Asking of the Designer what we would of any other designer (The atheist delusion)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Friday, July 29, 2011, 23:26 (4866 days ago) @ whateverist

Sometimes I think we worry too much about luckiness when it comes to abiogenesis. That the very sperm required to make me was the one out of millions to make it was 'lucky' but it had to be one of them. Some of the luster comes off when we realize we each of us won that race. So incredibly lucky as well as common as dirt.
> -As a computer scientist I use probability all the time. It's tricky and slimy and your observation of sperm is a fine example of perspectivism in probability; by reversing the question we arrive at ultra-simple logic. (Similarly to the birthday paradox.) -> Should we be just as amazed that water has three states and that we live on a planet where all three can be found? Or does the fact that we're here to tell the tale already settle the temperature range question?
> 
> That matter has the properties it does and that the laws of physics are likewise compatible with our existence .. still too lucky?
> 
> That earlier generations of stars made made heavier elements available .. lucky or just one more precondition which obviously got checked off or we would not be here to tell the tale?
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> Hate to be a wet blanket but lucky doesn't worry me.-Luck doesn't bother me terribly much either, but the overall point of dhw's (site owner) is this: Believing that chance created all of this when combining all the statistics we're aware of--is an awful lot of faith. If you flatly deny any creator at all, you're automatically left with "got here by pure chance," and the key point of Shapiro/David is that there simply isn't enough time for all the contingent events to have come about by a purely random process. Of course we know that Evolution is not random (cells can "write-back" to their own genome and pass these traits on) but the workings of the simplest bacteria are far more than could be assembled by chance. Only 8 of the 20 amino acids needed for life existed on earth; where did the other 20 come from? Can we make a life-form on only 8 and evolve it? All compelling questions, none with a decent answer. -Gould stated that if the play of life were started over from the beginning that he thought it entirely unlikely that we would appear again. Maybe he's right, or maybe life is a common property of the cosmos wherever the conditions are right. (Your idea.) David's contention is that both ideas are wrong; but I'll leave him to defend his own ideas. -Myself, I'm an avid fence-sitter. I can't put faith in the nonmaterial (because I recognize that materialism is the only reliable method of gaining knowledge) but I also recognize that unfathomable faith that chance could *pop* make it all happen. I believe in faith less than in any other human notion, and thus my own trap is set and sealed...

--
\"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.\"