From: markc@smsc.sony.com (Mark Corscadden)
Subject: Re: Entropy of the Universe, (was Re: Genesis - fact or fiction)
Organization: Sony Microsystems Corp, San Jose, CA
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 92 00:51:13 GMT

In article <VSUMMERS.92Aug21081947@polaris.cv.nrao.edu> vsummers@polaris.cv.nrao.edu (Vince Summers) writes:
>...
>     There was nevertheless an interesting determination as to the mathe-
>matical probability I believe of an important molecule (perhaps DNA),
>forming on its own, and the probability was so small as to be nonexistent.
>I believe it was a French scientist, and the number was 10 to the some-
>where between 74 and 141 or so AGAINST its forming.  Like I said, if 
>anyone wants to believe in creation, they may tend to accept this first
>chance, whereas those who don't first chance will say this isn't true
>and I am lying without even checking it out.
>Vince Summers
>vsummers@polaris.cv.nrao.edu

I have no reason to say you are lying, in fact I don't think you are.
I do think it's possible to say categorically that the calculation you
refer to must be flawed without having to "check it out".  The reason
is pretty easy to explain.

In my spare time at home I work with self-organizing systems which I create
on a computer.  The systems I design are meant to be just simple enough
so that I can make decent models to allow me to calculate things like
how long it will take for a given organized structure to emerge from a
process of computer-simulated evolution.  Even though these are *very
simple systems* they are already very hard (for me anyway) to model
accurately.  I guarantee that myself and many other people as well could
easily build systems that would defy *any* person's ability to calculate
in advance the time needed for various self-organized structures to appear.

Now all you have to understand is that these computer-simulated systems,
even ones which might be designed to be intentionally difficult to analyze,
are *very tiny toys* compared to the system which your French scientist
claims to analyze: biological evolution in all its massive glorious detail.
No one today could possibly know enough to calculate reliable bounds on the
time needed for organic molecules to self-assemble through the process of
evolution.

I may be wrong about the general character of this person's argument,
but if it is some kind of calculation-based argument, no matter what
kind, it has to be flawed.  No one today knows even a tiny fraction of
what would have to be known in order to make such a calculation.  How
could they, when even computer systems exist which no one can analyze and
these systems are far less complex than biological evolution?  That doesn't
mean that the conclusion has to be wrong, it just means that the argument
is flawed and thus says nothing one way or the other about the chances of
any particular organic molecule coming into existence through a process
of self-organization.

It might be fun to take the method used to perform the calculation and
apply it to a toy computer system.  If the method failed there (and I'm
sure it would because these things are *hard* to calculate) then what
honest reason could you possibly have to still believe that the same
method applies to biological evolution, which is so much more complex
and less well understood than a simple man-made computer system?

Mark Corscadden
markc@smsc.sony.com
work: (408)944-4086
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc