Chance v. Design Part 4 (Evolution)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Saturday, July 11, 2009, 04:16 (5413 days ago) @ dhw

The importance of chance is underlined by people such as yourself that don't think that all of this can come about by chance. - What is *most certainly* my view is that the best that chance can give us is either the processes that initiated life were *completely* random (fair die roll) or they weren't. To me, that's precious more than can be said by invoking any supernatural beings. The supernatural explains everything and thus nothing. - Earlier I talked about studying epistemology... part of this is analyzing what kinds of knowledge are knowable or not... well any designer that is 'supernatural' in nature is by definition not knowable. We cannot know if we were designed, thus meaning for all practical purposes, we have no other choice than to trust the origin of life question to science. - 
> ...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.
>
 
Both explanations are unsatisfactory, but one is less so. - The joke in my chimp statement was probably taken purely as a joke. - It's bad to use a chimp in that scenario because you're installing intelligence into the situation which completely messes with the randomness. (The chimp has a will and will not pound out random information.) Purely random chance is always sans intelligence, I would say--it's part of the definition. And purely random chance says... what I have been saying. I won't repeat it. - I can tell you this, when writing an algorithm to crack a cipher, one of the ways to do it by brute force is to randomly pick the keys. The random part is key however--the hardware itself must be built with a true random circuit. - If its a 56-bit key, (2^56) that's a max of 2284931317 years. Assuming one instruction per second (and modern processors can do say, millions) breaking this key takes far less. And that is what lies in my argument involving the chemistry. In a solution we have a cipher, and series of reactions that created life is like the encryption key. - I bring this up here because that's the core background I have in dealing with probability. Maybe you'll understand why I don't discount chance as surely as you (and Dr. Turell do). Biomolecules are organic molecules, and organic molecules are made of inorganic components. We do not know how the chemistry happened, we only know that it DID happen. It could have been designed, but we all agree we can't know! So in that broader sense, why try? - > 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! - A thank you is all I can say here. =-)