[Osx-nutters] The separation of church and state.

[Mark Smith]

On 04.12.2007, at 19:22, Stefano Mori wrote:

>
> On 2007-Dec-04, at 06:56, Mark Smith wrote:
>
>> On 03.12.2007, at 22:28, Stefano Mori wrote:
>>
>>> The one point where the ID people have a valid criticism, is the
>>> question of whether the universe is old enough for so much
>>> "creativity" to have happened with only a series of minor Oopses.
>>
>> There is nothing valid about this whatsoever. At what rate would one
>> expect your "creativity" to occur ? How many many oopses would be
>> required ? etc. etc. etc.
>>
>> You are falling into the creationists trap. This is how they win the
>> hearts and minds of folks who are insufficiently "scienitifc".
>
>
> I don't know if Sir Fred Hoyle is insufficiently scientific?

I was expecting this, or something similar.  Its an interesting  
excecise, but as usual, you being (apparently) non-scientific, didn't  
look closely at all of the assumptions involved in the calculation.

Its a very restrictive model. It doesn't allow for input other than  
the availability of raw materials and it requires as its output fully  
funtional "modern" units (proteins and chromosomes). In a way, he is  
denying evolution, in the broadest sense, its chance to work on his  
model.

That doesn't mean that he is wrong. He may be right.

He may, however be devastatingly wrong, and he might be devastatingly  
wrong for a fairly simple reason. It might be that under the  
prevailing circumstances, the system was strongly distorted and that  
each of the single possible outcomes was far more likely than the  
total number of possible outcomes would lead you to think. You have to  
know how the system works in order to apply statistics to it. Hoyle  
would himself admit, that he couldn't define his system sufficiently  
well to be sure about whether his probability was reliable.

I think you might get your eyes opened by reading a good book about  
probability. Its initially profoundly counterintuitive for about 90%  
of the population (myself included). We could consider the Monty Hall  
Problem as a very simple example of this issue.

In any case, even if Hoyle's calculation is more, or less correct, it  
still does not point in any way shape, or form to evidence for  
anything more than a single additional influence that is not taken  
into account in his model. What might this be ?

It *might* be God, and if you say that whatever this influence is, you  
are entitled to call it God. Then OK, but I say that you cannot  
further define it in any way, and you may not ascribe it any  
characteristics without applying robust scientific method to test  
their "fit".

You could build a church on this tenet of "undefined influence" alone  
and nobody would really be able to have a go at you.

But it stops precisely there.

Do you know of any religion that stops there ?

Its an absolute nonsense to suggest that this is really what the  
creationists are getting at. They are (as is the case with all  
religions) selling compulsory snake oil.

Mark.