If mathematics was properly
61 comments
"Limited set"? Possibly, but we have no clue what that limit is. And yeah, DNA is composed of amino acids and proteins (which are not elements), but it's how they're put together in the strand that makes the variations. Otherwise there'd only be 6 variations in every species, an idea easily disproven by simply going out to a public place and noting that no two humans really look alike.
Has this person ever heard of non Cube based dice (the d6), such as the d4, d8, d10 or d20, I wonder...? (Whoops, I've been reminded that I've forgotten the poor old d12... Sorry).
We have Bill Hamilton , John Maynard-Smith , George Price and Ronald Fisher . We win.
There is a common misconception amongst creationists (and sad to say some lay people) that evolutionary biology is just a lot of plausible "just-so" story-telling about how the elephant got its trunk or some such, maybe with a bit of statistics thrown in for appearences. All this proves is that their appreciation of evolutionary theory never got past the occasional pop-sci book or AIG tract.
I already had an engineering degree under my belt when I started my biology one, so was well used to quite complex applied math like Laplace transforms, partial diffs, fourier series, etc. I'd done my duty in the Kreyszig/Stroud war, I'd been blooded. I did travelling saleman problems in my sleep, finite-element for breakfast and discrete-element for a laugh when I felt bored...
So it was somewhat of a shock to be sent on "remedial mathematics 2" as part of my freshman year. I was lucky, if I hadn't already known calculus, I'd have had to do RM1 too!
Mathematics != Biology.
And if mathematics was properly applied to the Bible, everything about it would fall apart. Why? According to the Bible, Pi = exactly 3. But mathematics proves that Pi = 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288
that part of the Bible is wrong. And if part of the Bible is wrong, then every part of the Bible is wrong. Therefore the Bible is a lie.
Ergo, God doesn't exist. QED.
God doesn't play dice with the universe. That's because there is no God to do so. Random chance, baby. That's how we humans came to be. How our planet was formed. How our universe began.
"If mathematics was properly
I've noticed that when someone says this they promptly misapply mathematics to whatever it is they're arguing against.
"Chaos theory and
See what I mean?
Dna is made of sugar... lol. Phosphate backbones, base pairs... where are the aminoacids?
Amino acids make proteins. And the Law of Molecular Biology is DNA -> RNA -> Protein.
You strike me as the kind of guy who buys more than one lottery ticket for any given drawing. Perhaps you would be willing to use your superior understanding of mathematics to help me out. Exactly how much butter will fit in a firkin? Pounds, ounces, or liters will do. I await your reply.
I honestly don't get it, do they always think that they're breaking onto some new landmark line of thinking that absolutely no one before them ever thought of? I mean, sure, it is possible that it hasn't been thought of because it's fucking ludicrous, but still, it's like no thought was put into anything until these folks came around.
DNA
deoxyribonucleic acid.
It makes the proteins.
@ Fieendish: Why does everybody forget the d12?
I'll use my +12 charisma point cantrip and then nicely ask you to DIAF.
You're dumb.
Thank you, and good afternoon.
On a completely random note, when this guy posts like this, it seems oddly poetic, what with all the line breaks.
He can title it: Ode to Biological and Mathematical Failure.
DNA is only composed of amino acids and proteins not other elements.
For fucks sake, learn at least an elementary level of science before you start blathering about it.
And the human genome contains over 3 million pairs, now lets take 6 million dice and see how well your stupid little analogy works.
"amino acids and proteins not other elements"
Wow. Failing atomic physics, organic chemistry and biology in one fell swoop.
"It is sort of like rolling a dice. You can only get a 1 of 6 outcomes possible."
Ah, but when rolling a randomly-determined number of dice, the probability can shift dramatically! Different species have different numbers of chromosomes, and vastly different numbers of genes.
"Chaos theory and evolution theory are not currently compatible."
HAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, go back to school you moron.
You can only get a 1 of 6 outcomes
It's quite a bit like rolling a 4-sided die (with the sides labeled "G" "A" "T" and "C"), but millions of times. So 4 to the power of several million...yeah, it gets more complicated than you seem to have any concept of.
I wish people would stop saying the pi = 3 thing is somehow proof of God's falsity. It's a rough approximation used by a craftsman who didn't know what decimals are, and for what he was using it for it was more than close enough.
Also, 6 outcomes for DNA makes me sadpanda. This is the exact opposite of claims against abiogenesis.
Doesn't chaos theory state that it is essentially impossible to know anything for sure and to predict anything? If that's the case, then according to chaos theory anything is possible and with that, certainly evolution, too.
If mathematics was properly applied
Let me guess, whenever higher math is properly applied you have no clue what this is all about, right?
Judging from the jargon alone, chaos theory is only slightly less obscure than quantum theory to this non-mathematizard.
I did glean the notion though, that small influences can generate a large variety of consequences.
So. A stray bit of ionizing radiation at the right spot at the right time, can degrade a random guanine or thymine base, forcing a deviation in the DNA's replication.
Makes sense to me.
Evolution being unlikely doesn't make it impossible.
In fact, when you consider that there are millions of galaxies and thus at least trillions of planets in the cosmos, it would seem mathematically improbable that evolution didn't occur at ~least~ once.
The important thing to realize is that when sciency types talk about evolution, they ACTUALLY MEAN evolution -- a process that happens when life is already present.
When fundies talk about evolution, they're usually actually talking about abiogenesis, the start of life from an environment which begins with none.
It's important to note that while the scientific field has its ideas, nobody really knows yet how abiogenesis would have happened. Even the smallest prokaryote would require a staggering confluence of events to come together, even in an environment that best facilitates this. It's an incredibly interesting field.
It has nothing to do with 6-sided dice. Except as paperweights.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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