Chance v. Design Part 4 (Evolution)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Saturday, June 27, 2009, 18:45 (5626 days ago) @ dhw

Whew... - Coming back to this thread after a couple weeks is tough. - First off, I apologize. In reading your words here, I can tell I made you take offense and I most certainly didn't want that to happen. - Okay... as for my argument being hard to follow, let me try and reformulate it. You seem to suggest that scientific abiogenesis somehow excludes theism. Perhaps its just a restatement you are making characterizing the exclusivity that atheists and fundamentalists try to place on science. - I'm sorry, but I can't see any other distinction that allows you to say abiogenesis and god are mutually exclusive. I've spent a very long time studying not just science, but its philosophical underpinnings and there is absolutely no way to make that claim. Part of why I bring up (we'll call it my strawman deism) is that its view of the creator is absolutely no less valid than that of any other theological claim. - Chance and design are only mutually exclusive if you take a position in advance. If you call yourself an agnostic, than you also have to consider the possibility of chance AND design. And then be able to weed out which is which, if you do so attempt to claim a creator in a physical sense. - This discussion leads me even deeper that I sense you have a fundamental misperception in regards to the reasoning behind chance, and this was why I chose to tackle this before getting to the more "fun" issues. (Such as art and ethics.) For 10 days I didn't have my computer and my work on the "chance primer" is only about half done. There is a series of assumptions that people on both an atheistic and theistic side that simply do not play out in discussing chance, and why in reality, even attempting to place a probability is vacuous, simply due to our ignorance on the problem of life's genesis. My own claim that probability allows it stems only from the fact that the event happened. At some point non-life became life, therefore its plottable, and you can assign a probability to it. Everything else after that is however, best-guesses. (This goes for Shapiro, too.)
 
This is also why I do not consider the complexity of life as a valid argument for a creator. You have claimed that computer models can't count because something had to create the model. This may be true, but the point computer models make is that complex results happen from simple rules, and the complex results are unintended consequences of those simple rules, thus subject to stochastic (random) study. - For the mainstream deism part, I'll just man up and retract the comment. I have 3 separate colleagues that call themselves deists, and it is that kind of formulation as I had stated. I still hold however, that one could argue that the universe's existence even if only from the big bang, then you can still attribute your ability to reason to God. Just not in the personal sense that most people ascribe to it. - Finally, I'll remind you that I'm ultimately on your side, but I am determined to continuously challenge assumptions, beliefs, opinions, anytime I find a conflict might exist. So please... don't think I'm being hostile!