Texas Teach
Posts: 2084
Joined: April 2007
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| Quote (Patrick @ July 27 2011,17:16) | Elizabeth Liddle summarizes the core flaw of all ID creationist big number calculations in two succinct comments.
| Quote | The question is not (I would argue): “how likely is this pattern (say, a living cell) to have happened by chance at least once given the entire number of events in this universe?”, but rather: “given what has happened in this universe so far, how likely is this pattern (this living cell) to have arisen?”
And to calculate that, we need to know something of the contingencies that led to that point.
Dembski’s CSI concept does not even attempt to estimate this. And, I’d argue, that this is exactly what evolutionary biologists attempt to discover!
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Followed by
| Quote | Yes, we do have to “go on the basis of the laws of chemistry and physics” but they are a given in this universe.
The probablity of life given all possible physicses and chemistries may be very low. But the probability of life given this physics and chemistry might be quite high.
Dembski seems to be saying that confronted with something like a living cell, we can infer that it did not come by a series of independent random events.
Which nobody claims.
What people claim is that it came about through a series of highly dependent – contingent- events. Just as, given the constants of this universe, iron was virtually inevitable, life may also have been virtually inevitable.
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If I remember correctly, Elsberry and Shallit noted this back in 2003 and a number of people, including MathGrrl, have pointed it out since then. Perhaps Lizzie will be the one who manages to get the UD denizens to understand it.
Hey, a guy's gotta have dreams.... |
Was it a dream where you see yourself standing in sort of sun-god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you?
Why am I the only one who has that dream?
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"Creationists think everything Genesis says is true. I don't even think Phil Collins is a good drummer." --J. Carr
"I suspect that the English grammar books where you live are outdated" --G. Gaulin
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