Chance v. Design Part 4 (Evolution)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Sunday, July 12, 2009, 18:37 (5611 days ago) @ dhw

dhw, - I about jumped out of my chair with your chimp statement... I haven't had a good laugh in awhile! However the odds are better getting at cracking a cipher using random methods than with just incrementing one letter at a time. - In the grand scope of things, when we figure out the "how" behind abiogenesis (even if it didn't begin here on earth) the next step will be in determining the probability distribution. Once that is accomplished however, I don't think it'll be a stunning a blow to theism as you might think. As I discussed earlier, Process theology via Alfred North Whitehead, Heraclitus et al, offers a very comprehensive view that allows one to have a supernatural god without violating the scientific method. - http://www.amazon.com/Process-Metaphysics-Introduction-Philosophy-Suny/dp/0791428184/re... - I read the book 4 years ago but will be undertaking it again in light of this forum. I encourage you--or anyone else to hop in. It might make for some interesting dialogue. - Overall--really I'm done with the whole chance thing. The only--ONLY reason I brought it up was to make sure that the position on chance was thoroughly understood. From your initial treatise, I really felt that you were arguing against chance from a position of ignorance. It's clear you're not, and I do hope I wasn't seen as insulting your intelligence. My goal was to attempt to show why chance appears compelling. When you couple probability with the fact that people are trying to solve the problem, it is very easy to settle back with some popcorn, and consider it "solved in the future." - I challenge my "pale atheist" friends all the time on such assumptions, though the strongest challenge to the statement "God does not exist" is purely from the epistemological challenge that we can't know that answer, to which I preach to the choir here. - I will be starting a new thread today, abandoning the chance thread as it wasn't even the most interesting to me, though I did create one hell of a good lesson plan for the introduction to probability. (Sans "origins" overtones.)