A challenge to evolutionists, about DNA encoding (part 2)?

Question

Thank you, Chad J, for inspiring this revision.

How did the first DNA sequence get encoded with the instant ability to absorb food and reproduce itself? Being the first one, it had nothing to "evolve" from. And, if it got it wrong, it would be gone within a few hours.

"How long will it take a monkey with a typewriter to randomly type just the first 12 letters of the abc in the correct order?" The probability is: once in 3 billion years! (assuming he continuously types 1 letter per second). [The formula is : 26^12 seconds]

And, if we want a team of monkeys to produce, just once, all the 26 letters of the abc in the correct order, how many monkeys will it take? The probability is: 400 trillion monkeys might do it once in 400 trillion years!

So, how did the first DNA get encoded with all its genes, each gene (not each atom) being the equivalent of one letter?

Or, maybe, all evolutionary time estimates are wrong, and life in the universe did start trillions of years ago?

Answer 1

"How long will it take a monkey with a typewriter to randomly type just the first 12 letters of the abc in the correct order?"

Wow, are you making leaps in logic!

First, on what basis do you equate the odds of occurrence of the first life form to a single *specific* sequence of 12 letters from a 26-letter alphabet? You don't just pick a combination task out of a hat that has very low odds, and then conclude from that that the odds are very low ... and then use those numbers thoughout the rest of your analysis as if they came from some scientific basis!

Second, on what basis do you assume one new combination per second? That is *pitifully* slow. Considering the number of recombinations that can occur *per-second* in just a tiny flask of fluid, and multiply that by all the bodies of water (oceans, rivers, lakes, seas) on the planet, the rate could be as much as *trillions* of recombinations per second ... not one per second. Even if it was only 100 recombinations per second (still pitifully slow considering that this is the total *worldwide*), that still reduces your 3-billion-year estimate down to only 30 million years ... which is *way* less time that needed.

Third, you have to multiply that by all the *planets* in the universe with characteristics similar to ours. Even if you limit that to water-bearing planets within a certain distance of their sun, that could still be as many as a trillion planets in the universe ... life only has to appear on *one* of them for there to be enough evolution to produce an organism capable of asking these questions (and which would naturally assume that the odds of its existence was extremely small ... the way a lottery winner marvels at his own astronomical good luck).

And finally, when are creationists going to stop addressing questions about the origins of life to "evolutionists"? I.e. why is it so difficult to understand that evolution is a separate question from abiogenesis. How life formed is a difficult and unsolved question. How life *evolved* is a *solved* question. And the question of whether or not life evolved *at all* is *long* past being a question subject to serious scientific debate.

It is a common tactic among creationists to try to cast doubt on the *solved* question of evolution, by equating with the *unsolved* question of the origins of life.

That wasn't *that* much of a challenge.

Answer 2

The thing is, evolution works in many many many baby steps. The first early cells didn't have the ability to process and take in food. They were just nucleic acids in a simple micelle (self-forming droplets of lipids). Occasionally, one might have obtained the ability to take in free-floating glucose, and passed that trait on. One of it's offspring someday mutated and managed to break down a more complex kind of sugar and passed that on, and so on and so forth. Baby steps.

As for the monkeys at typewriters, there are lots of flaws with it, but they're not that obvious. That's why the ID'ers love to push it with thier propaganda.
a) It assumes that there was only 1 RNA strand in the works, whereas there were probably billions upon billions.
b) No one ever said that a DNA or RNA strand just formed and a cell coalesced around it. The first RNA strand was probably only a few nucleotides long, and wouldn't have had a cell around it. It didn't have genes. It was just a simple self-replicating strand.

Please don't call us evolutionists. That implies some sort of faith or belief. The evidence supports the theory of evolution. If new evidence is found that supports something else, or changes the theory, then so be it. That's the way science works. And I mean real evidence, not analogies, not convoluted logic exercises, not ancient texts. If you're going to call us anything, call us scientists.

Answer 3

Maybe when all the living things were developed with DNA sequences, you were missed. Scientists have been able to pull DNA from prehistoric life forms. This includes the ice man that was found in the Arctic frozen for about 50,000 years and Dinosaur bones, life forms found in Amber. And if creationism is so correct, what was the length of God's day? Why is assumed that was 24 hours? Why couldn't be 100 billion years?

Answer 4

Creationists really irritate me. Can't you just accept there's nothing special about humans, that we are a species handed the one in a million card to develop? Why are you so proud to realise we came from the animal kingdom?

DNA evolved from single strands called RNA. Plus, your monkey analogy is grossly inappropiate for the evolution of DNA. Everything on this planet grew by very sensitive reception to the outside world. When an environment begins to change, it has effects on the unborn of the next generation (its called epigentics, where events have affects on a person's descendant) and over millions of years if the species can survive it adapts by becoming a more suited new species.

I assume you're trying to say it would take trillions of years for DNA to come into existence by chance, which isn't true. It didn't just pop out of thin air as you seem to understand it.

Answer 5

Easy; read up on RNA precursors and pre-RNA precursors at the link below. And remember--just because something hasn't been discovered doesn't mean it isn't true. Or, absence of proof is not proof of absence.