Intelligent design (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, November 28, 2011, 02:28 (4723 days ago) @ Abel

xeno6696: &quot;But did you account for multiple, parallel, simultaneous trials?<--If you answer nothing, answer that. As a computer scientist I&apos;m well aware of the power of an exponential growth of adding &quot;processors&quot; to a problem. The impossible becomes probable. The probable becomes likely. The likely becomes routine.&quot;

I used a conventional analysis. Statistics are not my strong point, and I try to use only those tools I understand.

I have seen computer models where books and phrases are &quot;randomly&quot; written by measuring the random code generated by a &quot;measure of correctness&quot; (i.e. the answer your looking for). I find this approach conceptually flawed, however I don&apos;t know anything about the techniques that you mentioned so I cannot venture a comment about the appropriateness of their use in resolving this problem.

Math and probability are precisely my strong point. I&apos;ll tell you my thoughts directly. (It will save you time in looking for old posts of mine.)

1. Every statistical argument for (or against) a creator to date I have read has been absolutely naive.

When I say naive, I mean it in the technical sense of mathematics: An analysis working from incomplete data and little knowledge.

I asked the question about parallelism because of this:

A one in a million chance event happens 8x a day in NYC. Most statistical analyses that try to talk about the origin of life (especially from writers like Dembski) compute the odds by asserting only a single event at each step of the process. They do this on purpose in order to build a better statistical argument. It looks better for their case.

Lets take a 1:10 chance. Lets assume that our event happens whenever the dice rolls to a 1.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

What are the odds of choosing 8? 8 is still technically a failed event, but your chance of picking it is 1:10, just like your success.

This leads in to the fallacy that most atheists trip into:

All chances are equal. In dice, yes, in life, no. Our 10-sided die is loaded to almost never pick 1.

However--and this is the argument that IS NOT a fallacy from the atheistic side, if you instead roll 1M (M = million) 10-sided die, many, many, times--you will undoubtedly get a 1 eventually.

I make it clear that this statistical analysis can ONLY be resolved IF (and only if) we are successful in creating life from scratch, meaning abiogenesis. Until then, as far as I&apos;m concerned, statistical arguments for or against have no merit for any discussion whatsoever beyond the hypothetical.

What are the odds of life occurring by chance? We literally don&apos;t know. We don&apos;t know the odds of life occurring by design any better.

--
\"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.\"