i have a comic, i need some input athiests...

[Batyah]

so i put a comic out every week, and so far my only fallowers of it are all christians. Thats all fine and all but i need to make sure im keeping to facts.
https://www.facebook.com/Controversialtopicsthecomic

[Tuah]

Creationism relies on the notion of abiogenesis, thus should not be separated against it. It simply means "life from non-life", whether it be from natural means or supernatural means.
This process from amino acid to single-celled organism, as far as I know, is not understood and no conclusions can be drawn.

Evolution is not a subcategory of abiogenesis.

"Came from rocks" doesn't make any sense.

"Got better over time" also doesn't make any sense.

Evolution is also not a controversial topic. Well, except maybe to people who don't actually know anything about it, which the other points illustrate.


Addendum: Atheism has nothing to do with your comic's subjects. If you're looking for answers about science, ask that rather than a loaded topic.

[Layra-chan]

Your math in the chemistry one doesn't work for a number of reasons.
Firstly, it misses the fact that the hydrogens are interchangeable, and so are the carbons, and so are the oxygens. Also the partitioning of the amino acid into those particular subsets also changes the number of possible permutations, both matching and non-matching. So the number you eventually get is wrong.
Secondly, the number you get via the naive combinatorial method is irrelevant because it completely ignores chemistry. You're not going to get a random arrangement of atoms because the atoms attract each other in specific ways, leading them to spontaneously prefer certain arrangements. You aren't going to get four things attached to an oxygen atom the way you get four things attached to a carbon. The fact that you are expressing the molecule as a linear sequence of letters rather than as a branching graph in space obscures these sorts of relations. So really the probability that the atoms will arrange themselves in the correct order is a lot higher than you're saying it is.
Thirdly, 1 in thousand is not impossible.There are about 10^49 of the relevant atoms in the Earth. That's about 1 followed by forty-nine 0s. So just raw probability gives us that if it is a 1 in 1000 chance of glycine forming randomly, that gives us 10^46 instances of glycine forming correctly. That's more glycine than there are atoms in every human that ever lived, by several orders of magnitude. So, no, 1 in 1015 is not impossible by any stretch.

[Batyah]

Layra-chan

Your math in the chemistry one doesn't work for a number of reasons.
Firstly, it misses the fact that the hydrogens are interchangeable, and so are the carbons, and so are the oxygens. Also the partitioning of the amino acid into those particular subsets also changes the number of possible permutations, both matching and non-matching. So the number you eventually get is wrong.
Secondly, the number you get via the naive combinatorial method is irrelevant because it completely ignores chemistry. You're not going to get a random arrangement of atoms because the atoms attract each other in specific ways, leading them to spontaneously prefer certain arrangements. You aren't going to get four things attached to an oxygen atom the way you get four things attached to a carbon. The fact that you are expressing the molecule as a linear sequence of letters rather than as a branching graph in space obscures these sorts of relations. So really the probability that the atoms will arrange themselves in the correct order is a lot higher than you're saying it is.
Thirdly, 1 in thousand is not impossible.There are about 10^49 of the relevant atoms in the Earth. That's about 1 followed by forty-nine 0s. So just raw probability gives us that if it is a 1 in 1000 chance of glycine forming randomly, that gives us 10^46 instances of glycine forming correctly. That's more glycine than there are atoms in every human that ever lived, by several orders of magnitude. So, no, 1 in 1015 is not impossible by any stretch.

i didnt make that number

Quote:

NASA hired Yale University’s Harold Morowitz, a theoretics expert. Dr. Morowitz deals with “the laws of large numbers and probabilities.”

He did, thats the probability that there will be life in the universe. since nasa was afraid that the astronauts may bring back a harmful germ.

[Batyah]

Layra-chan

Your math in the chemistry one doesn't work for a number of reasons.
Firstly, it misses the fact that the hydrogens are interchangeable, and so are the carbons, and so are the oxygens. Also the partitioning of the amino acid into those particular subsets also changes the number of possible permutations, both matching and non-matching. So the number you eventually get is wrong.
Secondly, the number you get via the naive combinatorial method is irrelevant because it completely ignores chemistry. You're not going to get a random arrangement of atoms because the atoms attract each other in specific ways, leading them to spontaneously prefer certain arrangements. You aren't going to get four things attached to an oxygen atom the way you get four things attached to a carbon. The fact that you are expressing the molecule as a linear sequence of letters rather than as a branching graph in space obscures these sorts of relations. So really the probability that the atoms will arrange themselves in the correct order is a lot higher than you're saying it is.
Thirdly, 1 in thousand is not impossible.There are about 10^49 of the relevant atoms in the Earth. That's about 1 followed by forty-nine 0s. So just raw probability gives us that if it is a 1 in 1000 chance of glycine forming randomly, that gives us 10^46 instances of glycine forming correctly. That's more glycine than there are atoms in every human that ever lived, by several orders of magnitude. So, no, 1 in 1015 is not impossible by any stretch.

and on the attraction of elements and it being a chart, how would you perpose to draw it?

[Layra-chan]

Comic #5? That's your calculation, dude.

Carbon has four open spots for bonding, hydrogen has one open spot, nitrogen three and oxygen two. The entire bunch will turn pair each open spot in one atom to an open spot in another atom, because a filled orbital is lower energy and hence more stable than an unfilled orbital. Thus there are very few arrangements that will actually be stable. A few dozen, even discounting symmetries, if you don't distinguish between the hydrogen atoms because swapping two hydrogen atoms in a glycine gives you...glycine.

Moreover, we have little facts like hydrogen bonded to itself, i.e. hydrogen gas, is quite unstable in the presence of oxygen; this is why the Hindenburg burst into flames. Similarly, carbon quadruply-bonded to another carbon is also really unstable in the presence of hydrogen and oxygen. There's a bunch of little facts and rules like this that aren't going to just fall out of a drawing, because atoms aren't just irreducible points with bonds coming out of them the way a molecular graph or a Lewis diagram depicts them , they're complicated quantum-mechanical systems made of lots of tiny parts. This is why chemistry class involves so much memorization, rather than just counting stuff and doodling graphs.

Also, great quote regarding NASA. Without a source and without context, I can totally tell that you didn't make that up and are not misinterpreting it. "Theoretics expert" does not exactly fill me with confidence, given how vague it is. Anyway, considering that you're quoting Morowitz, you should probably be interested in the fact that he thinks that life formed spontaneously from basic physics and chemistry; see his book Energy Flow in Biology.

[PUSS KING]

Excluding the aforementioned mathematical issues, your Glycine comic is rather flawed. From what I can glean, it seems to assume that the atoms assemble entirely randomly, when in actuality molecules form under local chemical law. The process is even less random when you consider that Glycine is synthesised in the body and so it's production is extremely controlled - you wouldn't look at a new car fresh off the production line and say "this formed by chance".

[Layra-chan]

I think it's supposed to be a version of the watchmaker argument, that the probability of it forming spontaneously is supposedly so low that there must have been an intelligent being driving it. In this case, he wants to say that the production line is God, even though as you said, local chemical law is sufficient even without the sophisticated biochemistry that living organisms currently use.
In fact, in the Miller-Urey experiment, they had about 2% of the carbon ending up in amino acids and the most abundant amino acid was, what do you know, glycine. Given that the setup was just hydrogen gas, ammonia, methane and water getting randomly zapped with simulated lightning, that's about as spontaneous as you can get.

[Tuah]

Layra-chan

Your math in the chemistry one doesn't work for a number of reasons.
Firstly, it misses the fact that the hydrogens are interchangeable, and so are the carbons, and so are the oxygens. Also the partitioning of the amino acid into those particular subsets also changes the number of possible permutations, both matching and non-matching. So the number you eventually get is wrong.
Secondly, the number you get via the naive combinatorial method is irrelevant because it completely ignores chemistry. You're not going to get a random arrangement of atoms because the atoms attract each other in specific ways, leading them to spontaneously prefer certain arrangements. You aren't going to get four things attached to an oxygen atom the way you get four things attached to a carbon. The fact that you are expressing the molecule as a linear sequence of letters rather than as a branching graph in space obscures these sorts of relations. So really the probability that the atoms will arrange themselves in the correct order is a lot higher than you're saying it is.
Thirdly, 1 in thousand is not impossible.There are about 10^49 of the relevant atoms in the Earth. That's about 1 followed by forty-nine 0s. So just raw probability gives us that if it is a 1 in 1000 chance of glycine forming randomly, that gives us 10^46 instances of glycine forming correctly. That's more glycine than there are atoms in every human that ever lived, by several orders of magnitude. So, no, 1 in 1015 is not impossible by any stretch.

When everyone's playing the lottery, somebody's bound to win eventually.

[Batyah]

Layra-chan

Comic #5? That's your calculation, dude.

Carbon has four open spots for bonding, hydrogen has one open spot, nitrogen three and oxygen two. The entire bunch will turn pair each open spot in one atom to an open spot in another atom, because a filled orbital is lower energy and hence more stable than an unfilled orbital. Thus there are very few arrangements that will actually be stable. A few dozen, even discounting symmetries, if you don't distinguish between the hydrogen atoms because swapping two hydrogen atoms in a glycine gives you...glycine.

Moreover, we have little facts like hydrogen bonded to itself, i.e. hydrogen gas, is quite unstable in the presence of oxygen; this is why the Hindenburg burst into flames. Similarly, carbon quadruply-bonded to another carbon is also really unstable in the presence of hydrogen and oxygen. There's a bunch of little facts and rules like this that aren't going to just fall out of a drawing, because atoms aren't just irreducible points with bonds coming out of them the way a molecular graph or a Lewis diagram depicts them , they're complicated quantum-mechanical systems made of lots of tiny parts. This is why chemistry class involves so much memorization, rather than just counting stuff and doodling graphs.

Also, great quote regarding NASA. Without a source and without context, I can totally tell that you didn't make that up and are not misinterpreting it. "Theoretics expert" does not exactly fill me with confidence, given how vague it is. Anyway, considering that you're quoting Morowitz, you should probably be interested in the fact that he thinks that life formed spontaneously from basic physics and chemistry; see his book Energy Flow in Biology.

i love your imput, but your missing one thing that i also covered, protons neutrons and electrons, but i can go back and fix my previous calculation would you like me to send you a draft copy of it when im done?

[Layra-chan]

If you want to send me a draft, go ahead. To be honest, you're probably going to want a chemist rather than me, a mathematician, for this, because your main problems are not mathematical in nature. Rather, it's that atoms and molecules are more vastly more complex than your little toy model makes them out to be. So unless your calculation takes into account the differing behavior of the different elements, all I'll be able to say is "this is a gross oversimplification to the point of being entirely divorced from reality."
Also, in what sense did you cover protons, neutrons and electrons? In comic #3? That's not really covering in any sense that's relevant to the issues with comic #5. Yes, you mentioned that protons, neutrons and electrons form atoms, and that atoms form molecules, but without any sort of detail as to the internal structure of those atoms, and in particular the internal structures of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen, you can't say anything meaningful about the kinds of molecules that get formed.

[Vannak]

I think the big issue you're going to have when trying to calculate a probability of any such molecule forming is that its simply a vague question. There are dozens of constraints on this problem you're simply ignoring. Most obviously is that you provide no reasonable time frame for this probability to occur over.

If the truth you're trying to dig out is about the ability for glycine to form, you want to talk about stability. In a high energy and chemically rich environment, like the earth, bonds form and break all the time. The types of bonds that tend to last the longest change with the chemical environment and temperature and pressure of the system.

So the chance that glycine can form isn't really important at all, as long as it's not zero. All that really matters is glycine's relative stability. The common example to explain stability is to think of a ball at the top of a hill. This is unstable. Just a little energy can permanently change it's location to the bottom of the hill. A ball already at the bottom will require much more energy to permanently change it's location, otherwise it'll just roll back where it started. If glycine is relatively stable and the energy barrier isn't too high, other molecules will spontaniously change into glycine. If glycine is very unstable, it will easily break down even if it forms commonly, and won't be able to survive to do what it needs to do to help create life.

The correct question to ask, then, is how stable is glycine in earth's particular environment? More specifically the environment before life emerged. This isn't going to be a probability, it will be a range of probabilities and factors that will chance its average life time and the chance it will form. Add more hydrogen atoms and all these numbers will change. Switch from night time to day time and the probabilities will change. Your answer won't be "45%" but "its is/is not reasonable to think this could happen under x conditions, with such stability, and blah blah blah". There's a reason scientific papers are so dense and its because easy answers like "Glycine has a 1/1000 ish" probability of forming are completely vague and meaningless.

[Batyah]

Layra-chan

I think it's supposed to be a version of the watchmaker argument, that the probability of it forming spontaneously is supposedly so low that there must have been an intelligent being driving it. In this case, he wants to say that the production line is God, even though as you said, local chemical law is sufficient even without the sophisticated biochemistry that living organisms currently use.
In fact, in the Miller-Urey experiment, they had about 2% of the carbon ending up in amino acids and the most abundant amino acid was, what do you know, glycine. Given that the setup was just hydrogen gas, ammonia, methane and water getting randomly zapped with simulated lightning, that's about as spontaneous as you can get.

i did the simple version and put all the other possible variables in one of them to let a math person do them, but iv never heard the exeriment of which you speack actully produce anything, link me?

[Layra-chan]

The Miller-Urey experiment.
Basically, given the chemicals thought (at the time) to be common on pre-life Earth, can those chemicals, plus the occasional lightning strike, create organic chemicals? The answer was yes.

Also, I can guarantee you that you did not put in all the other possible variables. This is not a problem that can be solved by mathematics alone.

[Batyah]

Layra-chan

The Miller-Urey experiment.
Basically, given the chemicals thought (at the time) to be common on pre-life Earth, can those chemicals, plus the occasional lightning strike, create organic chemicals? The answer was yes.

Also, I can guarantee you that you did not put in all the other possible variables. This is not a problem that can be solved by mathematics alone.

oh im not even near done with it yet dont worry and ty