Hi, I'm new to this site, and I must say its very comforting to be able to feel free to express my beliefs and feelings.
Its been 6 1/2 years since I've been free from the brain washing and yoke of religion and I have my Uncle to thank for that.
The problem is my father (A devote Christian) has got a friend of his engaging me in debate's all the time. The truth is I see no reason not to after all us Atheists are Objective and open to listening (not like most creationists who just block there ears and say La La La)
But this past week he posed a question to me that has been bothering me since so i signed up to this forum to seek some help from you guys. He pointed out that all we focus on is Natural Selection and not step one which is mutations. so i looked it up and it is true that mutations is not even 5 percent of the Atheistic literature why? shouldn't we start there as he points out that NS (Natural Selection)only comes after we have a mutation in the genotype that is of some what significance to its survival or reproduction. This guy being a biologist showed me some research on the DNA and posed the following question to me according to wisegeek.com which is the only source he found addressing this question there are only 10 million functional Proteins known in existence and the but the amount of possible combinations in the DNA is at least 10 to the 64 power that means 10 with 64 zeros following it so how can we get complex life from 1 single cell it's astronomically improbable? (in truth there is probably way more then 10 to the 64 power)
please someone help me or refer me to someone that could.
Steven
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He is pulling a fast one. He is giving you the probably of something like a human genome being assembled randomly. Was your DNA assembled randomly? No. So those odds are meaningless
Might as well calculate the probability of running over 100 clowns on the way to work. Have you ever run over 100 clowns on the way to work? Then who cares?
Exactly! but I'm not sure what you mean that is wasn't assembled randomly?
Was your DNA assembled randomly? No. Your DNA is heavily based on your parents. Was the "earliest humans" DNA assembled randomly? No. Their DNA was heavily based on their predecessors.
So you have to ask yourself: why is this person presenting you with an argument that human DNA can't be randomly generated from scratch, when no one thinks it was randomly generated from scratch?
This is a standard apologists trick:
Step 1: Take a scientific theory but present a cartoon version of it. In this example he has created a cartoon version of evolution where human beings are randomly created from scratch.
Step 2: Make an argument why the cartoon version is impossible. In this example of course it is essentially impossible to create a human's DNA randomly from scratch.
Step 3: Conclude that the scientific theory must be incorrect, because of step 2.
It is a the same old strawman attack, except in this case it is used against a scientific theory instead of an actual person's arguments.
This friend of your father seems to have rattled your atheist conversion process a little bit. No disrespect intended. When I was going through this same type of debate stuff with people, I studied alot of evolutionary biology. My suggestion is to become a little more grounded in the life sciences before you debate anyone in that area.
The "National Academies Press" and the "National Center for Science Education" both have alot of literature you may be interested in reading.
Just because it may be "astronomically improbable" doesn't mean that it's impossible.
"He pointed out that all we focus on is Natural Selection and not step one which is mutations."
Nope. Genetic variation isn't just well established, it is extremely well documented.
"so i looked it up and it is true that mutations is not even 5 percent of the Atheistic literature why?"
A. I am not sure what you mean by "atheistic literature", but if you are talking about novels and such, it would seem impractical for people to spend time boring the reader with something they already believe or understand. Check scientific journals instead.
B. It is known by far more terms than simply "mutations", I have already mentioned genetic variation, but there are a plethora of other terms used as well.
"shouldn't we start there as he points out that NS (Natural Selection)only comes after we have a mutation in the genotype that is of some what significance to its survival or reproduction."
It happens regardless, actually, as the very reason many species went extinct is due to no such adaptation occurring to allow it to survive in circumstances unsuited to them.
"This guy being a biologist showed me some research on the DNA and posed the following question to me according to wisegeek.com which is the only source he found addressing this question there are only 10 million functional Proteins known in existence"
Possibly true, and we have no way of knowing how many proteins we haven't actually observed are functional. We may never know, nature tends to work with what is given.
"but the amount of possible combinations in the DNA is at least 10 to the 64 power that means 10 with 64 zeros following it so how can we get complex life from 1 single cell it's astronomically improbable? (in truth there is probably way more then 10 to the 64 power)"
1. Actually, we don't actually know how many of the possible combinations are actually possible, as many of them may actually not bond with each other. In chemistry, it is more than the simple number of chemicals involved that is important, but how many of those chemicals will actually bond with each other.
2. Many of those combinations may actually be nonfunctional, or perhaps malfuntional(like Down's Syndrome), so did not pass natural selection.
3. Probability is NOT a good indicator of whether it has or could have happened, let me give you an example:
There are 52*51*50*49*48*47*46 different possible hands in a game of seven card stud. That means there are 674,274,182,400 possible sequences of cards you could get! Despite that, there are only approximately 133,784,560 possible unique hands you could get, because the sequence isn't necessarily relevant to the hand(like in chemistry the order of bonding isn't that important to the outcome in all cases). We simply don't know how many actually unique combinations are truly possible, but that number has been artificially inflated by things like sequence of bonding and whatnot, and unlike the poker analogy there are nonexistent hands(combinations that simple can't or won't bond). This means that the probability has been constructed out of whole-cloth, by people who should really know better, but can't help but lie for Jeebus.
The mere fact you were born, just like the mere fact you are at the table in the poker analogy, gives you a 100% probability of getting a sequence. Also, the sequence we and every other form of life since the first cell get isn't random, it is variation on an already existing template(our parents in our case). This means that it is about as far from random as one can possibly get, the vast majority of our DNA was practically predetermined at the moment of conception, making his argument about as wrong as and argument can possibly be. Intellectually, his argument isn't really much better or deeper than "it's just a theory".
Atheism is the position that one believes that there is no god or the god in question.
It has nothing whatever to do with natural selection or random chance or even how many stars there are in the Milky Way.
Don't let these apologists divert you from the subject at hand. They try to do it all the time because they don't have any real argument.
If you're interested in evolution and /or phylogenetics, there are plenty of books on the subject. I personally am fascinated by this stuff.
For a quick tutelage you might look up Aron Ra on you tube and listen to his lectures.
I'm absolutely with the Capt. on this one. What does this have to do with atheism? Two different subjects. I'd suggest you point this out to him. Ask him if he wants to talk about science or his gawd. If he wants you to accept his gawd as real, then he needs to first bring proof to the table that his gawd exists. Tell him that once he does that, you might reconsider. But this proof must be real proof, testable, repeatable, etc.
You're getting good answers here. Remember that Christianity is an evangelical religion. They want to convert you. The purpose of his question is to trip you up, and somehow this will prove his point. His argument is that science looks at super huge numbers. They are scary and hard to fathom. So here, you were assembled from nothing by a an all knowing guy who just made everything. Personally, I'll take the big numbers. In the history of the universe there is one you. Just one. That's pretty cool. You are proof that nature works.
Thanks everyone, I will definitely do some home work, and your right i shouldn't be debating unless "I'm grounded in life science".
but i don't get what Capt. is saying my belief is if it is astronomically improbable that that life as we know it came about in just a few billion years then on what grounds can you base your beliefs? (I know that I didn't explain myself well)
Thanks again for all your responses I'm much more relaxed now with the knowledge that most of you are familiar with this argument.
Even if it was astronomically improbable, which we can't know because all of the information necessary to make such a calculation isn't known, that may not actually make it unlikely depending on the circumstance. In many theories, there may have been an astronomical amount of guanine (G), adenine (A), thymine (T), and cytosine (C) bonding and pairing. If I put all 26 letters in the English alphabet in random sequence generator, and it was capable of cycling through billions of generations a second, it probably wouldn't be long before it generated a sentence. Likewise, if I had billions or trillions of G, A, T, and C molecules mechanically bonding and pairing, it isn't actually THAT unlikely that a rudimentary self-replicating organism could emerge.
The atheist position is doubt: We have no proof that there is a god, so there is little-to-none reason to believe in one.
As an atheist, it is always allowed to say "I don't know" (some people forget that). And if you want, you go look for the answers.
Any and all information and arguments can be doubted, but that which you can verify, or have multiple independent sources verify for you, can be reasonably trusted. If the information or argument source is religious apologist... all the more reason to doubt.
Oh, I'm not good in DNA stuffs but I don't think scientific information has something to do with religious bluffs.
I think you are holding too tightly on the arguments you have absorbed from apologists.
Open your mind to more critical thinking and get some more education'
Stop believing what people tell you without checking it out yourself.
Information is available , but be careful, there's lots of bad information floating around too.
I think you will eventually figure this all out, but you are in the position right now of trying to defend yourself without a foundation to stand on.
Please don't let this apologist sway you from the path on which you now walk. He is wrong on so many points and he is trying to screw you up too.
This is another tactic they use all the time. They will get you unbalanced or get to you at a time when you're week or incapacitated in some way and try to indoctrinate you.
Most of the time the religious people are unsure of their own convictions and by brainwashing you they make themselves feel like they're right.
They're not !
Thanks again I will definitely do some research.