"Howard J. Van Till" wrote:
>
> >From: Woodward Norm Civ WRALC/TIEDM <Norm.Woodward@robins.af.mil>
>
> > "Howard J. Van Till" wrote:
> >>
> >> >From: Peter Ruest <pruest@pop.mysunrise.ch>
> >>
> >> > Are you implying that life and all biological funtionalities emerged
> >> > exclusively by chance (scientifically speaking)?
> >>
> HVT: >> Peter, suppose that you observed a perfectly honest gambling casino
> --
> >> all games used a form of randomness honestly, no cheating, and no
> >> "hidden choices" being exercised by the dealers.
> >> After considerable study you note a pattern: at the end of each day,
> >> the management goes to the bank with a substantial profit. Question:
> >> would you say that this outcome occured "exclusively by chance"?
> >> I have a feeling that my answer to your question would be similar to
> >> your answer to my question.
>
> NORM: > I am not sure what answer is being assumed, but I would say that
> the exact
> > take each day would be established "by chance," in the scenario described.
> > However, the games are designed so that "on average" the house should make a
> > certain percentage of all transaction, either by "owning" a portion of a
> > wheel, or instructing when the dealer is to "hold", etc. But the exact
> > yield depends on the luck, or lack thereof, of the patrons.
>
> The casino metaphor could be used to illustrate a number of points.
>
> 1. Randomness (what Peter called "chance") and purpose are NOT mutually
> exclusive. In the casino story, the human management purposefully employed
> the authentic randomness of the various games to compute pay-out rates in a
> way that ensured a handsome profit for the house. The details of each play
> need not be predetermined. No storehouse of information about the particular
> outcomes of each game is necessary. Yet the general character of the "grand
> outcome" -- house profit -- is practically certain. The certainty of the
> grand outcome was resident in the whole system of games, potentialities,
> probabilities, pay-out rates, etc.
>
> If, at the end of one day, you were to ask, What was the probability of this
> particular set of outcomes for each game played today, or even the exact
> amount of house profit for the day (to the penny), one might well encounter
> a wall of "transastronomical improbability." Nonetheless, the casino
> management takes its usual trip to the bank.
This shows that the casino is a very poor metaphor for understanding
biological evolution. In gambling, any game goes, whereas in biology,
virtually all games are inviable. In gambling, a loser can gamble again,
as long as he has anything left, whereas in biology, the loser is out at
once and forever (unless his bad draw happens to be overcompensated by a
simultaneous lucky one (of transastronomical improbability)). And as I
pointed out before, the casino requires an overall favorable bias to
stay in business, whereas in biology, there is no overall bias between
different mutations, as far as their overall values for the species is
concerned. And even an overall bias favoring certain types of mutations
would not help the evolution of the species concerned or the entire
biosphere (i.e. any given bias would increase the chances of a positive
mutation in one case, and that of a negative one in another case).
> 2. If human agents are able to employ authentic randomness purposefully,
> should we not be prepared to expect God to be able to do the same? Why not
> be prepared to consider it highly likely that the creaturely system to which
> God gave being has a bias (analogous to favorably calculated pay-out rates)
> built into the probabilities for the formation of viable life forms?
A casino applying a bias providing guaranteed favorable pay-out rates
does not involve employing authentic randomness purposefully, but
evading or overplaying it. Probably the casino's formula is entirely
deterministic (but possibly uses stochastic values as input), otherwise
the goal of achieving an overall pay-out would not be attainable. The
uncomparably much more difficult goal of constructing a biosphere
requires uncomparably much more information, either in a huge "world
life formula" or in a (much simpler and more straightforward) set of
simple directions given whenever needed.
> 3. Presuming that all such probability values were thoughtfully
> conceptualized and purposefully given to the Creation by the Creator, why
> should we expect these probability values to be far too small to be
> successful?
It's not at all a matter of probability values to be computed
beforehand, but of a huge set of correct selections at certain points
along each of the evolutionary roads. More specifically, a random
mutational walk towards the first minimal activity of a novel protein
will be unsuccessful if it involves three or more specific amino acid
replacements (without natural selection of the intermediates), cf. my
parallel post to John Burgeson.
> [Skip a bit...]
>
> > Abiogenesis seems to me as having a less
> > chance of occurring than the miraculous jumbo jet in the hurricane, not
> > necessarily because of the complexity, which is certainly a factor, but the
> > time factor.
>
> Re "...seems to me..." Why? Why have such low expectations of the
> formational capabilities of the Creation to which God has given being? I
> just don't understand this negative bias! Was the Creator unable to
> conceptualize a successful system? Was the Creator unwilling to give such
> a wealth of capabilities to the Creation?
>
> Is there some overwhelming desire (especially in evangelical Christianity)
> to reserve a place for divine controlling POWER to be exercised (by
> intervention, or by decision)? Why not place the emphasis instead on God's
> CREATIVITY (to conceive of a creaturely system of resources, potentialities,
> and capabilities that works) and GENEROSITY (to give such fullness of being
> to the Creation)? Is it possible that our theology is dominated/distorted by
> the POWER theme?
All these questions are beside the point. No theist doubts the Creator's
willingness, capability, creativity, generosity, or success. The real
question is: _how_ did he do it, which is the most probable way he did
the creating/developing? You keep insisting that after an initial
creation (presumably at the big bang), he did not do anything more
except through the secondary agency of the created matter, but up to now
you have not given us any indications about how such an ethereal scheme
would work from simple chemicals to a biosphere. Nor have you justified
this belief theologically or scientifically. Why do you believe God
would not actively develop further what he created? Gen.1 suggests this,
as well as the fact that God _created_ [bara'] each one of us
individually at conception (natural processes for body/soul plus
"intervention" for spiritual person?!), but continued to develop us
further (through natural processes) and answers our prayers (using
hidden options?). Why do you insist Genesis 1-2 doesn't give us anything
except the theological idea that it was God who did the creating? Why do
you believe (without any supporting data) that all information required
for the biosphere could emerge by mere random processes and natural
selection within the system (like Muenchhausen pulling himself out of
the bog by his own shock of hair)? Please forgive me if this sounds
aggressive! I am frustrated because I get the impression that you do not
really want to deal with the biochemical and biological problems, but
just keep repeating your belief in "creation's functional integrity",
without explaining what this entails specifically.
Peter Ruest
> I don't pretend to have all of the answers, but I think these questions need
> to be faced.
>
> Howard Van Till
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Nov 24 2001 - 14:11:27 EST