world simile, much less give us a single correctly sequenced entity for any useful length of time.

608 posted on 12/10/2002 3:08:25 PM PST by Southack
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