Chance or Designer

[Forty9er]

Remember: 1 in 10¹⁶⁴​. Who are you betting on?

I think what dissimulo is saying is that 1 in 10¹⁶⁴​ isn't a small enough probability to be certain about it. He believes it still COULD have happened, and of course is certain, like all the other evolutionists, that it did.

[dissimulo]

I think what dissimulo is saying is that 1 in 10¹⁶⁴​ isn't a small enough probability to be certain about it. He believes it still COULD have happened, and of course is certain, like all the other evolutionists, that it did.

I am certain that nobody can be certain about that number. I am also certain that it doesn't mean anything, because nobody expects a protein to form in a single step. We don't know enough about the process to assign probabilities. I don't know how abiogenesis worked, or even that it did, just like nobody else does. It seems the most likely explanation to me, simply because life is chemistry and this merely extends the model backwards, but that is an intuitive position. I am not able to calculate the probability of the formation of an intelligence capable of designing life either. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about how life came to be, merely how it works now.

[Forty9er]

I don't know how abiogenesis worked, or even that it did, just like nobody else does.

I can agree that you don't know how abiogenesis worked but it is hard for me to believe that you don't assume that it did work because what other alternative do you have? Panspermia doesn't offer an alternative but just pushes the problem somewhere else. And although I don't know exactly what you believe, I'm sure that the vast majority of evolutionary scientists completely reject the idea that God, even if He does exist, played any part in the origin of life.

That is the basic starting assumption for all modern evolutionary thinking - how do we explain the existence of everything without God being involved at all. But science wasn't always that way. Many great scientists of the past (and some current ones) believed that God exists and that He, in some fashion, created everything in the world and their task was to discover the laws of the physical world and how it works.

[dissimulo]

Well, it is probably fair to say that I assume that abiogenesis happened, but it is equally fair to say that I simply don't know. I am comfortable saying that there are things that I don't know, particularly when they are, in fact, unknown at our present level of knowledge. If you asked me to place a bet on how life began on Earth, it is the option that I would bet on. Similarly, I would call myself an atheist, because I don't have any belief in God, but I also don't really know. I could be wrong. I would be surprised, but I have been wrong and surprised before, so I know it is possible.

Science doesn't have to explain away God, but it does have to explain how things work in a way that is testable in some fashion. If God is the distal cause of something, then we need to work on the proximal cause. God, as a proximal cause, is not testable, so is not the domain of science. I know a lot of scientists and I can't think of one that is particularly interested in disproving God. They want to work on questions that they can answer. The kind of hostile anti-religious evolutionary evangelism is more the domain of media personalities than real scientists, who, while they are generally not religious, also are typically just really uninterested in the subject.

And that's basically where I fall in. I find the idea of God as a proximal cause supremely uninteresting because I can't think of a single aspect of the material world that we have made no progress toward explaining as a physical phenomenon. That doesn't mean that we won't encounter one at some point (or have encountered some yet and not yet realized it) but since we can't test God, the only way to approach God as an answer is to first disprove all other options. Even that would not constitute proof, but it does give you a sort of asymptotic approach I guess. Since there is a material universe with consistent physical laws, I have to imagine that if there is a God of any sort, it instituted these rules. And since the rules work across various scales, I have no reason to think that evolution, abiogenesis, the big bang, or any other hot-button topic would constitute any kind of disproof of God. They are just logical extensions of material phenomena that we have already observed. So, just as I have no interest in proving God, I have no interest in disproving it either - the entire scope of that debate lies outside the realm of science. The early naturalists thought that they were describing the world as created by God. I have no problem with that idea. I can't put any limits on something that I cannot imagine. The idea that elucidation of physical phenomena in the material universe has any bearing on the possible existence of God just seems silly to me.

[Forty9er]

Similarly, I would call myself an atheist, because I don't have any belief in God, but I also don't really know. I could be wrong. I would be surprised, but I have been wrong and surprised before, so I know it is possible.

It would be better not to play word games. I think most people would say an atheist is a person who affirmatively denies the existence of God. So either you are what most people would call an agnostic or you are truly an atheist but don't want to appear to be extreme or dogmatic about it.

Science doesn't have to explain away God, but it does have to explain how things work in a way that is testable in some fashion. If God is the distal cause of something, then we need to work on the proximal cause. God, as a proximal cause, is not testable, so is not the domain of science.

It's funny that you would say that God, as a proximal cause, is not testable because I would say that most of evolutionary "science" is not testable. When I think of something that is testable I think of combining two chemicals and getting a repeatable and measurable result, or using the law of gravity to precisely and repeatedly determine the orbits of satellites. Don't deceive yourself, that is not what evolutionary science does. Your kind of "science" is like taking a paper full of dots and drawing a nice evolutionary picture by connecting certain dots. But when someone who believes in God comes along and connects the dots in a different way you claim that isn't science because science must assume that everything can be explained completely by natural causes.

And that's basically where I fall in. I find the idea of God as a proximal cause supremely uninteresting because I can't think of a single aspect of the material world that we have made no progress toward explaining as a physical phenomenon. That doesn't mean that we won't encounter one at some point (or have encountered some yet and not yet realized it) but since we can't test God, the only way to approach God as an answer is to first disprove all other options.

Your "progress" toward explaining everything in the world as a result strictly of physical processes is not what I would call progress but is just another one of those 1 in 10¹⁶⁴​ probabilities that you like to cling to.

If I had lived in the 19th century and had been walking along and happened to stumble over a laptop computer and eventually discovered how to turn it on and get a rudimentary idea of what it could do, I wouldn't try to figure out how that happened to appear (or evolve) all on its own through strictly natural processes. I would immediately know first, that it had obviously been designed by someone, and second, had been designed for a specific purpose in mind. Your bias and complete refusal to admit that anything in nature could actually be designed and for a specific predetermined purpose shows how you have blinded yourself to any evidence that would argue for the existence of God.

[dissimulo]

I find that agnosticism has a much stricter definition than atheism, as it is the belief that the existence of God is unknowable. I don't think it is necessarily unknowable, just unknown. But I also don't see any good reason to believe in God, so I fit atheism pretty well. Obviously, these terms are just expedients - very few people adhere to the textbook definition of any particular philosophy. I lack any belief in God. I've never had any. I'm not really interested in the idea. Whatever that is, I am.

Evolution is a broad category of science that contains mostly testable ideas, many of which we have figured out how to test and some of which we haven't. But you are limiting the kinds of testing rather severely. Many of the kinds of proofs that are employed in evolutionary biology involve hypothesizing biochemical/genetic features that would occur at a particular stage given a particular set of starting conditions. The test then involves going to search out those features and determine whether or not they exist as predicted. It is as valid a kind of proof as any in science. If your requirement is that we reproduce evolution in a bottle, then you're just not ever going to be satisfied.

This is where I will probably bow out of the conversation again because we're headed into topics that just don't interest me very much and cannot be resolved. I'm not going to come up with anything new and interesting to say that you haven't heard and rejected before, so I would just be boring both of us.

[Forty9er]

I won't continue to bore you but I would like to make a couple of final comments.

Evolution is a broad category of science that contains mostly testable ideas, many of which we have figured out how to test and some of which we haven't. But you are limiting the kinds of testing rather severely.

I limit what I call testable ideas because that is how I was trained to understand what true science is. As I have said somewhere previously, in the hard sciences unless a phenomenon can be described mathematically, you really know essentially nothing about it scientifically.

Many of the kinds of proofs that are employed in evolutionary biology involve hypothesizing biochemical/genetic features that would occur at a particular stage given a particular set of starting conditions. The test then involves going to search out those features and determine whether or not they exist as predicted.

Here are some of the problems with that kind of "proof". The first problem you have is that your hypothesizing various features is a very generic kind of process and success or failure is a subjective call, not like a clear mathematical proof. Another problem is all the assumptions you make before you even start to do any analysis. You really don't have an open mind but have severely restricted your tests by your basic assumptions, which if incorrect, invalidate your conclusions. And then you have the problem that you completely rule out other possible ways to explain what is observed.

But since you seem bored with the rigors of the hard sciences, I guess pursuing that kind of fanciful science will keep you entertained.

[CaryC]

I think what dissimulo is saying is that 1 in 10¹⁶⁴​ isn't a small enough probability to be certain about it. He believes it still COULD have happened, and of course is certain, like all the other evolutionists, that it did.

Hey 9er,

Back at home, killing some time before bed, which is dangerous for everyone. I start bloviating.

To bad dissimulo doesn't watch vid, because the 1 in 10¹⁶⁴ would of answered his question, or thoughts, especially concerning chemistry.

So I took some notes, isn't everyone happy? LOL

The idea of 1 in 10¹⁶⁴ is about a single protein which is made up of 150 amino acids. Each aligned to ensure a folded chain.

The vid is testing what theorist believe that given enough time anything is possible, or is it?

Doing a test of assembling 20 amino acids chain. With a planet filled to the brim with only amino acids, and cutting out the destructive nature of solar radiation. AND using the time table of one second to construct a chain. If there is not a correct assembling of 20 amino acids, they will start over.

There will be a construct of 6⁴², every minute. Considering that the estimated age of the earth is 4,600,000,000 years those that don't fold is 10⁵⁸, which is nothing compared to 1 in 10¹⁶⁴.

Remember our first test was only 20 amino acids. What we need is a protein with 150 amino acids.

So there hasn't been enough time on earth for there to have been even one chance, which is NOT a causal agent, but merely a reference to probability.

A couple of notes should be made:

1) the simplest cell known to man, has 300 proteins in it. And we just run the probability of a single protein, with 150 amino acids. Even if there was one created, it was not life. It takes 300 proteins for the simplest cell. Which may be life, but it is no where near human. Did you know, you just made 4 million red blood cells?







Did you know, you just made another 4 million red blood cells?

You're doing this all the time as a created human. And there hasn't even been enough time in the whole to create a single 150 amino acid chain by chance.


2) In the OP those that did the testing were laying down a not, it could be, it might be, or it was probably this, or probably that, but rather, they were sure about their 90% claim.

3) You also did a great job. So, to be fair, I will take the "Dumber" title. Yeah, I figure if I was smart I could pass an IQ test.

[Forty9er]

To bad dissimulo doesn't watch vid, because the 1 in 10¹⁶⁴ would of answered his question, or thoughts, especially concerning chemistry.

So I took some notes, isn't everyone happy? LOL

The idea of 1 in 10¹⁶⁴ is about a single protein which is made up of 150 amino acids. Each aligned to ensure a folded chain.

The vid is testing what theorist believe that given enough time anything is possible, or is it?

Doing a test of assembling 20 amino acids chain. With a planet filled to the brim with only amino acids, and cutting out the destructive nature of solar radiation. AND using the time table of one second to construct a chain. If there is not a correct assembling of 20 amino acids, they will start over.

There will be a construct of 6⁴², every minute. Considering that the estimated age of the earth is 4,600,000,000 years those that don't fold is 10⁵⁸, which is nothing compared to 1 in 10¹⁶⁴.

Remember our first test was only 20 amino acids. What we need is a protein with 150 amino acids.

So there hasn't been enough time on earth for there to have been even one chance, which is NOT a causal agent, but merely a reference to probability.

Probabilities are the subject that evolutionists will avoid like the plague. Like dissimulo, they think that those kind of infinitesimally small probabilities have to be wrong because their starting assumption is that it is a fact that it happened so those kind of numbers can't be correct and we just need more knowledge to explain how it happened. But the problem is that the more we discover about the complexity of even the simplest forms of life, the more those small probabilities get even more impossible.

Fred Hoyle, the famous British scientist, who was also an atheist, put the chance of obtaining the required set of enzymes for even the simplest living cell without panspermia was 1 in 10^40,000. And he had this to say:

The notion that not only the biopolymer but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.

And it is simply nonsense.

[CaryC]

Fred Hoyle, the famous British scientist, who was also an atheist, put the chance of obtaining the required set of enzymes for even the simplest living cell without panspermia was 1 in 10

^40,000

. And he had this to say:

Boy, high! Can I use that?!

Goober: "Why, he's smart enough to work in a filling station." When referencing a challenger with a PhD, to Andy for his girl friend.

And it has gotten to the point now that is no longer a matter of evidence, but rather the will. As noted with dissimulo, he just doesn't want to. And that's fine, no problem.

In these discussions I know no one is going to be converted. I get that, and actually don't have a problem with it.

So why do this? To educate Christians. Because of the attitude (OMGosh you ought to hear my nephew on this topic, PhD. and can't see the forest for the trees), and use of big words, (as you are so apt at in your replies, for the good) the theorist comes across as intimidating, and therefore knowledgeable.

It doesn't take a genius to see this stuff. You can get a C on the IQ test and still know this stuff.

And the Bible today has become more of a spiritual guidebook, than the Word of God. And granting any kind of credibility to evolution tends to move The Bible in the direction of a guidebook, and that is all it is good for.

When the God of the Bible is powerful, and so powerful He created the Universe, AND wholes it together by His Word, and only His Word. No sweating, or exertion needed.

The oxygen level on the planet is what.....21%? At 25% the slightest spark, from a volcano, or electric switch, or lightening hitting a tree would ignite the atmosphere, and burn all living things. At 17% all oxygen breathing creatures would suffocate.

No matter what is going on, on the planet, God by His Word and Word alone, holds it at 21%. And has held it at 21% since the beginning, the very first day.

Who is this God whom we have to do? Find out for yourself, read The Book.