Comments on Crash Landing: Linnaeus, Darwin, Callahan

The article is so wonderful that I want to write s...

2008-12-23T03:39:00.000-05:00

The article is so wonderful that I want to write something about myself.
Yesterday, my boyfriend gave me a lot of runescape gold as the gift. But I will buy runescape or rs gold to return him because I do not like that someone gives me something free. Although the runescape money is attractive for me, I will insist on returning the cheap rs gold to him.

Andy,I don't think any sensible philosophy of prob...

2006-01-03T19:11:00.000-05:00

Andy,

I don't think any sensible philosophy of probability assigns any sort of probability to a unique event like God's existence. It's not like we have lots of other universe from which we can get a frequency distribution, or anything like that.

Gene

Bob,"But by the same token (and you pointed this o...

2006-01-03T11:01:00.000-05:00

Bob,

"But by the same token (and you pointed this out in your follow-up), the IDers would have a point if some of the steps (especially the origin of the first cell) were astronomically improbable."

But are they willing to subject the creation (or perpetual existance) of God to the same test? What is the probability that God exists?

Julius,In a different context the flaw in your arg...

2005-12-31T20:10:00.000-05:00

Julius,

In a different context the flaw in your argument would be so obvious that it wouldn't need mentioning. Two guys are hiking in the forest and come across rocks that are arranged to form the letters, "BEWARE SNAKES AHEAD". The first guy is quite sure that no one else has been in this forest before them, and so claims that it must have been an amazing coincidence that these rocks just happened to fall (after a storm perhaps) in this arrangement.

The 2nd guy thinks that's crazy, and that another intelligent entity must have placed them there.

The first guy says, "No, your scenario is even more improbable than mine. Not only does it rely on a random arrangement of rocks, but the existence of an unseen and ultimately unprovable 'first mover' of rocks."

(In other words, what Gene said.)

Of course, the "God hypothesis" has all sorts of other problems, but it's not a simple cumulative piling on of problems. It eliminates one sort and adds a different type.

Well, if the deity arranged the steps, they are no...

2005-12-31T19:39:00.000-05:00

Well, if the deity arranged the steps, they are no longer improbable.

But I agree with you to this extent: This sort of argument cannot resolve the question of God's existence. All I intended to show is that there is nothing inconsistent in holding that God is responsible for creation and life has unfolded just as Neo-Darwinists conceive it to have done.

Where the argument seems to end up is this - a cho...

2005-12-31T14:18:00.000-05:00

Where the argument seems to end up is this - a choice between:

1. A series of fantastically improbable steps leading to life as we know it.

or

2. An all knowing deity AND a series of fantastically improbable steps leading to life as we know it.

The trouble for proponents of 2. is that it seems to be the same as 1. except with an added layer of complication. As such, it explains nothing that 1. does not already explain and adds a layer of complexity in the process. In short it is a worse theory than 1. by any reasonable measure.

Julius

Gene,Granted, and that's what I was conceding to y...

2005-12-29T15:28:00.000-05:00

Gene,

Granted, and that's what I was conceding to you. But by the same token (and you pointed this out in your follow-up), the IDers would have a point if some of the steps (especially the origin of the first cell) were astronomically improbable. That would be evidence against the more sweeping Darwinian claims about purposelessness. (But as I said in the original post, ultimately you could never disprove the claim that there is no purpose.)

Yes, what we've got now is like a "consistency pro...

2005-12-29T12:15:00.000-05:00

Yes, what we've got now is like a "consistency proof" -- it is my attempt to demonstrate to an IDer that, once they put God in the picture, they are in theological difficulty if they try to claim that he couldn't have gotten us where we are on a Darwinian route. A divine designer is not inconsistent with a history containing all Darwinian evidence.

Hmmm. Wouldn't this sophisticated version of intel...

2005-12-29T10:00:00.000-05:00

Hmmm. Wouldn't this sophisticated version of intelligent design still have to prove the existence of God? Until this proof was accomplished, the default position would be that there was no design in the conscious sense.

Yes, that's it. This came up with Galileo -- he wa...

2005-12-28T21:44:00.000-05:00

Yes, that's it. This came up with Galileo -- he was told not to "constrain God" by claiming that he had proved heliocentrism. The idea that God was not limited to producing the phenomena Galileo cited in only ways conceivable by Galileo. In this "theistic Neo_Darwinism," what happened wouldn't be random from a God's-eye view, but it would be indistinguishable from chance by us.

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