Originally posted by Hortlund
No, events with the 1 in 10^119 841 probability range doesnt happen all the time. In fact, there is a general consensus that events with a lower probability than 1 in 10^50 doesnt happen at all.
Ah yes, Emil Borel's rule of thumb as posited in his book "Les Probabilite et la Vie", in 1943. Seven years later he wrote "Probabilite et Certitude" (I use the english translation):
The Problem of Life.
In conclusion, I feel it is necessary to say a few words regarding a question that does not really come within the scope of this book, but that certain readers might nevertheless reproach me for having entirely neglected. I mean the problem of the appearance of life on our planet (and eventually on other planets in the universe) and the probability that this appearance may have been due to chance. If this problem seems to me to lie outside our subject, this is because the probability in question is too complex for us to be able to calculate its order of magnitude. It is on this point that I wish to make several explanatory comments.
When we calculated the probability of reproducing by mere chance a work of literature, in one or more volumes, we certainly observed that, if this work was printed, it must have emanated from a human brain. Now the complexity of that brain must therefore have been even richer than the particular work to which it gave birth. Is it not possible to infer that the probability that this brain may have been produced by the blind forces of chance is even slighter than the probability of the typewriting miracle?
It is obviously the same as if we asked ourselves whether we could know if it was possible actually to create a human being by combining at random a certain number of simple bodies. But this is not the way that the problem of the origin of life presents itself: it is generally held that living beings are the result of a slow process of evolution, beginning with elementary organisms, and that this process of evolution involves certain properties of living matter that prevent us from asserting that the process was accomplished in accordance with the laws of chance.
Moreover, certain of these properties of living matter also belong to inanimate matter, when it takes certain forms, such as that of crystals. It does not seem possible to apply the laws of probability calculus to the phenomenon of the formation of a crystal in a more or less supersaturated solution. At least, it would not be possible to treat this as a problem of probability without taking account of certain properties of matter, properties that facilitate the formation of crystals and that we are certainly obliged to verify. We ought, it seems to me, to consider it likely that the formation of elementary living organisms, and the evolution of those organisms, are also governed by elementary properties of matter that we do not understand perfectly but whose existence we ought nevertheless admit.
Similar observations could be made regarding possible attempts to apply the probability calculus to cosmogonical problems. In this field, too, it does not seem that the conclusions we have could really be of great assistance.
In other words the guy who came up with your much vaunted rule of thumb didn't think you can place a probability on the creation of life with any accuracy. Besides, as I stated before, I also consider the primordial soup->modern bacteria as impossible. So I'd view Coppedge's estimate of 10^-119841 entirely false and basically irrelevant. Here's a link to a more thorough refutation his claims:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/addendaB.html#Coppedge Moreover (although this is as stated above, thoroughly irrelevant) the 10^-50 cut-off is just a rule of thumb: it remains a possibility. A possibility moreover that according to all probability theory
may occur the very first time it is tried.
As for your own theory there, the "-> and up" part is the key question isnt it. Let me know when the jump is to the first cell, because that is where life starts. Btw, I could not find proteins in your list either. Where are they?
The first cell is the protobiont.
A protein is a replicating polymer.
The bacteria would be the equivalent of
Mycoplasma Hominis H39.
And lets just say that you dont know anything about my theory on the creation of life and leave it at that. (btw, according to Genesis, God did not start out with a bunch of water, he created that too.)
Well just for the record:
Genesis Chapter One:
1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
1:4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
1:6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
1:7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
1:8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
1:9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
1:10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
No mention of the invisible vertebrate creating all this water - just his spirit moving over it. "Let there be light", yes (and before he created any stars - which is damn flash! Light without a source is a cool trick) "let there be water" is strangely missing.
