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I have to tell you that, seriously, I don't take the whole debate seriously. Although, undoubtedly, some opinions are incorrect, and, possibly, one is more or less correct, it seems not to be in the nature of things that one will be proven and others disproven.
I do appreciate the irony of your last sentence , although Christians and Jews seem to mostly go for six days (whatever a day was before the sun). Logically, Bible-believing folks just don't pretend to understand the process. They, and I, aren't so sure that evolutionists do, either.
Truthfully, I don't care to get into a debate, or even an investigation, as to whether my math (arithmetic?) is incontrovertible. A source to investigate might be The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, by Barrow & Tipler. Some less mathematical comments can be found in Genesis and the Big Bang, by Gerald l. Schroeder and Human Intelligence Gone Ape, by Josh Greenberger. As it happens, I am just not that emotionally attached to one view or another to even spend the time to check back on whence and how I arrived at my arithmetic conclusions. However, you might look at a seemingly simpler problem of determining whether, given enough time and a sufficient supply of typewriters, all the monkeys on earth could come up with an Encyclopedia Brittanica. Once you get started on that, a fairly simple problem if you are willing to make a few reasonable assumptions of your choice, a few billion years might not seem like such a long time.
It is quite reasonable to say that all the monkeys on earth could not produce encyclopaedia Brittanica even in 5 billion years. Not if you meant by that one of them or all of them typing at random the whole thing. But to make your analogy correct or fair, how about a few entries? One monkey typing a bit of one article, another monkey another bit?. but even that analogy is not watertight (1), because you are making the familiar error of assuming a predicated result Encyclopaedia Brittanica = an intended resultant biosphere.
Well let's make a better analogy with a huge book full of articles typed up by various groups of monkeys, and whatever article comes up - that goes in the book. Still pretty odds against.
But you have to understand how evolution works. True, they all type at random, but let's have an analogy of environment like a law of grammar that will oblige the monkey to fix on two or three random words and keep typong around them, and each time a grammatical word comes up that Works, it becomes part of the Article.
Not looking so unlikely now? It's even better; once enough words and phrases are added together, it does not come apart. it may add in different words that cause it to split so it become two growing articles. And all the monkeys are doing this. If they are not, one wants to know why, since the conditions now demand it.
I hope you followed this because to put it simply, Evolution is random in the sense of not planned with an end in view, but is not random in that it is guided by environment and what works, survives.
And the corollary is that all the 'whirlwind in junkyards' typ analogies are invalid because they all use the wrong analogy.
(1) and here of course we have another error. It ought to be a logical fallacy, if it isn't - use of analogy as a mind -experiment to act as evidence to prove something. Now, you can use it as a simpler way of showing how something works that is known to be true and here it is reversed- it is shown as a simpler form of something that is "known" to be untrue, because it Cannot (statistically) Work.
But when that is done, the analogy has to be "Watertight" as I say or it is misrepresenting evolution with a sloppy and false analogy, which is what is done with the 'Whirlwind in a Junkyard' apologetics, into which the thousand monkeys typing the works of Shakespeare idea has been pressed, unwilling.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 08-29-2017 at 12:40 PM..
I wouldn't call the Infinite Monkey Theorum a simple problem. It's an extremely complex problem of probability and that's before you have even decided on the paramameters.
There are many variations of the infinite Monkey theorum but in general it states that an infinite number of monkeys over an infinite amount of time typing in a typewriter will eventually type out Shakespeares sonnets or the entire works of Shakespeare or whatever.
However, attempting to liken this to the process of evolution doesn't make much sense. I will try to explain why.
Let's take the first line from one of the sonnets and just one of the monkeys.
"Shall I compare thee to a summers day"
In the Infinite Monkey theorum every letter typed is typed at random.
So the monkey at some point in time types out the letter 'S'.
Another time he types two consecutive letters, this time an 'S' and an 'H'
Another time he types three consecutive letters, this time an 'S' an 'H' and a 'A'
Another time, he types four consecutive letters, this time an 'S' an 'H', an 'A' and a 'W'....oh, now we have to reset the whole thing back to square one.
As explained by a former CD member regarding trying to form...
"To be or not to be, that is the question."
...by randomly casting 30 scrabble tiles onto the lawn.
"... you cast all your tiles out. With each letter having a corresponding tile, there is a 1/30 individual chance that a tile will fall in its proper place. Those tiles that DO fall in their proper place will be kept on the lawn. Those that do not, will be scooped back up and cast out again. So, let's assume the first throw looks like this:
"Ta kj od ald ie ne titu os ple uysqpoin"
Now, we leave the correctly corresponding tiles ON THE LAWN, And scoop up the incorrect ones. Using an odd symbol to show the difference between the correct and incorrect ones, this is what we should have currently residing on the lawn:
"T❈ ❈❈ o❈ ❈❈❈ ❈❈ ❈e t❈❈❈ ❈s ❈❈e ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈n"
In this case, this is currently the "fittest" creature for it's environment. It's by no means a perfect match. In fact, it looks more like a preliminary Wheel of Fortune answer than anything else. But you cast another set of tiles out and this is what you have:
"To jk ob utt iu be tiku is rhe qifsalnn."
Scoop the tiles back up but leave the ones that are in their correct place on the lawn. Here is what we now have:
"To ❈❈ o❈ ❈❈t ❈❈ be t❈❈❈ is ❈he q❈❈❈❈❈❈n."
Now, throw the tiles back out again. Let's say you come across this:
"To he on nut mo be tuit is nhe quetsion."
Scoop the tiles back up and leave the correct answers in place. This is what it will look like:
"To ❈e o❈ n❈t ❈o be t❈❈t is ❈he que❈❈ion."
As you'll see, we can keep doing this until we have the MOST SUITABLE string of characters for the environment. The previous entries, the ones that were not suitable, still existed, they were merely more primitive forms of the string of characters we asked for. In other words, you could look at the following sets as your FOSSIL RECORD. Here is the evolutionary lineage of the fossil record of this string of characters:
"T❈ ❈❈ o❈ ❈❈❈ ❈❈ ❈e t❈❈❈ ❈s ❈❈e ❈❈❈❈❈❈❈n"
"To ❈❈ o❈ ❈❈t ❈❈ be t❈❈❈ is ❈he q❈❈❈❈❈❈n."
"To ❈e o❈ n❈t ❈o be t❈❈t is ❈he que❈❈ion."
"To be or not to be that is the question."
Here, you can see how a very simplified sample of common evolutionary mathematics works. It is glaringly obvious that the "Missing Links" do not really have to be present to figure out what the phrase is. We know what we currently have and we know we had something grossly similar "two chains" ago. It doesn't take rocket science to put the rest together.
So, in actuality, it is the selection process that VASTLY reduces the astronomical likelihood of something happening. The faux pas that nearly every denialist makes is that evolution happens in one cast of the tiles. In fact, the very unbelievability of such a thing is exactly what is called for in the "creation" model - that some being cast a very lucky set of dice."
I'll grant that evolution of an existing life form would appear to be much faster than the monkey-EB problem, for exactly the reasons you describe. In fact, AFAIK, what creationists call micro-evolution isn't even a theory, it's an observation.
The question isn't really how the watch works, or how long it took to make it. The question is where it came from. The answer is as obvious to me as it is to you. What's humorous is that they are different answers. And neither of us knows which one, if either, is correct.
"Old Fred wasn't always right, but he was never in doubt."
I'll grant that evolution of an existing life form would appear to be much faster than the monkey-EB problem, for exactly the reasons you describe. In fact, AFAIK, what creationists call micro-evolution isn't even a theory, it's an observation.
The question isn't really how the watch works, or how long it took to make it. The question is where it came from. The answer is as obvious to me as it is to you. What's humorous is that they are different answers. And neither of us knows which one, if either, is correct.
"Old Fred wasn't always right, but he was never in doubt."
"Old Fred had the courage of his convictions, which was a problem when he was wrong"
I looked up the books you mentioned. Josh Greenberg I shall have to look up, but I suspect that he has approached the problem as a software engineer not as a scientists. As for the Anthropic principle (Barrow and Tipler:
"Not that Barrow and Tipler are endorsing a design argument; on the contrary, although scientists hostile to teleology are apt to interpret their work as sympathetic to theism and although I have already seen this book cited by two prominent philosophers of religion in support of the teleological argument, the thrust of the book's argument is in the end anti-theistic. As Barrow and Tipler employ it, the Anthropic Principle is essentially an attempt to complete the job, begun by Darwinian evolution, of dismantling the teleological argument by showing that the appearance of design in the physical and cosmological quantities of the universe is just that: an appearance due to the self-selection factor imposed on our observations by our own existence. If Barrow and Tipler are correct, then the wider teleological argument of Tennant proves no more effective than the narrow teleological argument of his predecessors.
Read more: Barrow and Tipler on the Anthropic Principle vs. Divine Design | Reasonable Faith
"
I'll look up Genesis and the Big bang, but I wonder whether you have read these books or just seen the cited by over enthusiastic creationists sites as support?
I note that you reverted with predictable haste to the good ol' "Who made everything, then?" argument.
If I haven't already done so, I'll be glad to put a few proposals that at least mean that Goddunnit is NOT the only possible answer, and is not even the most plausible one.
Genesis and the Big Bang. Well, your sources are a sight better than a lot of Creationist material. And who knows? Just that your Evolution model was incorrect and Barrow and Tipler don't actually scrap Darwin for Something Else, though some seem to claims that they do.
Schroieder is named as having persuaded Anthony Flew. I didn't know that. I thought it was Behe. However, I have heard his inflated 6 days argument. My line was that it was cheating by taking however long it took to make Life, the Universe and everything and dividing it into 6 make it fit Genesis. Having wangled Genesis to fit science doesn't make Evolution wrong, but finds a way of making the Bible fit evolution,.
I still don't see how Flew could have been persuaded (I/C could do it) and maybe you could explain just how any of those books argue for even a deist -god, since it seems that you may be ok with evolution (once you understand the arguments) but still like a deist God.
As I said, I'm fine with that - even if I don't myself believe it. After all as Dawkins once said (leading some over enthusiastic theists to scream he was was converting) "A case can be made". But, as he said - and so do I, "It is not one I buy into".
By the way "Micro evolution is neither a theory nor an observation: it is an unscientific label of an unscientific split between evolution that happens in our time scale and evolution that happened before we were around to observe it. In fact it is the same theory and the same thing.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 08-29-2017 at 01:01 PM..
I'll grant that evolution of an existing life form would appear to be much faster than the monkey-EB problem, for exactly the reasons you describe. In fact, AFAIK, what creationists call micro-evolution isn't even a theory, it's an observation.
The question isn't really how the watch works, or how long it took to make it. The question is where it came from. The answer is as obvious to me as it is to you. What's humorous is that they are different answers. And neither of us knows which one, if either, is correct.
"Old Fred wasn't always right, but he was never in doubt."
What I was trying to explain, perhaps ineloquently is that comparing the infinite money theorum to evolution just isn't comparable at all.
It's saying that one monkey out of an infinite set of monkeys, in an infinite timeline, in one instance types out a sonnet in its entirety, perfectly, and with no mistakes purely at random. The odds against it are almost, but not quite, infinitesimally small. *
This is nothing to do with how evolution works, in actual fact it's actually far closer to a description of how 'creation works'. - All the cells on earth appear one day, making perfectly arranged animals and plants and in order, with no mistakes.
*You also have to factor in an eternal earth, which isn't even possible, it's a purely hypothetical problem.
I used to be militantly atheist and antireligious. Think along the lines of Christopher Hitchens. I'm passively agnostic these days. I believe there is a creator that wound it all up, but am not dogmatic and don't believe we are so sinful innately that we need redeemed, etc.
I don't think I'm really an atheist. I'm not sure if I ever really was when I think about it. It was more a reaction to organized religion, especially when taken in a literal sense. Once I moved past that, I started exploring other thoughts and ideas. Taking a serous look at NDEs and consciousness is what primarily swayed me towards the other side.
I'm certainly not any more religious that what I have been, but I don't proclaim the atheist tag either.
What I was trying to explain, perhaps ineloquently is that comparing the infinite money theorum to evolution just isn't comparable at all.
Not ineloquently. You are right. Perhaps I shouldn't have drug it in. However, it did seem to unhinge Rafius, which some might maintain is not an entirely negative result.
Quote:
This is nothing to do with how evolution works, in actual fact it's actually far closer to a description of how 'creation works'. - All the cells on earth appear one day, making perfectly arranged animals and plants and in order, with no mistakes.
Maybe.
No mistakes? Were the dinosaurs mistakes? Or were "mistakes" and corrections part of the plan? It seems to me that the real question is "Was there a plan or did it just happen?"
Many thanks to you and Transponder for your discussion of this question so far. I have enjoyed it, even though it's not directly on topic (as defined by original poster).
I don't think I'm really an atheist. I'm not sure if I ever really was when I think about it. It was more a reaction to organized religion, especially when taken in a literal sense. Once I moved past that, I started exploring other thoughts and ideas. Taking a serous look at NDEs and consciousness is what primarily swayed me towards the other side.
I'm certainly not any more religious that what I have been, but I don't proclaim the atheist tag either.
Good, honest post.
I think your statement 'a reaction to organised religion' would be the true answer about practically everyone that says they 'used to be an atheist'.
You see time and time again people talking about how 'they used to come to the forum to shout at Christians, then found God'. Most of them (or all of them as is still my firm belief) were not really atheist, they were just angry about religion.
You also hear very commonly over on the atheist forum, Christians coming along and accusing atheists of being angry at god. This is a classic misunderstanding of atheism.
You can't be angry at something you don't believe exists.
I remain unconvinced that anyone 'used to be an atheist' and has now found god.. A good convincing story seems to remain elusive.
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, although Christians and Jews seem to mostly go for six days (whatever a day was before the sun). Logically, Bible-believing folks just don't pretend to understand the process. They, and I, aren't so sure that evolutionists do, either.
to the good ol' "Who made everything, then?" argument.
