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Author Topic:   Why do people believe what they believe?
JonF
Member (Idle past 168 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 40 of 51 (96288)
03-31-2004 9:30 AM
Reply to: Message 38 by secondlaw
03-31-2004 7:26 AM


Re: mathematical impossibility
Now, mind you, 10 to the 150th power is deemed the standard for impossible
Nope. That's a falsehood made up by creationists from a misunderstanding of Borel's Law.
Take two decks of cards. Shuffle them together. Deal them out on the table. By your criterion, what you are looking at is impossible, since the probability of the particular arrangement that you are looking at is about 1 in 10166.
The level of probability that is considered "impossible" depends on the circumstances. There is no universal probability bound.
This is my long elaboration on why I said that life from non-life is mathematically impossible.
You have mis-stated the conclusion, as did all of your sources.
Your sources proved that life from non-life is mathematically impossible by the process that they assumed. Since the processes that they assumed are not processes that any rational person has ever seriously proposed as the origin of life, what they have done is proven a "strawman" to be false. Such exercises are sutiable only for preaching ot the convereted; they fall apart upon cursory examination.
I'm not aware of any creationist, Dembski included, who has ever addressed a realistic model of abiogenesis. Real scientists haven't calculated such probabilities either, because we don't yet know enough to do so.
See Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 38 by secondlaw, posted 03-31-2004 7:26 AM secondlaw has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 41 by secondlaw, posted 03-31-2004 9:51 AM JonF has replied

  
JonF
Member (Idle past 168 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 45 of 51 (96336)
03-31-2004 12:19 PM
Reply to: Message 41 by secondlaw
03-31-2004 9:51 AM


Re: mathematical impossibility
Percy's already posted a good reply, but I want to underscore a few items:
the shuffling of two decks of cards is a mere matter of chance.
Yes, and that's why it's relevant. The "analyses" of abiogenesis that you presented are based on assuming that a complex sytem appears by a mere matter of chance, and you claimed "Now, mind you, 10 to the 150th power is deemed the standard for impossible," which is talking about a mere matter of chance.
The circular reasoning of the argument, presented by many on this site, that 'because we are, it must be' is illogical and completely based on assumption.
I agree, although I don't agree with "presented by many on this site". What does this have to do with what I posted?
This lends itself to strictly to allowing your assertions to go un-answered through ignorance.
Sorry, this just doesn't parse as an English sentence.
What is wrong with the fact that we don't have enough information to evaluate the preobability of the various pathways that have been proposed as possilbe abiogenesis scenarios?
[This message has been edited by JonF, 03-31-2004]

This message is a reply to:
 Message 41 by secondlaw, posted 03-31-2004 9:51 AM secondlaw has not replied

  
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