Chance v. Design Part 4 (Evolution)

by dhw, Friday, July 10, 2009, 12:24 (5613 days ago) @ xeno6696

Matt is still gallantly trying to teach David and myself all about probability. - Let me reassure you ... you have made the theory perfectly clear. What is not clear to me is its importance in relation to the unique and therefore incomparable problem of the origin of life. There are two things that come to my simple but sceptical mind. The first is this: if I told you that my pet chimp had sat down and spontaneously typed out a Shakespeare sonnet, would you believe me? To spell it out: everyone has limits to their credulity, regardless of all the mathematical formulae, and that is what our discussion is all about. If you tell me that once upon a time inanimate, inert, unthinking, unfeeling globules of matter spontaneously put themselves together to start off a programme for life and evolution, I shan't believe you. - Secondly, you wrote: "In order to be able to TRULY answer the question of the probability of abiogenesis we would have to have the same information available to us as we do for the dice, namely ... knowledge of the entire system under investigation....Shapiro (and anyone else for that matter) cannot be taken beyond the raw realm of speculation when they offer odds." - Frankly, I couldn't care less about the odds, and the only truth I'm interested in is not the accuracy of odds for or against, but whether abiogenesis happened. You are absolutely right when you say we cannot know the entire system. All the more reason why in our current state of ignorance we should refrain from drawing conclusions (or rather, more importantly, theists and atheists should refrain from bashing one another). You say "chance offers us a "better" explanation than anything else we've got". David says God offers us a "better" explanation. I find both explanations unsatisfactory. That's why I'm an agnostic. But arguing about odds is certainly not going to convince me that a chimp can spontaneously type out a sonnet, or non-life can spontaneously turn into life. - Where David and I do agree is in our admiration for your planning and your enthusiasm. As for your determination not to sacrifice your family, it shows that despite what I've written above, you've got your priorities right when it comes to life on Earth!