Making Sense Of It All

Genesis 3 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International
Bible Society

Genesis 3
The Fall of Man

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the

wild animals the LORD G-d had made. He said to

the woman, "Did G-d really say, 'You must not eat

from any tree in the garden'?"

2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat

fruit from the trees in the garden,

3 but G-d did say, 'You must not eat fruit from

the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and

you must not touch it, or you will die.' "

4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to

the woman.

5 "For G-d knows that when you eat of it your

eyes will be opened, and you will be like G-d,

knowing good and evil."

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree

was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and

also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some

and ate it. She also gave some to her husband,

who was with her, and he ate it.

7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and

they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig

leaves together and made coverings for

themselves.

8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of

the LORD G-d as he was walking in the garden in

the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD

G-d among the trees of the garden.

9 But the LORD G-d called to the man, "Where are

you?"

10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I

was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

11 And he said, "Who told you that you were

naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I

commanded you not to eat from?"


Saturday's blog is just scratching the surface
of the problems that are encountered with the
application of probability theory to the random
evolution of biological molecules. Living things
are magnitudes of order more complex than a
single molecule. That's what we find as we begin
to unravel the details. What is expected is that
if biological molecules really did randomly
assemble, then there would be a clear cut way to
demonstrate that expectation by the application
of probability theory. What we find is that
there is no reasonable set of assumptions that
will allow biological evolution at the molecular
level to take place. In short order, the odds
build up against any possibility of molecular
evolution, even when every sort of unreasonable
assumption is throw in.

The point of yesterday's ramble is to work toward
the idea that in any discussion of probabilites,
there has to be a clearly defined set of
assumptions that make sense.

Everyone involved in this controversy knows that
one of the major problems has to do with missing
links. There are not any transitional forms in
the fossil record. Oh, there is an attempt to
make acheopteryx a transitional form, but that
only serves to prove the case. When the entire
focus is drawn on one single example, it only
emphasises the fact that there are no clear cut
transitional forms. It's a big problem for the
evolutionista, that can't be dismissed. Again,
it has to do with probabilities. The expectation
is that there would have to be multiple
transitional forms of every 'kind', at each step
along the evolutionary ladder of ascent. There
would have to be all those that made the
transition and all those that didn't. That's not
what is found in the fossil record. But at the
theoretical level, probability theory would
expect large numbers of transitional forms. Not
to mention that we ought to be able to go out in
nature and locate any number of examples of
ongoing random molecular assembly.

It seems to me that unless there are numerous
examples of random molecular assembly right now,
at the present time, active in producing randomly
generated biological molecules, an attempt to
apply probability theory, has no basis to begin
with. In other words, as ReMine points out in
yesterday's quotes, the probability of an event
that has already taken place is 1. On the other
hand, the probability of an event that has never
been observed, even though it represents a key
element of modern theory, is implied to be zero.
That's the result that is implied by the lack of
transitional forms, not only in the fossil record
but also in the present biosphere. Not to
mention the even more likely, and less complex,
transitional molecular forms (random amino acid
sequences) that ought to be swimming all over the
surface of the earth.

The one thing that I like about the illustration
offered by Steiner is that he hints at the
complexity of biomolecules. As I see it, that
leads toward the implication that the
probabilities anticipate that the outcome is
either a one or a zero. Either it happened
already or it never will, or it is a totally
unique event that's not subject to scrutiny by
use of probability theory.

Maybe, if you haven't spent any time at all
studying math and probability theory, it appears
to be an almost magical result. But experience
leads to the opposite conclusion. The use of
probability on the part of the evolutionista is
mostly an effort to misdirect the discussion.

Sorry, the Jesus Bus is not yet out of the swamp
of numbers and probabilities. In fact, these
posts are just my best feeble attempt to lay out
the ground work for a launch into the swamp of
numbers. Without a context, the numbers don't
mean much. And a look at context shows that
there are most likely only three possible
outcomes, either it happens every so often, or it
never happens, or it happened once and something
in the context changed to prevent it from
happening again. What're the odds?


22 And the LORD G-d said, "The man has now become

like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must

not be allowed to reach out his hand and take

also from the tree of life and eat, and live

forever."

23 So the LORD G-d banished him from the Garden

of Eden to work the ground from which he had been

taken.

24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the

east side [e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and

a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard

the way to the tree of life.


Seems to me that there was a unique event in time
past that will never take place again because
something in the context changed to prevent it.
And there are 'improbable' events, that never
took place in the past and never will in the
future.

Events that happen every so often, are the
routine events that can be duplicated over and
over again in the lab, or are commonly observed
in nature. Given the requirements for molecular
synthesis, in the lab, we would expect to find
these same conditions routinely in nature, and
not just in biological life forms. If that's the
case, I'm not aware of it. I'll keep an eye out.