cricket

Sad, wet, is us. Ha!

See it's a beginning. During the next 'generation' (next type-fest) you would get to save those words and build onto the story, more and more.

In that book I mentioned above, The Blind Watchmaker R Dawkins uses randomly selected computer-generated letters to spell out the Shakespeare line "Methinks it is like a weasel." It's kinda like a slot machine... except that he retains the letters that line up correctly, and keeps going and going until he has that phrase (or, presumably, even an entire Shakespeare play, if he wanted to take the time). Have you read that book yet?

[ April 20, 2002: Message edited by: cricket ]</p>

SmashingIdols

Actually it is Dawkins' book Climbing Mount Improbable that addresses the probability/improbability issue.

As he surmises in the preface of the book, a jump [from the ground] up the shear cliff of Mount Blanc would be impossible. However, by coming around to the backside, and the gentle progressive paths to be found there, the climb is slow and steady.

And, as previously stated, nobody has ever suggested that the improbable jump was made from inanimate matter all the way to the complexities of the eye, or any other organ or organism, in a singular bound.

Nobody, that is, except for Theists.

Godless Dave

To put it more simply, evolution itself is not all that improbable. The evolution of a particular species with particular characteristics is improbable.

To abuse the typing monkeys analogy further: The probability that a monkey at a typewriter will bang out "To be or not to be, that is the question" is very, very low. The probability that that monkey will bang out some combination of 40 letters is very, very high. That's all evolution requires. It doesn't require that the typing be meaningful to some outside observer assiging arbitrary meanings to the letters on the typewriter.

Edited because I let my monkey type it the first time.

[ April 22, 2002: Message edited by: Godless Dave ]</p>

Gooch's dad

One argument I like to use against the probability argument is that of enzyme kinetics.

Now, I'm not even a chemist or biologist (last chemistry class I took was over 20 years ago, in college). But I do remember that there are many chemical reactions that just won't proceed without the proper catalyst. Enzyme kinetics in biological systems are one example of this.

Without the catalyst, the reaction simply won't happen, or it will proceed so slowly that it will take years for a beaker-full of reactants to do their thing. Add the catalyst, and the rate is often characterized in milliseconds.

The lesson is, given two starting reactants, and a final compound, you can't give the rate (a measure of probability in a sense) without knowing the pathway.

The same argument applies to all of the creationist probability arguments. They don't know the pathway, therefore their statistics are meaningless.

Abacus

I was just thinking. From the vantage point of the distant past looking forward in time, the probability that I would some day come into existence must be extremely small. Something like 1 in 10 to the &lt;insert very large number&gt; power. Now, if I were to take the theist's point of view, I would first express my incredulity at coming into existence against such long odds. Then I would conclude that a higher power willed all of the historical accidents to happen so that I could someday be me. Praise Jesus!

Of course, I don't buy into this line of thinking.

Joe Nobody

I've read the Science of God by GS. I've also read Genesis and the Big Bang by GS. I have a third book of his called The Hidden Face of God. I didn't read it yet. As an oec GS presents a refreshing change from the normal yec literature that tries to equate science and Genesis but I think he fails to see the literary genre that the creation stories fall into. We have a reworking of other, possibly older, creation stories which were probably familiar at the time of its composition. The creation accounts shouold be understood functionally as theological stories aimed at teaching certain things. Not as factual, scientific, eyewitness account of creation. I don't think their author/authors ever intended them to be that. They are creation myths reworked to incorporate Jewish theology. Hugh Ross and Gerald Schroeder throw out respectively different and much more impressive attemps at unifying the creation accounts with modern science than yecs but even with all the alternate interpretations and linguistic gymnastics I don't think either have reached an exact concordance by any means. I think the biggest problems lies in a necessary rejection of biological evolution (Ross) or at least certain major aspects of it and a rejection of the earths age (Schroeder) for their views to be correct.

Schroeder's view has Gen 1 verses 1 and 2 not mentioning anything about the earth. I don't think this is accurate. His time dilation stuff has day one being around 8 billion years. Of course, if the earth was actually around on day one as the Genesis text seems to imply to me (when understood literally as GS understands it) he has problems. The earth is said to be 4.6 billion years old. His day one lasted from around 15 billion years ago to 7 billion years ago. The earth couldn't have been there.

Gen 1:1-2 NIV 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the

For those that have the Science of God check out the chart I am referring to on page 67.

Of course on page 66 he argues that Genesis 1:2 has God hovering over the universe not the earth. He then goes on to argue this is the biblical description of the inflation of our universe.

The Nas Hebrew Lexicon has the word translated earth in Gen 1:2 being the transliterated word 'erets'. Calling this the universe does not seem justified to me. Schroeder failed to even address this if my memory serves me well.

<a href="http://bible.crosswalk.com/Lexicons/Hebrew/heb.cgi?number=0776&version=nas" target="_blank">http://bible.crosswalk.com/Lexicons/Hebrew/heb.cgi?number=0776&version=nas</a>

Also, I don't think Schroeder has established the proper context. If this a factual description then I think the story is given from the perspective of the earth's surface. Ross picks up on this and argues that verse 1:2 shifts our perspective from the heavens to the context of the earth's surface.

Joe Nobody

[ April 22, 2002: Message edited by: Joe Nobody ]</p>