Oh those clever etcetera--What RAZD said

Faith, your habitually contemptuous dismissal of people who disagree with you might yield a clue.Also, the interpretation of the passage in question is not that cut-and-dried. Parasomnium said that it is a "safe assumption" that he meant abiogenesis. RAZD never actually said it.

Of course it is true in the abstract, but it only appears not to assume anything about abiogenesis if you ignore everything else he has been saying, particularly the previous paragraph: See, what HE has committed here is the fallacy, as NOBODY has been arguing that "LIFE" is improbable, only that life spontaneously generated from non-life is improbable. Sure, the probability of LIFE's happening is irrelevant once life has happened, but the probability of HOW it happened is NOT irrelevant and that is what the dispute is about.He goes on immediately to the next paragraph, which is the one I originally quoted: In context this paragraph is clearly continuing the same fallacy, saying that you have evidence around you that LIFE has happened, although the mathematical model that says *something* cannot happen is not referring to LIFE but to life spontaneously generated from non-life. The mathematical model may indeed be erroneous, who knows, but it is not saying that life cannot happen, and certainly there is no evidence around us that life spontaneously generated from non-life has happened, only life itself.

He was dealing with a mathematical model that was all about it.I will try even harder to curb my contemptuous dismissals.This message has been edited by Faith, 10-06-2005 06:19 PM

quote:

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Of course it is true in the abstract, but it only appears not to assume anything about abiogenesis if you ignore everything else he has been saying, particularly the previous paragraph:

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But there are two problems in your assertion. First it is not clear that RAZD is referring to natural abiogenesis rather than life.Secondly it states "if there is evidence". Thus you cannot argue that the statement directly begs the question even in context. You would have to argue that the evidence RAZD had in mind begged the question which is getting rather tenuous to say the least.I must also point out that I have already discussed the sentence you chose to bold and pointed out that it makes more sense if RAZD is talking about the origin of life in general, as he later claimed. The fact that RAZD talks only of Life - rather than the means by which life arrived - you also choose to bold - is also consistent with my reading. Surely the fact that the very text you chose to emphasise can be used to argue agaisnt your cliams is evidnece enough that the matter is not clear-cut.I should add that if the context is necessary to understand your assertion you should have included it in your post. Ypu cannot expect others to automatically agree with you when you leave out information that you yourself claim is necessary to understand your assertion.I might also add that you seem to have had no problem in ignoring these statements: I do not see how you can fairly complain that others "ignore" text - text which you did not consider significant enough to quote, and which at most only implies the meaning you infer - when you have ignored explicit statements from the same post.n

Has he made any attempt to settle this?

Begging the question: So let's break these two statements down:P1:Math is not evidence for reality.
P2: There is a mathematical model that says abiogenesis cannot happen.
P3: When a mathematical model contradicts evidence it is likely the mathematical model is in error.
P4: There is evidence that abiogenesis has happened
Conclusion from P3 and P4: The probability is high that the mathematical model is erroneous.The last statement is not begging the question.P1: The difference between improbable and impossible is vast no matter what the number calculated actually turns out to be.
P2: Life could indeed be a highly unlikely event on the grand cosmic scale.
Conclusion from P1 and P2: That does not prevent it from happening.
P3: Once an event has happened its probability is 1
P4: A probability of 1 is irrelevant.
P5: Life has happened.
Conclusion from P3, P4 and P5: the probability of life happening irrelevant.RAZD is referring in the latter logical progression to the probability of life. If RAZD was arguing, in the latter logical progression, about abiogenesis - rather than just life - then it would be begging the question. As it stands, RAZD's argument here is mostly irrelevent.

I mostly agre with this. I would add that on my reading, the missing step is supplied by the assertion that a low probability of a natural occurrence of an event is insufficient to assert a miracle.Personally I suspect that RAZD's argument is a little confused.I would suggest the following revisions.1) The raw probability of abiogenesis has little relevance - the more useful number is the probability of abiogenesis given that life exists.2) At a minimum we would need to be able to compare the probability of abiogenesis with that of any proposed alternatives. Thus even if we had a reliable estimate of the probability of abiogenesis we could not use that as evidence of a creator, without also dealing with the probability of a creator accounting for the origin of life3) Since both quantities we would like to compare are not objectively knowable and subjective estimates vary wildly it is utterly impossible to construct a sound argument on this basis. Indeed it could be equally well argued that the probability of a creator producing life was - given our current knowledge - lower than that of abiogenesis.i

I think it was probably no worse than many contributions here, and in fact was probably better than most. I don't think a Talmudic dissection of casually written prose is very useful. Even worse, just as with the Bible, completely opposite arguments can be formed just by quoting different portions of RAZD's posts, which is what appears to be happening now.I think anyone who reads all of what RAZD wrote will find his point of view and the point he was trying to make pretty clear. If anyone chooses to focus on a particular subset of what he wrote while ignoring or not comprehending the rest then they can make an argument for question begging, but so what.The real lesson of this thread is that if you don't make the effort to understand the prerequisites of an argument, in this case probability, then you can reach conclusions that are pretty far off the mark.--Percy

I think Faith is hinting that there is another "lesson"--namely, an unspoken bias against Faith and her ilk.

I don't know if Faith is of the "ilk" but the main thrust of the original post was to show that those creationists who publish such rubbish math are either ignorant or dishonest (given the time to learn I'd suggest the later).I won't leave a bias against dishonesty unspoken.

I agree.But more specifically as regards this case, and "bias," one might be an execrable scientist but a pretty good logician. However, if somebody has been putting up with one's execrable science for a long time, he might miss the competent logic.

The bias isn't against Faith. All you can blame Faith for is not making the effort to understand the fallacies behind the Creationist probability arguments. I guess you can blame her for defending what she doesn't understand, but the lion's share of the blame must go to those who knowingly formulate false arguments. People like Faith have every right to expect that the pamphlets and books and lectures and videos and websites promoting Creationism are upright, well-researched, well-reasoned, and supported by meaningful evidence, and the biggest irony in the whole Creation/evolution affair is that the vast preponderance of chicanery takes place on the religious side of the fence. The inherent vulnerability of the sincerely devout attacts the flim-flam element like no other.--Percy

The only bias I'm aware of hinting at is not about me and my ilk exactly, but about the whole evolutionism v creationism debate. It seems to me that RAZD could so easily commit such a fallacy of assuming abiogenesis (and others be so blind to it) simply because the creationist argument doesn't really exist in his mind, doesn't even really register. That is, to him and some others on the evolutionist side here, life's origin in non-life is absolutely the ONLY possibility, almost a foregone conclusion, no matter what the current state of the evidence.Evolution itself certainly appears to be the only possibility for all on that side of the discussion, and this includes "creationist" or theistic evolutionism too I believe. There's a total blackout on the possibility of creationism, often pure contempt (speaking of contempt)-- sometimes with an excuse, such as the common accusation of dishonesty.In other words, debating with creationists is mostly a game evolutionists indulge in, in the hope of getting us to see the "truth," absent any real respect or tolerance. That's a pretty total "bias," rather beyond bias I think.So I believe that what happened when RAZD begged the question is just that this total eclipse of a bias slipped out, as it does from time to time here anyway.

Couldn't the same be said for the other side?

I don't think we're in a position to have that kind of wipe-out bias. That's a prerogative of the Establishment. We're on the defensive.