They’re making a purely mathematical argument, which, as we all know, doesn’t work. If the origin of life depended on pure chance alone, then it could not have happened.
The only other alternative is to insert some fine tuning into the very laws of nature as presented earlier.
So they start off by saying that “species” is a simple concept and any bright child knows what “species” are because children can tell the difference between dogs and cats and cows.
Then they misrepresent the fossil evidence for the Cambrian “explosion”.
It’s simple, teachable, understandable… and wrong.
Technically that would just make it very unlikely, that doesn’t mean it could not have happened.
The lower the probability, the lower the frequency. If the probability isn’t strictly zero, then it’s possible it could have happened. At no point does the probability of some event, or result of some process, cross over from just more unlikely to “so unlikely it requires divine intervention/design/fine-tuning”.
Positing fine-tuning doesn’t solve the probability problem, as you now have to have a fine-tuned fine-tuner such that it would want to create life as we know it. What’s the probability of that?
Armchair arguments from a bunch of guys sitting in armchairs.
Scott Aaronson of Gerlenters standing in CS:
Never heard of Gelernter, so I looked him up and found he had been a victim of the Unabomber!
Someone has to say it: Who TAF dressed Berlinski for this?
This has been the failure of the ID movement all along. Their arguments against evolution are detached from reality.
I’m still curious when they will move on to engaging contemporary understanding of evolution, rather than the 150 year old “Darwin’s theory.”
I wonder if we take a look at the transcript and count up how often the word “Darwin” appears.
Turns out it 76 times in 9200 words. And here is a tag cloud. “Darwin” is the most important person in the room!
Never.
They have no interest in that.
And then they try to taint Darwin by associating him with Marx and Freud, as examples of “failed paradigms.” It’s the old Argument from Negative Associations fallacy.
The Discovery Institute loves to attack “Darwinism” even though Darwinism hasn’t been the scientific consensus for close to a hundred years. Darwin is a recognizable name of course so the DI spends lots of time attacking something the public has heard of. ID’s target audience isn’t professional scientists. It’s scientifically illiterate laymen who want science to prop up their religious beliefs, something the DI exploits with 100% of their religious themed anti-science propaganda.
The other reason they do this is it allows them to deceptively claim that legitimate scientists who criticize “Darwinism” are criticizing evolution as a whole.
From your understanding what are the current scientific claims of evolution as a whole?
Too big a question. Suffice it to say it is not encompassed by “Darwinism,” and much of it is in direct contradiction of “Darwinism.”
I think a good starting point is common descent of humans with the great apes.
That is the one point that sticks in the craws of creationists. If that one piece was not part of the theory, creationists would consider evolution as controversial as gravity (which it is).
28 posts were split to a new topic: Fuzzy definitions of human: YEC and evolutionary science
this was a great idea for a talk. its about how someone was persuaded by meyers book that evolutionism has serious problems andf this was from a fan of evolution.
The math thing was explained. its how it requires fantastic probabilities to see chance created complicated things. Evolutionism claiming mutations turned dust into biology is just dumb. Math should prove this.
A ringing and much coveted endorsement, to be sure.
Joe F has a thread on Panda’ thumb on this video
https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2019/07/A-dramatic-new-mathematical-challenge.html
