To: mel221 who wrote (21057 ) 2/9/2012 2:32:24 PM From: 2MAR$ Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 69300 The technique Creationists & ID'ers use is to hyperinflate the numbers (and quote 15yr old statements)to make it seem so improbable that such chains of peptides could ever have formed randomly and of course intentionally limit what they wish to accept or imagine . This is the stock & trade of religion to always maintain that "wow" factor , if he isn't walking on the water or the "last prophet" , don't follow him! But accept it or not , there not only was the time for this to happen but when taking the entire earth developing these dense concentrations of molecules in the prebiotic soup , with constant agitations these very complex chains could actually with amazing speed . Denying it is their trade but obviously it did happen , we are the living proof , aren't we ...only a matter of time . Here's how the huge improbability of their hyper inflated numbers become decimated by simple logic looking back , how the precursor peptides & amino acids could have formed with lightning speed . The Probability of Life http://www.evolutionfaq.com/articles/probability-life The calculation which supports the creationist argument begins with the probability of a 300-molecule-long protein forming by total random chance. This would be approximately 1 chance in 10390. This number is astoundingly huge. By comparison, the number of all the atoms in the observable universe is 1080. So, if a simple protein has that unlikely chance of forming, what hope does a complete bacterium have? If this were the theory of abiogeneisis, and if it relied entirely on random chance, then yes, it would be impossible for life to form in this way. However, this is not the case. Abiogenesis was a long process with many small incremental steps, all governed by the non-random forces of Natural Selection and chemistry. The very first stages of abiogenesis were no more than simple self-replicating molecules, which might hardly have been called alive at all. For example, the simplest theorized self-replicating peptide is only 32 amino acids long. The probability of it forming randomly, in sequential trials, is approximately 1 in 1040, which is much more likely than the 1 in 10390 claim creationists often cite. Though, to be fair, 1040 is still a very large number. It would still take an incredibly large number of sequential trials before the peptide would form. But remember that in the prebiotic oceans of the early Earth, there would be billions of trials taking place simultaneously as the oceans, rich in amino acids, were continuously churned by the tidal forces of the moon and the harsh weather conditions of the Earth. In fact, if we assume the volume of the oceans were 1024 liters, and the amino acid concentration was 10-6M (which is actually very dilute), then almost 1031 self-replicating peptides would form in under a year, let alone millions of years. So, even given the difficult chances of 1 in 1040, the first stages of abiogenesis could have started very quickly indeed.