>>Susan said:
>> schools need to be free to report scientific observations and "random
>> mutation and natural selection" have been observed to occur. Being forced
>> to conceal the fact that those observations have been made is religious
>> oppression.
>>
>Uhm, coming out of the woodwork...
>
>Natural selection has been observed. Mutation has been observed. Have we
>been able to show it was completely random?
Chris
No; I think that's why Susan put it in quotes. You can't show that something
is truly random. You can only show that it fits the pattern of what would be
expected if it WERE random. Suppose I flip a coin ten times and, unknown to
me, some hidden being is controlling how the coin lands. If it does this
according to the results of someone else's coin flips, it is design but it
looks just like the other person's random flips. Further, in principle, it
is possible for a being to have purposes for determining the sequence heads
and tails of my coin flips that are simply outside my knowledge, but which
make the results appear random (it could be representing, in binary form,
the first ten binary digits after the first trillion trillion trillion
binary digits of pi, for example, and I would not be able to distinguish it
from a random sequence without knowing this via some other means).
Chris