Higher math and Darwin (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, April 13, 2010, 21:47 (5147 days ago) @ dhw

Matt has argued that in relation to the origin of life, chance versus design is a false dilemma.
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> MATT: I don't know another way to say it: If chance becomes part of the process, then you can't separate it from the cause. This is due to a mathematical fact--consider that we look at the entire string of chances that makes life exist. Life is some number in this context. If at any point on the line of its history, one of these events was completely random, than that number is permanently a factor, and its effect is greater and greater over time. If you factor out this number, it ceases to be life. This makes the question harder, because its not chance vs. design, it's "how much is chance, and how much is design?" In a sentence: You're turning a gray question into black and white.
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> I seem to remember you saying once that mathematicians think differently from everyone else! The point of the chance v. design debate is to ascertain whether there may or may not be/have been a designer. Atheists believe that the original mechanism for life, reproduction, adaptability and innovation came about by chance. Most theists believe it was designed by God. Black and white. However, even with your scenario, my non-mathematical, agnostic mind has to ask you: "if at any point on the line of its history, one of these events" was designed, doesn't that mean there has to be/have been a designer? The question "how much is chance, and how much is design?" therefore becomes as irrelevant as a girl protesting her innocence because she is only slightly pregnant. If there is ANY design, there is/was a designer. The very real dilemma is therefore still between chance and design, not between proportions of each. 
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> As regards the second half of your post, I'm sorry if I misconstrued your argument concerning research into the origin of life. I hadn't realized that you thought "the goal should be to create life ... any kind of life, even if it doesn't resemble our own ... and then work from THAT point." Perhaps the goal depends on WHY you want to find out what was the origin of life. No matter what approach you use, though, you still won't prove or disprove the existence of a designer (in your scenario, he/she will be human). If the quest is for "the truth", you have argued that we can never know the original conditions or forms, in which case we can never be sure that what we invent/discover will be "the truth" anyway. I'm all in favour of us trying to create life ... and of the similar project of trying to create a brain ... but I still see nothing wrong with also researching into life as we know it, as well as looking for forms that we don't yet know. Until the research is finished (will it ever be?), who can even guess what it might uncover?-Time for my "truth hat." In other words, the rare case we see "What Matt really thinks. In this (as in many questions) I'm a fairly staunch perspectivist. First, the question on creating life.-Biology in all its forms has given us--quite clearly--the benchmark by which any artificial creation of life needs to achieve. Studying existing life at this point can fill in some gaps, but it is too... reactionary in its approach. It relies on someone needing to go out and find some bit of life and then to study it. -My computer science background tells me explicitly--to understand something--to truly understand something, you need to build it. Anything less is--in my opinion--incomplete. In my mind the research direction needs to move away from biology in this field and towards experimental chemistry. Too few people work in this area. -Why do I want to know the origin of life? I truthfully submit that I will not know the answer to origins. But I want to know any and all of the potential processes that may have given it to us, in my case because we need the technology. We have a limited life on this planet, and we need to get off of it purely for survival's sake. The power to engineer life is one that will allow us to colonize worlds we would never have dreamed of otherwise. -Philosophically I've had a unique path. I've been a theist, atheist, and now agnostic. And I recognize at each point that I was able to argue convincingly for each position, which informs me that--very likely--there is no true position. There's one painfully honest one. But no one likes to admit they can never know. And in my framework, knowing trumps everything.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"