SW VandeCarr said:
Given the availability of the chemical constituents of life and what we know about carbon chemistry, I don't understand this idea that life is such a low probability occurrence.
The problem is the (i) "Goldilocks" conditions required for a self-replicating peptide to form, (ii) inherent complexity of all known self-replicating peptides, and (iii) the requirement that the peptide be protected from all degenerative environmental factors until replication, and some evolutionary advances, have had time to occur.
As I noted above, Richard Cevantis Carrier argued, strongly, that all of the studies which I cited above and had rendered the natural origin of life to be statistically impossible (one change in 10
50 or less) were flawed. He went on in his paper (on pages 749-750) to argue as follows:
"The appropriate mathematical methods and tools are formally discussed by Küppers (1990) and Kauffman (1993). In general, there are a minimum of five steps necessary.
First, we must identify the smallest possible self replicating protein and identify how many amino acids long it would be (which no one knows, though many guesses have been made).
Second, we must calculate the number of possible ways this many amino acids can be arranged into a string of such a length. Basically, the total t = n
s [n to the s power], where n is the number of types of amino acids occurring in nature and s is the protobiont’s minimum length in amino acids. This requires including all the known varieties of amino acids (which is many times greater than the number assumed by all the authors who attempt this …).
Third, we must identify the “viability space” (v), the number of combinations within t that are self-replicating proteins (which no one knows, and no one but Coppedge and Eden have even tried to guess), since the odds of any entity forming by chance c in a single experiment will be v÷t. Almost all the authors who have attempted this have simply assumed v = 1, which is not even plausible, much less proven.
Fourth, we must repeat these three steps for all other protein chains of greater length (which no one has ever even attempted), up to the largest chain that can occur in nature, since we need the sum of all these probabilities, not just one of them. With this (and certain assumptions, see below), we can derive C, the odds of life forming by chance in a single experiment:
C = (v
s + v
s+1 + v
s+2 + ... + v
s(max) ) ÷ (t
s + t
s+1 + t
s+2 + ... + t
s(max))
Once we have calculated all the viable combinations for all possible natural chains, and divided that by all the combinations possible, we will have the odds that life will naturally arise in a single trial. The final step is to modify that result according to the number of possible trials that have taken place in the available space and time. The more trials, the better the odds. This does not mean on Earth alone, but throughout the whole universe. For instance, McFadden (2000) repeatedly complains about there not being enough materials on Earth to generate one random success, but the early Earth was just one pond among possibly trillions in the cosmos, and only one of those ponds needed to hit upon a successful combination."
In support of his argument that the statistics I quoted above are wrong, Carrier (on page 757) noted the following:
"We have created self-replicating peptides as small as 32 amino-acids long (Lee 1996), demonstrating that the smallest possible chemical that could spark life may be much, much tinier than anything any AFB proponent has assumed possible. McFadden calculates the odds against the Lee peptide arising by chance as 1 in 10
41 (1996: 98), which is so far within the realm of cosmic possibility that it is already certain to have happened many times."
However, this statistic assumes the proper allocation and concentration of constituent chemicals and a means to protect the peptide from all degenerative environmental factors until replication, and some evolutionary advances, have occurred. Carrier responded to one of these criticisms as follows:
"And though some argue that cellular structure must also arise coincidentally at the same time, we know life in the right conditions can survive without a cell wall long enough to evolve one (organisms like viruses can survive outside cell walls), and cell-like chambers occur naturally in space (Cowen 2001), and under natural conditions on Earth (e.g. Goho 2003b; Morgan 2003; Horgan 1991: 119, 122), in which living organisms could take shelter, and over which they would gradually evolve a more complex control."
Nonetheless, and unfortunately I cannot find the citation, it is my understanding that these factors would again reduce the probability below 1 in 10
50, which would again render the spontaneous generation of life in our universe a statistical impossibility.
This runs counter to my belief that life is common throughout the universe and has been the catalyst for me to look for a possible quantum mechanical solution to the problem.