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RICHARD DAWKINS ERROR CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

Pursuing the concept that anything is possible given enough time for trial and error, two atheist astronomers, Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe calculated an estimate of the probability that life on earth could have arisen from non-life within the amount of time available. Their conclusion was an astonishing improbability: something on the order of one chance in many trillions. I don’t remember the exact number, but for my purpose of showing Richard Dawkins error, I will simplify it by saying it was just one chance in a million. In his book, The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins admitted this improbability of life arising on earth by random chance. He should have then followed by saying that this means there was 999,999 chances in one million that life arose on earth by some means OTHER than random chance. But he did not say that. Instead he takes his readers on an irrelevant ride through the universe by saying something to the effect that: admittedly there is only one chance in a million that life could have arisen on earth by random chance; but the universe is very large and there are a million other planets where life could have been trying to get started; so the odds are that we should not be surprised that success occurred on ONE of those planets. And if it just happened that our planet is the one where success occurred, then why should we be surprised? There is nothing wrong with Dawkins math but there is something very wrong with his logic; It is a fact that there is only one chance in million that life could have arisen on earth by random chance; and that fact is a fact regardless of what might have happened elsewhere in the universe. It is like if I were in my living room throwing dice hoping for a double six, my chance of success is not at all effected by the fact that all of my neighbors might also be throwing dice.

LloydBrumbaugh 4 Apr 6
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18 comments

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0

I'm sure that Hoyle and Wickramasinghe were well intentioned, but I don't believe they understand life or its origination well enough to perform a meaningful calculation. They could not model the simplest life form because we don't know what that was.

The issue of The Origin of Life and the Theory of Evolution are often confused, often confused intentionally by Christian Creationists. The Theory of Evolution and the The Origin of Life are totally separate issues. And yet Evolution can be an object lesson about a question such as the Origin of Life.

Before Evolution, the notion of the vast diversity of life forms was taken for granted as being an expression of creation. People may have noticed the groupings and similarities, but no religion or philosophy I've heard of went so far as to suggest that all living things were related. That's what Evolution implies and the evidence supports this. Summarizing, we have an unimaginably diverse variety of living things, and that diversity derives from Survival of the Fittest. In the same way, that nucleic acid polymers found a sequence that would reproduce, in the eons of time and trials, only one self-replicating sequence was needed. Our incredulity might be tempered by the example of Evolution. The rules governing the Origin of Life dynamics could increase the probability for reasons we're not aware of.

In no way does not having an answer to the Origin of Life question merit introducing an ineffable spaghetti monster.

0

But have you taken into account the length of time you were actually throwing dice? Life could theoretically have started millions of years earlier than it did. Also the shape and attractions between atoms involved in forming all the intermediate molecular forms that fit between no life and living, self replicating molecules.

I have not examined the calculations of Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe so I really can't speak about that one way or the other. But what I remember from Dawkins book is that he agreed that the probability of life arising on earth from natural causes is extremely unlikely. And I think it is irrelevant and a distraction for him (or anyone else) to talk about the possibility of life arising elsewhere in the universe as being an explanation for life existing on earth. If life did succeed to arise at some other place, the problem of that life being transported to earth appears to me to be utterly insurmountable. That leaves me with the conclusion that if there is only one chance in one hundred of our FIRST ancestor arising on earth by non living matter transforming itself into a self replicating organic structure by the mere laws of physics; then by the process of elimination it means there are ninety nine chances in one hundred that matter made the transition by being guided, moved, controlled or assembled by some intelligent force. Am I missing something?? Can someone think of some other possibility??

@LloydBrumbaugh It seems to me that you are locked into having an essential 'agent' as the cause of things and swinging your arguments around to fit in with that. We know who thinks like that.

0

Robert Shapiro, a chemist at New York University, thinks life started with molecules that were smaller and less complex than RNA, which performed simple chemical reactions that eventually led to a self-sustaining system involving the formation of more complex molecules.
"If you fall back to a simpler theory, the odds aren't astronomical anymore," Shapiro told Live Science.

1

Anyone who has read Dawkins or knows the basics concerning biological evolution should know that he never said life evolved by random chance. Random chance is an important element in evolution, but it is not the whole shebang. Random mutations of DNA provide the raw material, grist for the mill, if you will, for natural selection, which is a decidedly NON-RANDOM process. Dawkins (and Gould, and Mayr, and Darwin, and many others) makes this very clear. The evolution of living things is a non-random process. Any discussion of the probability of life evolving at random is an interesting footnote at best. Unfortunately it is sometimes used by demagogues in their attempts to discredit established science. Focussing only on the random aspect of evolution is a distraction that reveals a gross misunderstanding of the process.

Any theory or form of Darwinian evolution is irrelevant to the ORIGIN of life for the reason that it does not even come into operation until we first have reproduction.

@LloydBrumbaugh
While many of the details of life's origins remain shrouded in mystery, science has managed to uncover enough facts to provide a very compelling sketch of how life probably evolved on Earth. These include (but are not limited to) the spontaneous assembly of nucleotides (the building blocks of DNA and RNA) and amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) from very simple organic molecules that were present on early Earth. Prototypes for cells likewise are known to spontaneously form in certain environments. It is very probable that even in the earliest stages of their formation, even before they fit our present definition of "living," cells were undergoing a process of natural selection. There is no reason to discount that possibility. Indeed, we see selective processes at work in all kinds of systems. Below the level of organisms.

1

There is a free course on logic running currently here:
[futurelearn.com]

It could help you understand.

2

,when,where,WHAT?

1

Logical errors abound in your post. A 1 in 1,000,000 chance (or, let's say 1 billion, why not?) is almost a sure thing if there are 100 trillion chances. You assume that there was a single roll of the dice, one chance for life to arise by natural processes, and if it didn't succeed the first time, then some other cause must have been the explanation. The dice were rolled trillions of times, and life may have arisen multiple times before it took hold. But when it did, it was by a natural process.

Agree,also that study occurred 1900.
All sciences are coming to other
conclusions(finding life in Marianas Trench;
life on Antarctic Plateau;water on meteor&astroids;ect),more relavant conclusions.

The calculations of Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe did not assume a single roll of the dice. They allowed for many times of trial and error. They estimated the age of the earth to determine the number of millions of years during which life had an opportunity arise. I am not aware that they even mentioned dice. I am the one who mentioned dice for the purpose of showing that Dawkins appealing to the millions or billions of planets in the universe is an irrelevant distraction.

@LloydBrumbaugh You don't address the central fallacy; the fact of improbability (1 in 1,000,000 chance of life arising by a natural process) does not lead to a conclusion that there is a much greater probability of life arising by some other process. There is no other process available. "It's unlikely, therefore God did it" is not a valid conclusion. A 1/1,000,000 chance will happen once in 1,000,000 times, statistically.

2

Bearing in mind that Hoyle was a Steady State proponent and Wickramadinghe pretty keen on panspermia, neither seem be much of an authority for the origins of life on Earth. Fine in its day but no real purchase now. To me Panspermia is the cosmic equivalent to flat earth in that it has no foundation in scientific discovery

1

First, we do not know what the probability of life arising is. This will be unknown until we start discovering other types of life forms.

Second, I don’t think Dawkins is saying that the probability of life arising on Earh changed because of what is happening in other areas in the cosmos.

4

The new guy has made one GOOD point: a reason to hold off posting until level 4 or 5.

0

“He should have then followed by saying that this means there was 999,999 chances in one million that life arose on earth by some means OTHER than random chance.”

This assertion is illogical and the rest of your argument falls flat because of this. You’ve left no room for % chance life does not arise on earth.

Acree Level 4 Apr 6, 2019

If life did not arise on earth, then it was transported, or it migrated to earth. I intended that this possibility be included within the "some means OTHER than random chance."

@LloydBrumbaugh Now you're in the infinite regress. Where did THAT life come from?

@LloydBrumbaugh, we’re talking past each other. You’ll need %life arose on earth, %life migrated to earth, %no life on earth regardless of origin. That’s why this simple inversion of yours doesn’t apply.

@Paul4747 I am not the one who believes that life migrated to earth... In fact I think that is very unlikely. But in order to be open and fair to everyone, I allow that as one of the possibilities.

3

For those who can be bothered, and I don't blame you if you can't, here is one of the passages on Hoyle to which this may refer. Dawkins, in The Blind Watchmaker. "Sir Fred Hoyles memorable misunderstanding of the theory of natural selection. He compared natural selection, in its alleged improbability, to a hurricane blowing through a junkyard and chancing to assemble a Beoing 747. - this is an entirely false analogy to apply to natural selection," The passage does not refer to the origins of life, though in other places Dawkins does make it clear that the extreme complexity required by even simple life, must mean that natural selection got going very early in life's history, and the main theme of the book is devoted to explaining how natural selection differs from random chance, and why the assumption that natural selection is the same thing as chance is wrong. And sadly why theists often deliberately choose to misunderstand that.

3

Regardless of your take, the lottery winner only needed to try once, and is unlikely to have played anything remotely close to the "odds" in regards to the number of times required to win. Nor did he win by something other than random chance. Odds are a nice mathematical way to describe probability, but not necessarily what happens. Like, odds are, I'm going to Hell?

4

Actually I have read all of Dawkins books, some of them more than once, and either this is either complete misquoting, complete misunderstanding, or just plain lies. I do not remember Dawkins saying any of those things. Though I do remember passages which could be distorted to be read like that. If these are not just lies, then you need to go back and read Dawkins again more carefully.

1

It is true that what is evolving on another planet in another galaxy may have no bearing on what is evolving on this planet. I'll give you that.

However, having not read Dawkins explanation I will address the issue given my understanding.

First, who's to say it was entirety random. The Universe has physical laws that apply equally to biology and evolutionary science as well as physics and chemistry. The present hypothesis as I understand it has life beginning at the bottom of the ocean around "black smokers" where nutrient rich mineral is welled up from the mantle. Within that mineral material upwelling were many of the componrnts that would combine to make the first simple RNA structures needed for the reproduction and perpetuation. The surrounding environment was warm and nutrient rich.

Having stated thus, my point was that it wasnt entirely random. The combination of extant conditions were not necessarily unusual or farfetched. Any planet experiencing tectonic crustal formation with a molten interior would potentially carry the necessary elements and they would arise at the tectonic edges as did ours hypothetically.

2

Like I'm going to believe you over Dawkins.
Near as I can tell, you aren't qualified to demonstrate anyone's "errors", let alone Dawkins'.

Learn to use paragraphs.
All that gibberish you just spewed would be easier (and probably more entertaining) to read, if you tried using proper paragraphs.

3

No where in that word salad did you make a rational point

Is he trying to say that life was started by some superior being ? I'm not sure.

2

Nonsense. You cannot calculate the probability of an event you have no information about.

Do you have an opinion as to whether life arose on earth by random chance??? If so, what is the source or your opinion?

@LloydBrumbaugh It doesn't matter what my opinion is. Yours is based on bad math. You cannot calculate the probability of an event when you don't know the details of how the event occurred. Moreover, the people you cite don't agree with your conclusions anyway. They think panspermia is the answer to the origins of life.

Most people are notoriously bad at understanding probabilities. Try this. I roll a six sided di ten times. What is the probability of any pattern I get?
A) 1 in 6
B) 1 in 10
C) 1 in a million
D) 1 in 60,466,176

You can do the math.

Now I may or may not have a di that may or may not have 1-10 sides, or maybe 100 sides, or maybe 1000, and I roll it a number of times, or maybe I just roll it once, or maybe I don't roll it at all.

What is the probability of the pattern I get?

Your conclusion is that it is astonishingly improbable, and then you make up numbers to make it sound official.

When in reality I have a 1 sided di, that I roll once. The probability is one, and is far less interesting than your made up numbers.

In terms of abiogenesis, it is very odd that all life is made of nonliving materials found in the environment. It would be much more impressive if all life was made of unknown materials not found in the environment, which disappeared when we/it died. If that were the case, you would be screaming from the rooftops that it is evidence of special creation. And you might even be right. But having the OPPOSITE of that certainly indicates abiogenesis is far more likely. You take away nonliving water, nonliving heat, nonliving oxygen, nonliving minerals, etc., you do not have anything living.

Just sayin'.

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