Your probability website (
http://experimentalmath.info/blog/2012/01/does-probability-refute-evolution/) starts out backward. The first paragraph... the introduction:
Both traditional creationists and intelligent design scholars have invoked probability arguments in criticisms of biological evolution. They argue that certain features of biology are so fantastically improbable that they could never have been produced by a purely natural, “random” process, even assuming the billions of years of history asserted by geologists and astronomers. They often equate the hypothesis of evolution to the absurd suggestion that monkeys randomly typing at a typewriter could compose a selection from the works of Shakepeare.
Note that billions of years are mentioned with the idea that a long time makes probability work in ones favor. The reverse is true. Simple rusting iron shows that over a longer period of time, the iron rusts more. Translated into evolution, this means that the longer the time, the more degradation of any naturally occurring chemical reaction, even one in the direction of climbing the evolutionary ladder.
Since this whole article is laid out based on false ideas like this one, how can there be any truth in any of it? There essentially isn't. Until the author corrects his basic idea that the improbable can overcome the probable in the tremendous odds that are against the improbable, there is no way that the article has any practical value. The rest of the articles are the same.
The point is that evolutionists show exactly the opposite of the thing that they want. They constantly prove that evolution is impossible, and then ignorantly (many knowingly) suggest that evolution is fact.
Believe them, if you like. But understand that you are following a religion if you believe them.
One fallacy in this particular argument, common to many others of this genre, is that it ignores the fact that a large class of alpha-globin molecules can perform the essential oxygen transfer function, so that the computation of the probability of a single instance is misleadingly remote. Indeed, most of the 141 amino acids in alpha-globin can be changed without altering the key oxygen transfer function, as can be seen by noting the great variety in alpha-globin molecules across the animal kingdom (see DNA). When one revises the calculation above, based on only 25 locations essential for the oxygen transport function (which is a generous over-estimate), one obtains 1033 fundamentally different chains, a huge figure but vastly smaller than 10183, and small enough to neutralize the probability-based argument against evolution [Bailey2000].
But even after this revision, the calculation still suffers from the fatal fallacy of presuming that a structure such as human alpha-globin arose by a single all-at-once random trial event (which, after all, is the creationist theory, not the scientific theory, of its origin). Instead, available evidence from hundreds of published studies on the topic suggests that alpha-globin and other proteins arose as the end product of a long sequence of intermediate steps, each of which was biologically useful in an earlier context [Hardison2001]. Thus any simplistic probability calculation (whether it is arguing for or against some aspect of evolution) that does not take into account the step-by-step process by which the structure came to be is not meaningful and can easily mislead [Bailey2000; Musgrave1998].
What’s more, such calculations completely ignore the atomic-level biochemical processes involved, which often exhibit strong affinities for certain types of highly ordered structures. For example, self-catalyzing biomolecules such as RNA are being investigated in research into the origin of life — see Origin. Also, molecular self-assembly occurs in DNA molecule duplication every time a cell divides. If we were to compute the chances of the formation of a human DNA molecule during meiosis, using a simple-minded probability calculation similar to that mentioned above, the result would be something on the order of one in 101,000,000,000, which is far, far beyond the possibility of completely “random” assemblage. Yet this process occurs millions of times every day in the human body.
Those familiar with probability theory will recognize that one central difficulty with these creationist arguments stems from the fact that in any probability calculation, one must first very carefully define the ensemble space. As noted above, it makes no sense to consider, as an ensemble, all possible random assemblages of atoms into a protein chain, since that is not the scientific hypothesis of how alpha-globin and other biomolecular structures came to be. Instead, the only valid ensemble for this analysis is the set of all possible outcomes of an eons-long string of biomolecular processes, encompassing proteins, organisms, species and environments. But at present we have no possible way of even enumerating such an ensemble, much less determining the probability of any particular scenario or class of scenarios in this ensemble. Perhaps at some time in the far distant future, a super-powerful computer could simulate with convincing fidelity the multi-billion-year biological history of the earth, in the same way that scientists today attempt to simulate (in a much more modest scope) the earth’s climate. Then, after thousands of such simulations have been performed, we might obtain some meaningful statistics on the chances involved in the formation of some class of biological structures such as alpha-globin. Until that time, all such probability calculations are essentially meaningless.
Along this line, it is also important to keep in mind that the process of natural biological evolution is not really a “random” process. Yes, mutations are “random” events, but the all-important process of natural selection, acting under the pressure of an extremely competitive landscape involving thousands of other species as well as numerous complicated environmental pressures, is anything but random. This strongly directional nature of natural selection, which is the essence of evolution, by itself invalidates simple-minded probability calculations.
