I need some help and I bet can get it here.

I've been arguing for evolution on another board against a guy that is constantly claiming that it has been shown statistically that random mutations plus natural selection cannot have resulted in the variation we see around us in the time period allowed (4.5 billion years.)

Anyone out there know about this argument? Can anyone link me to a website with some info on this?

Anybody got a handy rebuttal, other that to simply say "Oh, yeah? Prove it!"?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Harte

I believe EdSinger posted that "formula" as proof of God once upon a time here.

It relies on alot of fallacies most notably that low probability = zero probability, which of course it does not.

But if he can't even show you the formula, why bother? Sounds like a total butthead.

No, he's talking about some mathematical analyses done by Fred Hoyle, whom I disagree with but have immense respect for. The man was a genius, after all.

I don't find it too hard to believe that mutation and selection don't account for all the variation, but I don't know. I mean, seems to me like if this were true, then it would only mean that there are other, undiscovered drivers of evolution.

But I really would like to have some refutation of Hoyle handy next time we go at it.

Harte

Sometimes its best to advocate for a particular position, so as to better understand it.

So perhaps, Harte, you can advocate here for whatever position this guy is making. That way it'll be easier for the rest of us to discuss it, and you might see, in trying to defend it, and flaws in the logic.


As far as mutations and time, there are a few variations on this sort of arguement. As Rant notes, the 'blank' arguement that proteins are super complex and would take a trillion to one chance to form has been made here, probably a number of times.

That arguement calculates the 'chances' of it happening by looking at the arrangment of each amino acid within the protein in relation to one another. This is a poor way of looking at it tho, in fact, its a type of 'Straw Man" arguement (where you 'refute' a ridiciulously weak position that no one is actually claiming, and then claim victory). No one is saying that, for example, hemoglobin arose out of a soup of amino acids and elemental iron, in one step, ad hoc. It shouldn't come as a surprise to see that its so incredibly unlikely as to be basically immpossible.

I don't know the specific argument that this other guy is making, but I do recall there being concern amoung some biologists (in the somewhat distant past however, I think before the Evolutionary Synthesis (of genetics and population biology) even).

The important thing to remember is that, like in the example above, evolution does not say that these things happen all at once, nor does it say that they happen in an unguided manner.

Evolution produces 'objects' (organisms, or even characters of organisms) thru random mutation, but thru the guide and 'designing' effect of natural selection. A simple consideration of random mutation alone leads to failure, becuase much more than random mutation is going on. This is also why ID advocates can make a good case, organisms certainly look like someone said 'lets give this one a longer beak, so that it can get the nectar that's really deep in the flower'. Or who can not look at a wasp and a fig and think, 'dang, someone thought of this and then made it"?
No one thought of it tho, natural selection, an unthinking process, results in the exact same thing that people try to make when they design things, a matching of form to function. This has nothing to do with intelligence and forethought in the case of evolution tho.


As a side note there was also a geneticist-organic chemist who used to post here who seemed to feel that Intelligent Design could be a workable theory too, and that it could explain lots of the problems in evolutionary biology.