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To: Hodar
"You are also assuming that each experiment is being performed serially, instead of gazillions of experiments being performed simultaneously."

Your comment is irrelevent. At the very least, the math shows an event that couldn't happen, ever. The final resulting statistical probability is even greater number than the total number of electrons in the universe.

66 posted on 03/05/2002 2:20:00 PM PST by woollyone
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To: woollyone
At the very least, the math shows an event that couldn't happen, ever. The final resulting statistical probability is even greater number than the total number of electrons in the universe.

And it is a completely meaningless number. It has nothing to do with evolution or the origin of DNA.

71 posted on 03/05/2002 2:23:55 PM PST by mlo
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To: woollyone
the total number of electrons in the universe

Which is?

73 posted on 03/05/2002 2:26:15 PM PST by RightWhale
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To: woollyone
At the very least, the math shows an event that couldn't happen, ever. The final resulting statistical probability is even greater number than the total number of electrons in the universe.

That's exactly the kind of argument that's used to proclaim the security of various encryption systems: If a long enough key is used, the time it would take to try all decryption combinations is many times longer than the life of the universe, or would require more computers than there are electrons in the universe, etc. [with various assumptions about computer power and algorithmic efficiency thrown into the mix].

Then along comes the still-infant technology of quantum computing, and suddenly all those estimates of impossibly long times and impossibly large numbers are called into question. Quantum computers can simultaneous examine all possible output states, and so (in theory) are not subject to the same exponential limitations as conventional computers. What were previously infinitesmally small probabilites are now substantial.

Quantum mechanics is real, and it is fundamental to the nature of this universe (and maybe an infinity or near-infinity of other universes). Even aside from the many valid points that other posters on this thread have made about the non-random, iterative nature of evolution, it is not impossible that quantum mechanical "random" processes could have produced a universe in which intelligent life evolved. No matter how "unlikely" that might seem to some people, our observation of that fact would be the consequence of our being an instance of that "unlikely" event.

112 posted on 03/05/2002 3:01:14 PM PST by dpwiener
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