Oh those clever evolutionists: Question-begging abiogenesis

I'm interested in what you think is funny. What I think is that you have your "analogy" exactly backwards.

Yes, you can wave it away. RAZD demonstrated that the calculations were done terribly incorrectly. The subtext is that those who publish such junk math have had a lot of time to pass this by a real statistician and since this sort of stuff is still being published without correction someone is deliberately supplying bad numbers.He also points out that done as correctly as possible or not they still can not have any meaningful bearing on the debate since we don't know enough to do a meaningful calculations.If you don't understand what was presented then you are simple not in a position to comment on the issue at all. The material presented was very straight forward and screamingly obvious to someone who has had an introductory stats course. The sources of the original probablity calculations are either not at all competant or dishonest (unless you can think of another option).

As an attemt to appear to be contradicting myself I'd like to point out that it can have some impact at a superficial level: no one presumes that a fully functioning DNA plus stuff mechanism arose in one step by "accident". We can understand that this is highly improbable without doing any pretend math. So thinking this way can exclude some trivially obviously wrong choices for a pathway to living things.The fact that creationists are either too dumb or too dishonest not to understand that even considering such pathways and doing fake math on them is ridiculous should tell the interested observer something about them. It's too bad when the observer doesn't have the intellectual tools to know what is being done to them.

Thanks, Faith, for an absolutely priceless example.

I sure agree with that. We all fall into the trap and no one is without ignorance on many, many topics.However this thread has exemplified in a very crisp manner that the creationists seem to specialize in willful ignorance and closed-mindedness.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 10-02-2005 11:04 PM

-- it's not us that are doing that. You're the one that "can't get anything ..".

The whole point of the thread that this one is discussing is that the odds against abiogenisis are completly unknown. That is not the same as astronomical. It maybe that half the planets in the galaxy are within a wide range (from Europa to mars) which can support life. It maybe that all of those have life on them. We don't know.

The simple fact is: NO we will NOT. There isn't enough information available to calculate "real" probabilities. That is the fundamental point that you haven't grasped yet. No one knows enough to calculate any valid probability.The other point you seem to have missed is that even IF there was a chance to calculate "real" probabilities none of the creationists have done the math right; not even close to right, no where near right.

Now you've missed one of the points that RAZD( it was he no?) made. Even if the process for which the probability was calculated was THE one the creationist calculations are wrong anyway. This was made clear in the list of things wrong he suppied.So you can say they are wrong because they didn't do the math right.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 10-05-2005 09:38 PM