The improbability argument

Being a nerd that I am, I was watching a Nova program last night on bird flu.Some facts I learned that I didn't know before:1) In 1918 an outbreak of bird flu occured in the human population that killed 50 million people.2) Most variations of the virus that causes bird flu only infects the lower abdominal regions, literally causing the infected to poop out the virus.3) In 1918, the outbreak occured in the human population because a random mutation somewhere along the line gave a specific variation of the virus the "recipe" for cough and sneeze.4) If you put an infinite number of monkeys in an infinitely large room with an infinite number of typewriters and each monkey would start randomly pushing the typewriters' buttons, you're going to have at least 1 perfect copy of Hamlet. 5) We do not know what the "recipe" for cough and sneeze is so we can't really estimate the probability of a specific virus being produced inside a specific cell of a specific bird at a specific time, right down to the millisecond, at a specific place with a specific person susceptible to the new mutation living among a specific human population in a specific region that allows the infection to spread beyond the local area at a specific relative time that allows the infection the opportunity to spread to 50 million people before it was contained. We do not know what the recipe for cough and sneeze is, so we cannot really estimate the probability of it occuring considering the following factors:i) a specific virus being produced inside a specific cell
ii) of a specific bird at a specific time, right down to the millisecond,
iii) at a specific place with a specific person susceptible to the new mutation
iv) living among a specific human population
v) in a specific region that allows the infection to spread beyond the local area
vi) at a specific relative time that allows the infection the opportunity to spread to 50 million people before it was contained6) Yet, in 1918 it happened! Relating the Nova program to the improbability argument on both abiogenesis and events of so-called positive mutations that allow a specific individual belonging to a specific population living in a specific environment that favors certain specific traits within that specific population at a specific time frame for the mutations to be truly positive with the specific conditions to allow the individual to spread its advantageous mutation enough that it would one day change the allele frequency of the population, *deep breath* how improbable is it that it has to be labeled as impossible by creationists and how do we know how to calculate the probability?Relating the Nova program to the improbability argument on both abiogenesis and events of so-called positive mutations considering the following factors:i) that allow a specific individual
ii) belonging to a specific population
iii) living in a specific environment that favors certain specific traits within that specific population
iv) at a specific time frame for the mutations to be truly positive
v) with the specific conditions to allow the individual to spread its advantageous mutation enough that it would one day change the allele frequency of the populationhow improbable is it that it has to be labeled as impossible by creationists and how do we know how to calculate the probability?

Therefore there was no bird flu outbreak. Or, if there was, it was because those 50 million people didn't pray hard enough (or right).

Good Intentions who uses the same ip address as a herd of folk well known here at EvC and who has not returned any results to the Grid or even registered a device?

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A number of ID proponents refer to an idea of Dembski's called the 'Universal Probability Bound'.This was popularised by William Dembski and suggests that anything with a probability exceeding 1 in 10¹⁵⁰ would not have been able to happen by chance, taking into account the age of the universe and the number of elementary particles in the universe.As to how we know to calculate the probability? We don't, which is why creationists seem to just pull values out of their hats. On many occasions the process seems to involve just choosing a selection of variables which they consider to be the relevant ones, and the values of which often have to be estimated themselves.TTFN,WK

Wasn't it Spanish Influenza that caused the 1918 catastrophe?

Aside from Wounded King's criticism on its arbitrariness, the Universal Probability Bound is also objectionable on purely technical grounds.ID-ers say that something that has a chance of 1 in 10¹⁵⁰ of happening, is in fact impossible. First of all, something that has a non-zero chance is per definition not impossible. Anything that has a non-zero chance of happening might take three times the age of the universe before it happens, or it might happen at the very first try.Second, ID-ers erroneously assume that whatever happens was specified in advance. The situation they invisage is like someone emptying a bucketful of coins on the floor, after having predicted the exact resulting configuration of heads and tails. If the bucket contained about 500 coins, the chance of making the right prediction is about 1 in 10¹⁵⁰. It would be prety amazing if the prediction was correct.But evolution makes no such predictions. Whatever evolves, evolves. In terms of the bucket example, the resulting configuration may be one of 10¹⁵⁰ possible combinations, but something had to come out. There's nothing amazing about the resulting configuration if it wasn't specified beforehand.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

The H1N1 influenza strain 'Spanish Flu' is thought to have derived from an avian virus either shortly before, or at least in the decades leading up to, 1918 (Reid, et al., 1999).TTFN,WK

WK,Ah, thanks for clearing that up.Mark

There is another problems with the assumptions about probablity.First of all, it assumes that there are no rules to chemistry. Second of all, it assumes the probabilty of 'Life' as complex as it is today self assembling intact. THe development of life was a process. It started small, and those pieces of chemical reactions that could self replicate became more common. Those chemicals evenutuall became more complicated.That throws the entire concept they are trying to use out the window.

You toss a coin. The outcome is either heads or tails, each with a probability of 0.5Or is it?What I really described is how we think about coin tossing. We have in mind a mathematical model with two possible outcomes. In the real world, with real coins, there are many more than two possible outcomes. For the coin can land anywhere on the floor. The probability that it lands at any particular position on the floor is zero. How is that for improbable?We don't normally see the probabilities as zero, because we use our mathematical model. In effect we take many possible real world physical outcomes, and merge them into one or the other of those two possible outcomes of the mathematical model. It is our knowledge of the situation that guides us in merging possible physical outcomes into the smaller number of outcomes of the theoretical model.Where we lack the knowledge, we lack a suitable explanatory theoretical model. So we are unable to merge multiple real world outcomes into a few theoretical outcomes. We really cannot use probability arguments without some kind of model. Thus, in practice, our ignorance leads us to generate a very crude mathematical model with a large number of possible outcomes. The improbability of a particular event reflects the crudeness of our model and the degree of ignorance that leads to using such a crude model. With more knowledge, we might have been able to use a more realistic model with fewer theoretical outcomes and thus probabilities that are not nearly as small.My point is this. When we are ignorant of mechanisms, our estimated probability or improbability does not mean much. It may merely be an artifact of using a poor theoretical model.The argument from improbability is, in many cases, little more than the argument from ignorance dressed up in mathematical clothing.

I don't know. Should the accounts of folks who use the library's computers be merged?

Do you have multiple accounts here at EvC one of which is Lam?

No.

"The argument from improbability is, in many cases, little more than the argument from ignorance dressed up in mathematical clothing."I am assuming that this is the same situation for all mathematical models? If this is true what you are saying obviously it has a severe impact on the ID argument. However, don't/ wouldn't IDers just argue back that the reason why this figures are so high is because God indeed created life? It seems like if thats the case science would have to admit they do not know something, or cannot find something. As of right now that seems like a poor mistake because IDers would use that to argue for a creator.Though I do agree that the mathematical models most likely are very crude and unreliable. However, I don't know the logistics of each one. I have only been told the results. For instance, Sir Fred Hoyle is said to have made calculations that the chances for an organism 1/5 as complex as a bacterium to randomly be created are 10^40,000 to I. That is an enormously high number (I don't mean a necessarily doubt it). Does anyone know if Hoyle or others have taken into account the possibility of reproducing chemicals that other members have mentioned? I guess as long as I am on the subject, does anyone have a link that could better explain the concept of reproductive chemicals to me? Thanks

What are the odds of God?How come that's never made explicit in ID arguments? If we're going to say that it's "more likely" that God did something, shouldn't we know exactly how likely that actually is?