How to decide is there a deity (Introduction)

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Friday, January 09, 2009, 08:28 (5604 days ago) @ David Turell

DT writes: "Chance can work miracles slowly over time, if the time is long enough. If the rate of beneficial mutations and other beneficial DNA changes are known, statistics can tell us if there is enough time for chance to work. Life has been around 3.6 billion years + ?; the earth is 4.5 billion + years old. Are those periods of time long enough for chance to produce life (.7 billion years) and is that long enough for chance alone to have produced us after life started? Current math estimates say no." - This is my point. No-one is claiming that such changes can occur by CHANCE ALONE. This is a straw man. Chance works within the constraints of Law. - Take a simple example, often given, of a pencil stood on end. A slight chance effect will push it off the vertical and it will then fall under the law of gravity. This is an example of "symmetry breaking", which in current physics is used to explain the separation of the three forces of electromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces, which originally were all one. - In the case of the evolution of life the law within which chance works is the law of natural selection. - In the case of the origin of life the laws within which chance works are those of chemical combinations and reactions, though of course the details of how this happened have yet to be worked out in detail. Because there are gaps doesn't justify inserting "some divine interference occurred here" to explain them.

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GPJ