Agreed. I included this simply because it is one possibility, and I have
recently seen some creationists abusing probability theory by claiming that
low probabiliity events don't happen. But more about that later.
>>
BH:
>><<2. The probabilities are incorrect because of phenonema unaccounted for in
>>the model.>>
>>
Jim:
>>Sure, leaving naturalists with an "atheism of the gaps" argument, which I've
>>never found compelling.
BH:
(The third possibility -- divine intervention, got snipped. Evidently it
wasn't controversial enough. I'm glad of that.)
I agree with Brian's response to Jim's response, and his elaboration of my
second point. Most researchers agree that the model is flawed. Glenn
Morton has pointed out one of the flaws in this forum: that there are many
ways of solving some of the subproblems that have to be solved for life to
develop. The probability arguments assume there is only one solution for
each subproblem. My response to Jim was strongly conditioned by a response
I have been working on
(slowly. I have a family and a job and am an officer of my church) to
misuse of probability theory by some creationists. One of
the most egregious of these is the claim that if the probability of an
event is less than about 10^(-50) it can't happen. Since it's easy to give
an example of an event whose probability is identically zero, yet occurs,
this is patently false. However, some creationists seem to have fastened
onto this thirty year old erroneous model as though it were rock-solid,
attached some bad probability theory to it, and misled thousands of young
Christians. That gets my dander up.
As I said earlier, _if_ it could be demonstrated that abiogenesis has
occurred, and that the higher taxa truly did originate through common
descent, I fail to see how that is a demonstration that God did not create
all life and ordain exactly what it was to be, how it would develop, and
continually oversee the process. All we would have succeeded in doing,
should we be able to satisfy the above criteria, is to have understood
something more of the means God has at his disposal for doing these things.
Bill Hamilton | Chassis & Vehicle Systems
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