Charles Darwin

You compared a hand you are dealt in a game of cards (say a royal flush), which is equally probable with every other possible hand, with the evolution of complexity. But only a few hands will make you a lot of money, and a royal flush is one of them. You were dealt a rare hand in terms of the monetary outcome.

Likewise, the evolution of complexity (even if possible) is rare in terms of the outcome. The vast majority of states gives you a pile of mud, not the DNA code in a functioning cell.

This is the "equiprobable outcome fallacy." While it may be true that each *state* of a system is of equal probability, this does not imply that every *outcome* is equally probability.

Gawdawful

It seems to me that the creationist looks at evolution backwards, but they can't help it because they believe what we are now is how were created. They see the enormously complex thing we call life and cannot see how it originated by accident. What I see now could have been merely the end result of a complex series of accidents of chemistry and mutations of organisms, by pure chance. We could just as easily have been just a pile of mud if that series of accidents had not occurred as they did. Perhaps some of us are not all that far removed from that same mud.


Warren in Oklahoma

Shadowy Man

That it discriminates against atheism says that it discriminates against those who have no religion. Yes, that is religious discrimination, and no it does not mean that atheism is a religion.


If atheism is a religion than bald is a hair color.

pangloss

Hmmm... More evidence for the bible. That is an interesting statement. Do you mean evidence that the Bible - the book - actually exists? Or that it (I understand that there is no one all-encompassing set of scrolls calle d'the bible', but I will grant that there are ancient texts that have come to be included in what is called the Bible) contains accurate depictions of historical events?

And what is it, specifically, that "science tells us" about how DNA etc. do not appear to have 'naturalistic origins'? i will be most interested to look into this...

enfant terrible

Atheism is a viewpoint (not a "claim" - your English isn't too good, is it?) about religion. That is rather obvious. Just like a statement "I don't have crabs" is about crabs, so is the statement "I don't have any religious beliefs" about religious beliefs. Get it? It does not make it a religion, however, just like absence of crabs doesn't cause itching.

HRG

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Charles Darwin
[B]CD quote:
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Hence we may look at the most complex thing in the universe -- living organisms -- which defy naturalistic origin
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Because we live in a universe where things don't tend to fall together.
[quote]
Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Gravitational collapse of a gas cloud, the emergence of a hurricane or the emergence of self-catalyzing RNA by spontaneous polymerization are examples
where they do.
No, just showing a better understanding of biochemistry, molecular genetics and evolution.

And, as Sherlock Holmes might have said: "Never confuse the unlikely with the impossible".

BTW, do you have any plausible estimate for the probability of the existence of a being which is required for a supernatural explanations of organisms ? Until you do, you cannot exclude that the mere existence of your God is even less likely than a natural origin of DNA (which is a code only in a metaphorical sense).

Regards,
HRG.

enfant terrible

You either can't read or can't think. You are making an obvious fallacy again. "Monetary value" of the hand is completely irrelevant. (There is some reason I used bridge in the example: in bridge /especially duplicate/ a hand has no value on its own.) The point is that any hand you get was extremely unlikely before the fact, but once you observe it after the fact, it is there with probability 1, no matter how unlikely it used to be.

You are committing at least three separate fallacies here. First, you are assigning "value" to the state with life on Earth, and classifying "outcomes" based on that value. But there is no justification for such valuation.

The fact that the state and the "outcome" (however defined) which we observe would have been very unlikely before the fact, is exactly what I dealt with in the cards example. Your second fallacy actually works against you: no matter how you define it, an "outcome" is a set of states, so there are always more possible states than outcomes (or equal number, in a trivial case). So (assuming equiprobable states), any given "outcome" was a priori more likely than any given state.

The third fallacy is a misapplication of physics, not of logic. You implicitly value states according to the resulting entropy of the Earth's biosphere, as if it were the entire universe. (That is the only way I can imagine a scientific justification of your notion of a "rare outcome" and a royal flush analogy.) But that doesn't make sense; you ought to consider the entire universe. Then, if you want to define outcomes in some analogy to thermodynamical states, you could consider, for example, the number of the planets in the universe that have developed life as the index of the "outcome". That would give some meaningful quantitative structure to your argument. Unfortunately for you, you have empirical data only about (at most) 9 planets, out of who-knows-how-many-billion planets in the universe. Tough luck.

Jah191

Let me use the analogy of light and dark. In the same way that dark is the absence of any light, silence is the absence of sound, etc. atheism is the absence of belief in god(s). Theists seem to think that the "default" is a belief in god and everything else is irrationaly opposed to it. Infants have no religion.

Jack the Bodiless

Why did you choose the handle "Charles Darwin", given that you evidently know virtually nothing about evolution?

Evolution is fact. We know it happens. It isn't a great mystery, it's actually an inevitable consequence of the existence of imperfect replicators and heritable mutations. We have a whole forum to debate these issues, and this isn't it. But I think your attitude says much about your adherence to dogma. Arguing against the fact of evolution is like arguing that the sky is green: it simply doesn't address reality.

Jack the Bodiless

Apparently, just about every single contributor on this thread has pointed out your error here. How can you possibly be "missing" all these clarifications?
Since when has evolution been an alternate explanation for the existence of the Universe? Evolution is an alternate explanation for the existence of US, given the prior existence of the Universe. It doesn't pretend to be anything more than that.
Yes, there is. It contradicts everything we know about the origin, function, and capabilities of intelligence.

The Magical Toenail Clipping is just as valid (or invalid). So are you prepared to worship it?
All of these issues are easily explained by Santa's magical powers. Why do you deny magic to Santa, but allow God to have it?

Of course, as the Toenail Clipping is also magical, there's no problem there either.
...How?
But the Magical Toenail Clipping is equally compelling!

Whether or not you choose to call it "metaphysical" hardly matters. What matters to us is that belief in God is no more rational than belief in the Magical Toenail Clipping, and we don't need to have a fully worked-out aToenailClippist alternative explanation to disbelieve that the existence of the Magical Toenail Clipping is likely.
Circular argument. Why do you believe that God is capable of creating the Universe? There is no evidence that he is capable, you've merely arbitrarily assumed that he DID do this, and worked backwards from there.