The issue of chance... (Evolution)

by Matt S. , Tuesday, June 02, 2009, 19:57 (5651 days ago) @ David Turell

Mr. Turell--I apologize in advance, my hope was to acknowledge your acceptance of evolution in my previous post... I kinda hate email for the reason that it's so easy to sound like a Jackass... I will try to watch myself on that. It's hard. Please continue to be forgiving! - I feel that raw numerical reasoning is safe here as a basic starting point, and ultimately my goal was (by starting this topic) to encourage the author to give a more formal treatment on the topic of chance, as you can tell by my *warning sensors* firing that I don't know what exactly he's basing his argument and characterization of the atheist position on. I realize that my argument isn't holistic, but I would like some assurance that the exploration of chance is given a more formal treatment so that future readers--some of which have as technical a bend as myself--don't feel that he's creating a kind of strawman. To me, even though I agree with quite a bit of his reasoning, his treatment of chance is so sparse that it seems to stack the deck against atheism... the arguments about chance are incredibly compelling once you learn the math behind it. And when you've been exposed to chaos theory, things begin to clarify further. - I'm close enough to being a mathematician that I cringe when someone brings up "chance" in a way that really appears frivolous. I've almost completed the author's treatise, and chance is simply not explored satisfactorily. It's more or less categorized as the "atheist position," and it... very strongly outlines it in a kind of 'magic' and rightly implies faith "that science will find a way..." but that is scientism, not atheism, and this is a separate topic from his main thesis. The only faith you can pin on a bona-fide atheist on is in a statement that 'god does not exist.' - I'm familiar with Shapiro's arguments concerning the energy cycles, but in general abiogenesis is not in the realm of my expertise. I've had a year each of organic and inorganic chemistry before I switched to computers and as you can expect, they don't cover new areas of research in college. - I know that this will sound like a cop-out, but I'm taking summer classes and although this discussion has inspired me to do the exact kind of formal investigation that you suggest... I just don't have the time. But I feel I've found a home here at this web, and I plan on staying awhile. There's plenty of more interesting topics I'd like to talk about, but I only wish to deal with one thing at a time, and at this point it is chance.