Feeling Reality (General)

by dhw, Thursday, February 17, 2011, 11:13 (4838 days ago) @ George Jelliss

GEORGE: I'm not coming back. And this is the reason. dhw hasn't moved on from his initial position. He still states the same old same old:
"it continues to baffle me that anyone can truly grasp the immensity of all these different wonders, and yet still gloss them over with language and place his faith in chance to produce them."
"It is an argument from complexity AND incredulity, because neither you nor I can believe that such complexity could arise by chance."
To describe evolution by the processes of natural selection as being the same as the appearance of things "by chance" is just misrepresenting the case. Perhaps the phrase "by chance and law" or "by chance and inevitability" would express the case better. To set off an avalanche may only take a small amount of chance, the rest of the process follows by the law of gravity. -I long to have you back, George, with your informative posts and cogent arguments, but "misrepresenting the case" is precisely what you are doing. I have never, ever described evolution by the processes of natural selection as being the appearance of things by chance, and this is the same massive distortion in which Dawkins indulges so frequently, and which is all part of the great language gloss. His and your faith in chance relates solely to the origin of life plus the mechanisms which enabled evolution to happen. Once these were in place, evolution followed ... as you rightly say ... through a mixture of chance (e.g. environmental changes and random mutations) and law. The origin of life and of the ABILITY to adapt and innovate (i.e. the factors that made evolution possible, and which you attribute to chance) are matters of such complexity that we are still trying to figure them out. That is why, unlike yourself, I am not prepared to discount the possibility of design. If your misunderstanding of my position is the reason for your staying away, I hope very much that you will now return!