>> Shapiro first cites the results of Fred Hoyle and N.C. Wickramsinghe,
>> who estimated the odds of spontaneous generation of a living bacterium
>> at 10^40,000 to 1 and that was after VERY generous allowances were made
>> (like assuming that the primordial soup consisted of homochiralic amino
>> acids, etc.) Shapiro then cites Morowitz who made estimates based on
>> more realistic conditions (as if 1 in 10^40,000 wasn't bad enough):
>> "A more realistic estimate has been made by Harold Morowitz, a Yale
>> University physicist. He has calculated the odds for the following case:
>> <Next paragraph outline assumptions in his estimation.>
>> The answer computed by Morowitz reduces the odds of Hoyle to utter
>> insignificance: 1 chance in 10^100,000,000,000....This number is so
>> large that to write it in conventional form we would require several
>> hundred thousand blank books. We would enter a '1' on the first page
>> of the first book, and then fill it, and the remainder of the books, with
>> zeros....
> I think the usual response to this argument is that this is not a
> calculation of the probability that life could arise by chance. It is
> *the odds of spontaneous generation of a living bacterium*. Scientists
> who accept a naturalistic origin of life would mostly say that the above
> figure is irrelevant because it is not how they believe life began. I
> think they would argue that there were a number of intermediate steps
> between raw amino acids and a complete bacteria (although the details of
> these steps is largely unknown).
>
> --
> Jim Foley Symbios Logic, Fort Collins
Robert Shapiro is aware of this fact. He also reviews estimations
of the probability of the origin of biological life through naturalistic
processes employing the most generous and quite unrealistic assumptions:
a primordial soup miles deep; on trillions of planets; reacting in every
cubic micrometer; reacting for billions of years; self-replicating
molecules consisting of the fewest possible set of proteins and
nucleic acids; no admixture of L and D variant amino acids. The results
are not as bleak as those produced by Morowitz, but they are, nonetheless
vanishingly small. Of course this does not falsify abiogenesis. One
can always disregard these hostile results as 'irrelevant' by appealing
to as-yet-undiscovered-naturalistic-processes-and-or-physical-laws,
but this smacks of metaphysical commitment. Shapiro addresses this
issue face-forward on the next page in a brutally frank admission:
"Some future day may yet arrive when all reasonable chemical experiments
run to discover a probable origin for life have failed unequivocally.
Further, new geological evidence may indicate a sudden appearance of
life on earth. Finally, we may have explored the universe and found no
trace of life, or processes leading to life, elsewhere. In such a case,
some scientists might choose to turn to religion for an answer. Others,
however, myself included, would attempt to sort out the surviving less
probable scientific explanations in the hope of selecting one that was
still more likely than the remainder."
Robert Shapiro was interviewed in the book "Cosmos, Bios, Theos."
In an excerpt:
Q. What is your view on the origin of life: both on a scientific level
and - if you see the need - on a metaphysical level?
A. This is an area with which I am quite familiar. As a scientist,
I have no taste for supernatural explanations. In a scientific sense,
we know very little: there has been little opportunity to gather relevant
data. My best guess is that life arose on earth somewhere between 3.5
and 4 billion years ago.... The specific chemical cycles and energy source
involved remain unknown, but it is unlikely that the prominent large
molecules of life today, such as nucleic acids, played any role in this
process."
Many scientists would not be so open as to admit that they agree with
Robert Shapiro - few can afford to be that honest. It is nonetheless
my hunch that many do share the same metaphysical commitment with Shapiro.
The problem I have with this, is that many non-scientific people I talk
to in society often express a perception that science has somehow
disproven the existence miracles or the supernatural, as if
scientists have somehow tested the hypothesis in a laboratory. If,
what they mean by scientists, are people like Robert Shapiro, then
many do not realize that such arguments reduce to a meaningless tautology.
For, in fact, many scientists do operate from a metaphysical commitment
to naturalism. It is a commitment that places an unnecessary burden on
the scientific process. It is a commitment that can, and does, operate
quite apart from empirical reality.
-jpt
--John P. Turnbull (jpt@ccfadm.eeg.ccf.org)Cleveland Clinic FoundationDept. of Neurology, Section of Neurological ComputingM52-119500 Euclid Ave.Cleveland Ohio 44195Telephone (216) 444-8041; FAX (216) 444-9401