Re: [asa] CSI Forensics WAS Staggering drunk WAS Romans 1:20

Am I missing something here, or is it just tacitly assumed by most that
there is a single (more or less) "good" outcome to the functioning of
Creation, including the complementary processes of natural selection and
whatever is responsible for continuing diversification? If there is more
than a single possible and desirable (in God terms) outcome, that seems
to me to change the odds considerably from the scenarios being discussed.

It seems to me that as soon as some molecular configuration comes about
that stores a little energy that is recoverable/usable in some form
(freestanding or as a part of something else), that opens the door open
to new possiblities. Similarly, as soon as some sort of physical (or
electrochemical, or other) reactiveness comes about which tends to
enhance the survivability of a particular assemblage of molecular
components, that opens still another whole dimension to the
possibilities. This is not at all like random tinker toy assembly which
seems to be the model so oftern discussed.

I am inclined to side with those who simply say that we can't do a
reasonable calculation of anything resembling a model of the real thing,
simply because we know too little. Computing an outer limit that is huge
is an interesting exercise, and maybe even useful to stimulate
discussion. But its relevance to whether something might or might not
happen in the reality of Creation is pure speculation at best.

Or seemeth to me.

JimA [Friend of ASA]

Iain Strachan wrote:

> I think George's illustrations are very apt.
>
> A point that occurred to me recently was that all possibilities are
> equally likely for sure, but "interesting" possiblities are far less
> likely than "uninteresting" possiblities. All the distributions of
> gas that are evenly spread over the container are not interesting, but
> one where all the molecules are in half the room is very interesting
> indeed. It also boils down to the point I've made many times before
> about description length. If the molecules are restricted to one half
> of the room, then you need precisely one less bit per molecule to
> specify the positions, so the description length is reduced by
> O(10^24) bits.
>
> Likewise a Royal flush is much more interesting than the arbitrary
> hand that George gave!
>
> However, the key problem is that in ID, it seems to me, the proponents
> seem to think that "interesting/unlikely" is equated with the action
> of an Intelligent Designer, whereas it might be due to a physical
> process whose details we haven't yet fully fathomed out, which makes
> what was previously considered extremely unlikely, actually very likely.
>
> I also had a thought on whether (non)-randomness implied design - what
> started this thread. There are two examples:
>
> (1) Imagine chucking a bucket of water down a water-slide of the type
> you see at leisure centre swimming pools. Despite the randomness of
> the motion of the water molecules, overwhelmingly many of them go down
> the slide in a well-determined fashion. Now one might argue that this
> points to the fact that someone designed the water-slide to be a
> particular shape. Intelligent Design? No the analogy fails because:
>
> (2) Consider water flowing in a river. It also follows a twisty
> course in a deterministic fashion, but the processes of erosion and
> the laws of physics carved out the best path through the terrain.
> No-one designed the water slide - its shape arose naturally.
>
> Iain
>
> On Nov 23, 2007 1:59 PM, George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com
> <mailto:gmurphy@raex.com>> wrote:
>
> I won't get into the debate on ID, Rom.1:20 &c here but want to
> contribute something that may help to elucidate the point about
> statistics that Iain is making below. When I 1st studied
> statistical mechanics from Sears I learned what I assumed then
> was - & still think should be - standard terminology but apparetly
> isn't, the distinction between a microstate and a macrostate. (Of
> course it's the concepts rather than the words attached to them
> that are important, but having distinctive words for different
> things can be helpful.) If we're talking about a container of
> gas, e.g., one specifies a microstate by giving the position and
> momentum of every molecule of the gas. A macrostate, OTOH, is
> specified by giving just the numbers of molecules with different
> positions and momenta (within limits specifying the precision of
> measurements).
>
> The basic assumption is that all microstates are equally
> probable. A given microstate with each molecules in my study in
> the north half of the room & travelling due north is as likely as
> a given microstate in which the molecules are evenly distributed
> throughout the room and in momentum space (i.e., moving in
> different directions with different speeds). But all macrostates
> are not equally likely. In the example, there are far more
> macrostates with the molecules evenly distributed than there are
> macrostates with all the molecules in one half of the room. The
> thermodynamic probability of a given macrostate is defined as just
> the number of microstates corresponding to that macrostate. (&
> entropy is then Boltsmann's constant times the log of that
> probability.)
>
> In poker, a hand with 10, J, Q, K, A of diamonds is exactly as
> likely as that with 2 & 6 of hearts, K of spades, and 6 & 9 of
> clubs. But a royal flush is lots less likely than one with a
> pair because there are lots more ways of getting the latter.
>
> Shalom
> George
> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/ <http://web.raex.com/%7Egmurphy/>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Iain Strachan <mailto:igd.strachan@gmail.com>
> To: Dick Fischer <mailto:dickfischer@verizon.net>
> Cc: ASA <mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
> Sent: Friday, November 23, 2007 4:03 AM
> Subject: Re: [asa] CSI Forensics WAS Staggering drunk WAS
> Romans 1:20
>
> Why oh why do certain members of this list keep on making the
> same fallacious straw-man argument over and over again despite
> my many attempts to explain it? It seems to me that any
> mention of the word "probability" on this list results in yet
> another excuse to bash ID. I believe the correct response to
> ID is to point out that events that seem unlikely may well
> turn out to be highly likely once we've understood the
> processes involved.
>
> But this silly "low probability events happen all the time
> argument" is completely vacuous. Sure, if four players sit
> down at a bridge table and deal the cards, then the chance of
> them getting that set of four hands is one in 5.36x10^28 (The
> impressive figure given by D.F. Siemens in all its 67 digit
> glory in an earlier post turned out to be too big by a
> whopping 39 orders of magnitude, because he failed to take
> into account that the same bridge hands arise independent of
> the order in which the 13 cards in each hand are dealt).
> Nonetheless the 5.36e28 number is pretty impressive, but it
> doesn't surprise us because any set of hands has the same
> chance. But what if you shuffled the deck and dealt out the
> cards again and got the same set of four hands? Then you
> would be surprised, because it conforms to a specified target
> (it matched the previous hand).
>
> Likewise consider the case when two parents have a child by
> the usual means. Each sperm has 23 chromosomes, each one
> chosen at random from each chromosome pair. The same goes for
> each egg cell. Hence when I was born, I was one of 2^46
> possible individuals that could have been conceived.
> Therefore God? as Dick would say. Of course that's a silly
> statement, but the point is that no one in the ID camp would
> make that claim. Dick's argument is just a straw man. But
> suppose my parents had a second child after me by the usual
> means and it turned out to be an identical twin genetically?
> At this point the 1 in 7x10^13 chance is significant because
> it conforms to a target (ie it's the same as me).
>
> Honestly, until you start to grasp this elementary point your
> arguments look every bit as foolish as some of the stuff
> coming out of RATE. Are you going to get it this time?
>
> Iain
>
> ............................................
>
>
>
>
> --
> -----------
> After the game, the King and the pawn go back in the same box.
>
> - Italian Proverb
> -----------

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Received on Fri Nov 23 11:03:22 2007