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

[Stefano Mori]

On 2007-Dec-04, at 19:00, Mark Smith wrote:

> 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.


Mark, you said "there is nothing valid in this whatsoever", and as we  
can see, it's not that simple.

Politically we may not wish to give the Creationists an inch, but if a  
Creationist says, "you don't really understand how life evolved", are  
we to claim that we do, when in reality we are still studying the  
question ourselves, or rather, the scientists are still studying it?

All we need to tell the Creationists is that their worldview isn't  
about Science.



> 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.


It's a calculation and he's a mathematician and that will only get him  
only so far, I appreciate that. Fuck, I've argued against over- 
reliance on models since forever.



> 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.


I love the one about how testing positive on a 99% reliable medical  
test can still mean that you are unlikely to have the disease.



> 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".


Yes, I agree. The Creationists are barking up the wrong tree. As I  
said earlier, if the system is doing something we don't know what,  
then we just give the I don't know what a name and hope that one day  
we can study it more closely and pick it apart and find sub-processes  
or whatever and so on.



> 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.


Well, I think there's a reason why Creationists picked on evolution  
for their little crusade. Maybe next they'll pick on string theory.  
Any cutting edge science field where there are still unresolved  
questions which they think they can answer with a handy Bible quote.

Did I tell you about the Hare Krishna who was convinced that the moon  
landings were fake because the Gita says that man cannot walk on other  
planets? I was like, dude, the spacesuit wasn't invented 4000 years ago.

Stefano