NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/alt/atheism/26925

Text File | 1993-01-24 | 6.5 KB | 128 lines

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From: [e-mail] (Mark Mccullough)
Subject: Re: Let's try these proofs
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (The News)
Organization: University of Wisconsin, Madison -- Computer Sciences Dept.
References: <[e-mail]>
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 17:28:14 GMT
Lines: 116

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:

[intro analogy deleted]

>The Embryo Witness
>
>    Have you ever pondered how the human fetus forms and
>develops in the tiny workshop of its mother's womb?  At a
>moment of which neither the father nor the mother is aware,
>two small lifegerms unite then in nine months, they develop
>into several organs and part fo the human body in the
>appropriate places.  Every part, large or small is precisely
>where it should be.  Only a person out of his wits could say
>that this wonderful system of life came into being, and has
>continued for countless generations without a Wise, Powerful
> Being possessing vast knowledge and unrivalled powers of
>creation.

Yes it is complex, but the actual process is not much of a miracle.  Look
at computers for example.  You have four to five transistors to make a gate.
Between five and 30 gates make up a simple subunit.  Several subunits are
used to make a useful component.  Many components are combined to make
a simple processor.  You have used hundreds of transistors to do this, but
it is no miracle, merely complex.  The development of a fetus is could be
considered similar.  You have a code, the 23 chromosome pairs.  Each chromosome
codes for many many traits.  Differentiation (the act of cells in one part
turning from generic cells to brain cells is coded for and is not completely
out of wack.  As a counter example, do you _understand_ how a telephone works,
to the point of being able to draw a circuit diagram and explain each part,
why it is needed, and so on?  Complex is possible without intereference.
>
>Impossibility
>
>    Suppose an earthquake occurs and all the different
>solutions in a lab fall and mix together.  It would be a
>very strange coincidence if such a mixture produces a new
>medicine that cures a certain disease.
>    Now let us look at the probability of forming a protein
>molecule assuming that all the elements are already in
>existence.  The Swiss mathematician Charles Eugene Jai
>calculated this probability.  He took the protein molecule
>as his sample, but he simplified the case by considering his
> molecule to contain 2,000 atoms instead of 34,500 and to
>consist of two types of atoms instead of four major ones.
>The value of probability is determined by the size of the
>material necessary for such a reaction to take place and he
> found that the probability of forming that simplified
>protein molecule was approximately 1/2 X 10 to the 321.  The
>size of the material necessary for that almost zero
>probability was a sphere whose diameter was approximately 6
>X 10 to the 176 miles and this sphere is approximately 10 to
>the 63 times the imagined size of the universe.  He found
>also that the tie necessary for such a molecule to form was
>10 to the 243 billion years which is by far greater than the
>hypothesized age of the earth which is only two billion
>years.  So the size and time factor would make it impossible
>even to form one protein molecule.

Actually that model has been discussed and is well known to be highly
inadequate.  It ignores catalists, and the fact that as the molecule
grows, it grows at a geometric rate.  (I think it is geometric, could
be exponential).  This is because you have two atoms.  They bond.  They
then bond with another pair.  This continues until you get amino acids.
We have created amino acids fairly easily in a short period of time in
the laboratory.  These amino acids then combine in various ways to make
proteins.  Once it was known how little time was required to make amino
acids, the development of protein isn't far behind, maybe only a few years
of those conditions for many proteins.  I could go on, but it should be
obvious how since proteins are combinations of amino acids, they could
be made by taking amino acids and sticking them together.  The process
could continue until the first cells develop.
>
>The Thinking Process Proves
>
>    As the computer needs a program to run, a human being
>needs previous information to produce a thought.  Who put
>that initial information in a human being's mind?

What initial information?  The first year or so, the infant is learning an
enourmous amount of information by observation and interface with its
enviornment.  You are implying that a person is born with some knowledge.
I challenge that.
>
>One Principal
>
>    Have you ever heard of a school with two principals, or
> a department with two chairpersons, or an army with two
>commanders-in-chief or a country with two presidents?  In
>any event could any institution under a dual control be run
>effectively?  Look at the millions of planets and starts:
>their conduct and movement show extremely strict adherence
>to a certain uniform set of rules and regulations.  Their
>distances and directions in relation to one another are set
> and even the slightest alteration of this scheme will upset
> the whole system and cause chaos.
>    The rules they are abiding by are so uniform that we
>research to find mathematical formulas describing them.  If
>the universe had been governed by several or even two gods,
>its affairs could not possibly have been run so regularly
>and efficiently and we would have seen the chaos stemming
>from contradicting orders and rules.  If even a small school
> cannot accept two principals at a time, how could the vast
>realms of the heaven be run by more than one Sovereign?

If you look at your analogy (analogy is slippier than logic.  Heinlein),
you find that it isn't very good.  Science presupposses that certain
principles are constant, such as gravity.  Religion presupposses another
constant, a supreme being, commonly called a deity or god.  Is it reasonable
to assume the existence of this being, with unknown motives, that has
deliberately done everything to show evidence for things to _seem_ like
they are how science says they are, when they are not?  (ie, evolution).
You are saying you can't accept the constants that science presupposses,
why?

M^2
,