Chance v. Design Part 4 (Evolution)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Thursday, July 09, 2009, 23:26 (5614 days ago) @ David Turell

You have no right to confine my thought patterns to the agreed-to constraints of the scientific method. When I was in your position as a research fellow in cardiology and wrote papers with my boss we followed that agreement. We did not invoke supernatural interference to explain our results. But I'm not doing that now. I know the method and I can read the articles and understand from my previous knowledge, and I can reach my own conclusions to satisy me. 
> - The confinement isn't placed by me its placed by your hypothesis. 
 
If you say life either came about by chance or design, that's fine. However if you choose to define life's origin by THAT hypothesis, you need to be able to construct some kind of method to detect design, and to be able to differentiate it's effects from the effects of chance. However, the assumptions of the scientific method do not allow you to do this if you invoke a non-physical entity. (Defined by me as "supernatural.") You can "feel" there is a creator, but empirically you have constructed the question in such a way that it forces all supernatural entities out of the picture by virtue of the method involved to investigate it. You cannot use physical evidence to justify the existence of something that is not physical, therefore the constraint is placed by you--not me. - If god is supernatural, those are the only two options available that fit within those constraints. As a panentheist, you actually are close to one of them. - > Thare must a universe friendly to have life in order for life to evolve. We do not know that there any other universes around. We only can know this one, so we should stick to those considerations. John Leslie said God or multiple universes. Only two choices and that is right. The Big Bang is either a creation or came from something else, which we both agree we cannot study. Again two choices.
> - But only one is actually "studyable" (if that's a word!). Again... we need to be pragmatic. To me, even though I'm not a complete materialist--I only care about questions that are knowable. Supernatural design is not one of those. - > The probability of a friendly-for-life earth planet is a second issue. Either we are on the only one, or there are others, two choices. And finally the origin of life is extremely complex. I think we will find that a single-celled organism is so complex, that by the passive method of natural selection, 400 million years is not enough time for its development. Natural chance or design, two choices. Antony Flew is on my side. 
> 
> Have I made my point clear enough? - What is clear to me is that I'll be a pretty awful probability teacher. - What I synthesize from your view is this: We only have two options, Design or Chance. Because you feel the odds are so low, you err towards design--though for scientific reasons remain non-committal. (The exact--and i mean EXACT opposite of my position. I err towards chance and remain non-committal for philosophical reasons.) - My issue is that I just can't seem to get across what I'm talking about in terms of chance. - In the *worst-case* scenario, you have dice-style probability. (Because the alternative helps life become more probable as time moves forward. Perhaps this is where your designer lays--but it is indiscernible from chance.) - The problem is that there is no reason to assume that 400 million years is even needed; by chance you only need one success. The odds could be 1/2^1000 but if life came about by a die-roll, every toss of the dice produces an equal opportunity for that success to be rolled as any one of the failures. - You are right that we only have one knowable universe, but that actually underlies my point in that we can't attach probabilities on systems that we don't know anything about. (That's why I pretty much ignore numbers anytime someone throws one out there.)