Quotes on Probability
This page offers you a variety of quotes on the topic of "probability."
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Periodical (7)
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Quotes from Book sources
"Summing it up, and contrary to the oft-repeated evolutionist claims, a random mutation is not an enhancing factor -- it is almost invariably a destructive one. It interferes with the exquisitely fine balance and purposefulness of the hundreds of millions of nucleotides within a given program. To propose and argue that mutations even in tandem with 'natural selection' are the root-causes for 6,000,000 viable, enormously complex species, is to mock logic, deny the weight of evidence, and reject the fundamentals of mathematical probability."
Cohen, I.L. in Darwin Was Wrong - A Study in Probabilities. New Research Publications, Inc., New York, NY (1984), p.81.
Keywords: natural selection, mutations, evolution
Topical Category: Evolution, General
Verified: No
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"Mathematically speaking, based on probability concepts, there is no possibility that evolution was the mechanism that created the approximately 6,000,000 species of plants and animals we recognize today"
Cohen, I.L. in Darwin Was Wrong - A Study in Probabilities. New Research Publications, Inc., New York, NY (1984), p.8.
Keywords: natural selection, mutations, evolution
Topical Category: Evolution, General
Verified: No
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"Why does every type of fig tree have its very specific type of wasp?...A fig tree is not a fig tree unless it is serviced by its own type of wasp. They are part and parcel of the same unit.
Again we observe an enormous display of purposefulness and ingenious architecture to perform a job elegantly. This implies that incremental evolution over "the millions of years" was not the route of development of these two partners. There is a delicate system of coexistence here which has to be in perfect working order, for each one of the partners to survive. If any aspect in the biological structure of the tree and the wasp is not in order and properly functioning, neither species can survive. It follows, that both had to be fully developed and functioning from the beginning of both species.
...What are the chances for this program to have developed at random, but in such a way that it would coordinate its activities with the DNA program of another species, so that the combined survival of both would then be assurred? The answer given by probability concept is: no chance."
Cohen, I.L. in Darwin Was Wrong - A Study in Probabilities. New Research Publications, Inc., New York, NY (1984), p.153-54.
Keywords: complexity, plant evolution, mutualism
Topical Category: Evolution, General
Verified: No
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"What is so frustrating for our present purpose is that it seems almost impossible to give any numerical value to the probability of what seems a rather unlikely sequence of events. ... An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going."
Crick, Francis in Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature. Touchstone Book, published by Simon & Schuster, New York, NY (1981), p.87-88.
Keywords: origin of life, chemical origin of life, chemical evolution, prebiotic evolution, spontaneous generation
Topical Category: Origin and Complexity of Life
Verified: Yes
Date Verified: April 13, 2008
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"Design theorists, far from trying to make it difficult to evolve irreducibly complex systems such as the bacterial flagellum, strive to give the Darwinian selection mechanism every legitimate advantage for evolving such systems. The one advantage that cannot be legitimately given to the Darwinian selection mechanism, however, is prior knowledge of the system whose evolution is in question. That would be endowing the Darwinian mechanism with teleological powers (in this case, foresight and planning) that Darwin himself insisted it does not, and indeed cannot, possess if evolutionary theory is effectively to dispose of design. Yet, even with the most generous allowance of legitimate advantages, the probabilities computed for the Darwinian mechanism to evolve irreducibly complex biochemical systems such as the bacterial flagellum always end up being exceedingly small."
Dembski, William A. and Jonathan Wells "Specified Complexity" in The Design of Life. Foundation for Thought and Ethics, Dallas, TX (2008), p.182.
Keywords: probability, irreducible complexity
Topical Category: Intelligent Design
Verified: No
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""[the probability of the coincidental formation of Cythochrome-C, an essential protein for survival is] as unlikely as the possibility of a monkey writing the history of humanity on a typewriter without making any mistakes" "In essence, the probability of the formation of a Cytochrome-C sequence is as likely as zero. That is, if life requires a certain sequence, it can be said that this has a probability likely to be realised once in the whole universe. Otherwise some metaphysical powers beyond our definition must have acted in its formation. To accept the latter is not appropriate for the scientific goal. We thus have to look into the first hypothesis""
Demirsoy, Ali and Kalitim ve Evrim in Inheritance and Evolution. Meteksan Publishing Co., Ankara, (1984), p.61.
Keywords: natural selection, mutations, evolution
Topical Category: Evolution, General
Verified: No
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"In fact, the probability of the formation of a protein and a nucleic acid (DNA-RNA) is a probability way beyond estimate. Furthermore, the chance of the emergence of a certain protein chain is so slight as to be called astronomic"
Demirsoy, Ali and Kalitim ve Evrim in Inheritance and Evolution. Meteksan Publishing Co., (1984), p.39.
Keywords: origin of life, ool, chemical origin of life, chemical evolution, prebiotic evolution, spontaneous generation [and then any sub category you see]
Verified: No
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"What gambler would be crazy enough to play roulette with random evolution? The probability of dust carried by the wind reproducing Durer's 'Melancholia' is less infinitesimal than the probability of copy errors in the DNA molecule leading to the formation of the eye; besides, these errors had no relationship whatsoever with the function that the eye would have to perform or was starting to perform. There is no law against daydreaming, but science must not indulge in it."
Grasse, Pierre "Chapter IV: Evolution and Chance" in Evolution of Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation. Academic Press, New York, NY (1977), 2nd edition, p.104.
Keywords: religion, philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Practice of Science
Verified: Yes
Date Verified: February 28, 2007
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"Mutations have a very limited 'constructive capacity'; this is why the formation of hair by mutation of reptilian scales seems to be a phenomenon of infinitesimal probability; the formation of mammae by mutation of reptilian integumentary glands is hardly more likely..."
Grasse, Pierre "Chapter IV: Evolution and Chance" in Evolution of Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation. Academic Press, New York, NY (1977), 2nd edition, p.97.
Keywords: natural selection, evolution, mutation
Topical Category: Evolution, General
Verified: Yes
Date Verified: March 26, 2007
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"The opportune appearance of mutations permitting animals and plants to meet their needs seems hard to believe. Yet the Darwinian theory is even more demanding: A single plant, a single animal would require thousands and thousands of lucky, appropriate events. Thus, miracles would become the rule: events with an infinitesimal probability could not fail to occur. ...There is no law against day dreaming, but science must not indulge in it."
Grasse, Pierre "Chapter IV: Evolution and Chance" in Evolution of Living Organisms: Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation. Academic Press, New York, NY (1977), 2nd edition, p.103-104.
Keywords: mutations, natural selection, evolution
Verified: Yes
Date Verified: February 28, 2007
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"Since the mid-nineteenth century when the theory of organic evolution became the focal point for ferreting out relationships between groups of living organisms, zoologists have debated the question of vertebrate origins. It has been very difficult to reconstruct lines of descent because the earliest protochordates were in all probability soft-bodied creatures that stood little chance of being preserved as fossils even under the most ideal conditions."
Hickman, Jr., C.P.; Roberts, L.S.; and Larson, A "Chapter Twenty Seven: The Chordates - General Characteristics, Protochordates, and Ancestry of the Earliest Vertebrates" in Integrated Principles of Zoology. Mosby-Year Book, Inc., St. Louis, MO (1993), 9th edition, p.609.
Keywords: origin of phyla, phyla, origin of metazoa, multicellular animals, Cambrian explosion, Fossil Record, fossil, transitional forms, intermediate form, intermediate, transition
Verified: Yes
Date Verified: May 31, 2007
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"Because of the redundancy in the genetic code it is not possible to work backward from the amino acids of a protein to the triplets of base pairs which coded for it—on the average there are about three different triplets coding for the same amino acid. Even though natural selection may hold a protein to a unique chain of amino acids, shifts of base pairs can occur provided they do not go outside the redundancy permitted by the genetic code. ... Essentially, the same amino acid chain being found also in other animals and even in plants, we have a case in histone-4 where more than 200 base pairs are conserved across the whole of biology. The problem for the neo-Darwinian theory is to explain how the one particular arrangement of base pairs came to be discovered in the first place. Evidently not by random processes, for with a chance 1/4 of choosing each of the correct base pairs at random, the probability of discovering a segment of 200 specific base pairs is 4 -200, which is equal to 10 -120. Even if one were given a random choice for every atom in every galaxy in the whole visible universe the probability of discovering histone-4 would still only be a minuscule ~10 -40."
Hoyle, Fred in Mathematics of Evolution. Acorn Enterprises, Memphis, TN (1999), p.102-103.
Keywords: probability, mutations, evolution, amino acids, protein evolution, protein
Topical Category: Origin and Complexity of Life
Verified: Yes
Date Verified: January 1, 2008
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"Once we see, however, that the probability of life originating at random is so utterly minuscule as to make the random concept absurd, it becomes sensible to think that the favourable properties of physics on which life depends are in every respect deliberate. ...It is therefore almost inevitable that our own measure of intelligence must reflect...higher intelligences...even to the limit of God... ...such a theory is so obvious that one wonders why it is not widely accepted as being self-evident. The reasons are psychological rather than scientific."
Hoyle, Fred and Chandra Wickramasinghe "Chapter Nine: Convergence to God" in Evolution from Space: A Theory Of Cosmic Creationism. Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, NY (1984), 2nd edition, p.141,144,130.
Keywords: Intelligent Design, evolution, philosophy, origin of life
Topical Category: Philosophy
Verified: Yes
Date Verified: March 27, 2007
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"...life cannot have had a random beginning ... The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 10 to the power of 40,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. If one is not prejudiced either by social beliefs or by a scientific training into the conviction that life originated on the Earth, this simple calculation wipes the idea entirely out of court."
Hoyle, Fred and Chandra Wickramasinghe "Chapter Two: Enzymes and Other Biochemicals & Conclusion" in Evolution from Space: A Theory Of Cosmic Creationism. Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, NY (1984), 2nd edition, p. 24 & 148.
Keywords: origin of life, ool, chemical origin of life, chemical evolution, prebiotic evolution, spontaneous generation [and then any sub category you see]
Verified: Yes
Date Verified: March 27, 2007
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"Once we see, however, that the probability of life originating at random is so utterly minuscule as to make the random concept absurd, it becomes sensible to think that the favorable properties of physics on which life depends are in every respect deliberate. ... It is therefore almost inevitable that our own measure of intelligence must reflect in a valid way the higher intelligences to our left, even to the extreme idealized limit of God."
Hoyle, Fred and Chandra Wickramasinghe "Chapter Nine: Convergence to God" in Evolution from Space: A Theory Of Cosmic Creationism. Simon & Schuster, New York, NY (1984), 2nd edition, p.141, 144.
Keywords: origin of life, ool, chemical origin of life, chemical evolution, prebiotic evolution, spontaneous generation [and then any sub category you see]
Verified: Yes
Date Verified: February 28, 2007
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"A primary tool used in all scientific activity is testing. Every new fact and every new explanation must be tested again and again, preferably by different investigators using different methods. Every confirmation strenghtens the probability of the ...of a fact or explanation, and every falsification or refutation strengthens the probability that an opposing theory is correct. One of the most characteristic features of science is this openess to challenge. The willingess to abandon a currently accepted belief when a new, beter one is an important [characteristic of] science."
Mayr, Ernst in This is Biology: The Science of the Living World. (1997).
Keywords: Philosophy of Science, Practice of Science, philosophy, religion
Verified: No
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"... the magnitude of the probability of proteins and self-replicating DNA molecules forming by chance is so great as to be virtually impossible in the time we now know was available. The probability calculated by Yockey and confirmed by Sauer's experiments—one chance in 1065— an event so improbable that it could be compared to winning the state lottery by finding the winning ticket in the street, and then continuing to win the lottery every week for a thousand years, finding the winning the ticket in the street each time-possible, in principle, if you have eternity at your disposal, but impossible in practice, if all you have is a negligibly short time."
Milton, Richard in Shattering the Myths of Darwinism. Park Street Press, Rochester, VT (1997), p.18.
Keywords: probability, origin of life
Verified: Yes
Date Verified: December 31, 2007
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"...at the very heart of the synthetic theory of evolution is a single, central matter: improbability. How we deal with this issue alone either convinces us of the validity of neo-Darwinism or or convinces us of its impossibility...
If Paley's watch is the argument from Design, then the Darwinian case might be called the argument from probability. What does it really amount to?"
Milton, Richard in Shattering the Myths of Darwinism. Park Street Press, Rochester, VT (1997), p.159, 161.
Keywords: probability
Verified: No
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"Modern Darwinists seem to have a profoundly optimistic belief that the occurrence at an early stage in evolution of such a fundamental innovation--cells which are sensitive to light--makes cumulative selection of vision somehow less improbable. But the existence of light sensitive tissue has no effect whatever on the probability of the mutation of a lens, or an iris mechanism or an eyelid or anything else."
Milton, Richard in Shattering the Myths of Darwinism. Park Street Press, Rochester, VT (1997), p.162.
Keywords: probability, evolution of the eye
Verified: No
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"...there is no evidence for beneficial spontaneous genetic mutation; there is no evidence for natural selection (except as an empty tautology); there is no evidence for either as significant evolutionary mechanisms. There is only evidence of an unquenchable optimisim among Darwinists that, given enough time anything can happen--the argument from probability."
Milton, Richard in Shattering the Myths of Darwinism. Park Street Press, Rochester, VT (1997), p.169.
Keywords: probability
Verified: No
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"[I]t seems to require many thousands, perhaps millions, of successive mutations to produce even the easiest complexity we see in life now. It appears, naively at least, that no matter how large the probability of a single mutation is, should it be even as great as one-half, you would get this probability raised to a millionth power, which is so very close to zero that the chances of such a chain seem to be practically non-existent."
Ulam, Stanislaw M. "How to Formulate Mathematically Problems of Rate of Evolution" in Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution. Wistar Institute Press, (1966), p.21.
Keywords: microevolution, macroevolution
Topical Category: Evolution, General
Verified: No
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"The required rapidity of the change implies either a few large steps or many and exceedingly rapid smaller ones. Large steps are tantamount to saltations and raise the problems of fitness barriers; small steps must be numerous and entail the problems discussed under microevolution. The periods of stasis raise the possibility that the lineage would enter the fossil record, and we reiterate that we can identify none of the postulated intermediate forms. Finally, the large numbers of species that must be generated so as to form a pool from which the successful lineage is selected are nowhere to be found. We conclude that the probability that species selection is a general solution to the origin of higher taxa is not great, and that neither of the contending theories of evolutionary change at the species level, phyletic gradualism or punctuated equilibrium, seem applicable to the origin of new body plans."
Valentine, J., and Erwin, D. "Interpreting Great Developmental Experiments: The Fossil Record" in Development as an Evolutionary Process, Raff, Rudolf A. and Elizabeth C. Raff, ed. Alan R. Liss, Inc., New York, NY (1985), p.96.
Keywords: Cambrian explosion, Fossil Record, origin of phyla, and the origin of metazoa (multicellular animals)
Topical Category: Evolution, General
Verified: No
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"The important point is that since the origin of life belongs in the category of at-least-once phenomena, time is on its side. However improbable we regard this event,...given enough time it will almost certainly happen at least once... Time is in fact the hero of the plot. The time with which we have to deal is of the order of two billion years. What we regard as impossible on the basis of human experience is meaningless here. Given so much time, the 'impossible' becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs miracles."
Wald, George "The Origin of Life" in Physics and the Chemistry of Life. Simon and Schuster, (1955), p.12.
Keywords: gradualism, time, probability
Verified: No
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"The origin of life by chance in a primeval soup is impossible in probability in the same way that a perpetual machine is in probability. The extremely small probabilities calculated in this chapter are not discouraging to true believers ... [however] A practical person must conclude that life didn't happen by chance."
Yockey, Hubert P. in Information Theory and Molecular Biology. Cambridge University Press, (1992), p.257.
Keywords: evolution, faith, religion, philosophy
Topical Category: Philosophy
Verified: No
Quotes from Periodical sources
"From the perspective of developmental genetics, the global micro/macro evolutionary debate can be reduced to the question of whether the same genetic mechanisms underlying intraspecific variation and interspecific differences are sufficient to account for the large-scale changes in evolution. Several arguments can be made in support of the explanatory sufficiency of regulatory evolution and against the necessity for or the probability of dramatic large-scale “macromutations” playing a significant role in morphological evolution."
Carroll, Sean. Endless: The Evolution of Gene Regulation and Morphological Diversity in Cell, 101, June 9, 2000.
Keywords: microevolution, macroevolution
Topical Category: Evolution, General
Verified: No
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"The probability for the de novo emergence of a particular protein by chance alone is extremely small, even for a very imperfect one.... Why then does the scientific theory of evolution hold on to the concept of chance to the degree that it does? I suspect it is the fact that there is no alternative whatsoever which could explain the fact of universal evolution, at least in principle, and be formulated within the framework of natural science. If no alternative should be forthcoming, if chance remains overtaxed, then the conclusion seems inevitable that evolution and therefore living beings cannot be grasped by natural science to the same extent as non-living things—not because organisms are so complex, but because the explaining mechanism is fundamentally inadequate."
Erbrich, Paul. On the Probability of the Emergence of a Protein with a Particular Function in Acta Biotheoretica, 1985, p.77-78.
Keywords: genetic homology, molecular homology
Verified: No
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"A spaceship approaches the Earth, but not close enough for its imaginary inhabitants to distinguish individual terrestrial animals. They see growing crops, roads, bridges, and a debate ensues. Are these chance formations or are they the products of an intelligence?' It is not at all difficult to formulate examples of events with exceedingly low probabilities. A roulette wheel operates in a casino. A bystander notes the sequence of numbers thrown by the wheel over the course of a whole year. What is the chance that this particular sequence should have turned up ? Well, not as small as 1 in 10^40000, but extremely small nonetheless. So there is nothing especially remarkable in a tiny probability. Yet it surely would be exceedingly remarkable if the sequence thrown by the roulette wheel in the course of a year should have an explicit mathematical significance, as for instance if the numbers turned out to form the digits of pi to an enormous number of decimal places. This is just the situation with a living cell which is not any old random jumble of chemicals"
Hoyle, Fred. The Universe: Past and Present Reflections in Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 20, 1-35, 1982, p.15.
Keywords: origin of life, chemical origin of life, chemical evolution, prebiotic evolution, spontaneous generation [and then any sub category you see]
Verified: No
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"In other words, it's natural selection or a Creator. This is why prominent Darwinists like G. G. Simpson and Stephen Jay Gould, who are not secretive about their hostility to religion, cling so vehemently to natural selection. To do otherwise would be to admit the probability that there is design in nature-and hence a Designer."
Johnston, George S. The Genesis Controversy in Crisis, May, 1989, p.0.
Keywords: natural selection, design, darwin, darwinists, creation, creationism, religion, teach the controversy, materialism, philosophy
Verified: No
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""Since there appear to be so few good sequences for a unique structure, the probability that there is any good sequence for any single novel backbone structure may be very small." "Remarkably, in the designed sequences 51% of the core residues and 27% of all residues were identical to the amino acids in the corresponding positions in the native sequences....Taken together, these results suggest that the volume of sequence space optimal for a protein structure is surprisingly restricted to a region around the native sequence.""
Kuhlman, B. & D. Baker. Native protein sequences are close to optimal for their structures in Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 97:, 10383-10388, September 12, 2000.
Keywords: molecular machines, evolution
Topical Category: Evolution, General
Verified: No
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"As a final comment, one can only marvel at the intricacy in a simple bacterium, of the total motor and sensory system which has been the subject of this review and remark that our concept of evolution by selective advantage must surely be an oversimplification. What advantage could derive, for example, from a "preflagellum" (meaning a subset of its components), and yet what is the probability of "simultaneous" development of the organelle at a level where it becomes advantageous."
Macnab, R.. Bacterial Mobility and Chemotaxis: The Molecular Biology of a Behavioral System in CRC Critical Reviews in Biochemistry, 5(4):, 291-341, December, 1978.
Keywords: molecular machines, evolution
Topical Category: Evolution, General
Verified: No
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"A pool of 5 x 10^14 different random sequence RNAs was generated... On average, any given 28-nucleotide sequence has a 50% probability of being represented... Remarkably, a single sequence accounted for more than 90% of the selected pool... This result indicates that there are relatively few solutions to the problem of binding biotin."
Wilson, C. and J.W.Szostak. in Nature, 374, 1995, p.777.
Keywords: molecular machines, evolution
Topical Category: Evolution, General
Verified: No
Quotes from Blog sources
"Seeing that the scientific establishment displays chronic paranoia and pitiable irrationality at the mere mention of the probability that nature is the product of a creative intelligence, and that its members do their best to suppress the introduction of such ideas, the more grotesque their objection becomes that theories which go against the purely naturalistic “climate of opinion” are seldom published in refereed scientific journals. They are the ones who deny on purely ideological grounds that nature is the product of a creative intelligence, yet sneeringly they encourage Intelligent Design (ID) theorists to get their findings published in peer-reviewed scientific journals."
Ujvarosy, Kazmer. Intelligent Design and the Wacky Peer-review Demand, in the California Chronicle blog, posted February 14, 2007.
Keywords: peer review
Verified: No