Why do people deny evolution?

@OldGrumpy,

Doesn't 0.999 imply a possibility?

@Leadfoot,

OG doesn't use colloquialisms, his writing is garbled and confused. It's a best fit when trying to comprehend, you can't really be certain of anything.

I wouldn't have thought that having a moral code was irrelevant when you're trying to argue a religious point of view. If you're going to start calling people cowardly bastards you can't complain when your own principles are called into account.

If FM is able to pick holes in your peer reviewed papers and point out that your scientists are fringe figures then your argument doesn't that solid to begin with.

At the end of the day you're asking me to take your word over his, and I'm not going to do that. FM doesn't sound like he's enjoying this, that he finds it all rather arduous and is doing it more out of a sense of public duty. You are the exact opposite, despite all your scientific referencing, you don't come across as being scientific in your manner. If you go looking for something you'll find it whether it's there or not, and that's what I think you've done. And it's all a bit too preachy for my taste.

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

O5 wrote:

As for you, you keep dodging farmer's and my points, so you're a coward too.

Leadfoot wrote:

That is patently false.

I know for a fact that you keep dodging my points.

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

I know for a fact that you keep dodging my points.

No, YOU do!

Do you agree that

0 < P(M1) <1 &

0< P(M2) <1 ?

follow so far?

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Ethan Siegel is a physicist who writes a pretty consistently interesting regular blog for Forbes. Yesterday he offered thoughts on “How To Overthrow A Scientific Theory In Three Easy Steps.” He concedes, “Even our best theories of today may be superseded with tomorrow’s science.”

And no one, except perhaps some ultra-Darwinists, would disagree. He notes that theories have limits:

Quote:

Any theory, no matter how successful, has a finite range of validity. Stay within that range and your theory works very well to describe reality; go outside of it, and its predictions no longer match observations or experiments. This is true for any theory you pick. Newtonian mechanics breaks down at small (quantum) scales and high (relativistic) speeds; Einstein’s General Relativity breaks down at a singularity; Darwin’s evolution breaks down at the origin of life.

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

I know for a fact that you keep dodging my points.

The only points I recall you making were the questions you asked about why 'God' took so long, why didn't he do it instantly, etc. Those are theological questions unrelated to what I was addressing. I allowed you to get by with substituting 'God' for Intelligent Design' which is not necessarily a valid assumption. That assumes that the only possible intelligence in the universe is us humans. You have not presented evidence of that assumption. You are trying to make this a discussion about religion. That is a bullshit tactic.

Nevertheless, I went to great length to explain why a designer might take the time that it apparently did.

So what point of yours have I dodged?

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

Quote:

you're trying to argue a religious point of view.

Once more, I, at least, am not arguing from a religious point of view. Why would I debate religion with avowed atheists who have made it clear they want nothing to do with religion? I am not in the habit of hitting my head against that wall.

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@InfraBlue,

Quote:

Doesn't 0.999 imply a possibility?

Why yes, it does!

So does 10^-500.

Where do you place your bets?

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@MontereyJack,

Quote:

Ii probably. Know.more stats than him. His argumentstarted like a reststement of debunked haldanes dililemmaehich it always is. No bulllshit baby stteps..make some actual points grump ot sohutp up.

I don't know if OG is arguing Haldane's Dilemma or not. I don't see any indication that it has been debunked though. There is one paper that makes that claim but it's far from 'debunked'.

Farmer makes the same claim about irreducible complexity based solely on a plausible pathway for a simple example of complexity arising naturally. He ignores the literally millions if not billions of examples of complexity arising that occurred in the process of 'bacteria to man'. I mean, how much can you attribute to mere chance?

No one else was willing, want to take a crack at the Whale Testes evolution problem I mentioned earlier?

OK, so you want some points. What do you make of Douglas Axe's calculation that the odds of a functional protein forming by chance are 1 in 10^77 ? Do you disagree with his math? Does that give any pause for the chances of a usable one evolving by chance?

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@Leadfoot,

You can't argue ID without adopting a religious viewpoint no matter how much you claim not to.

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

You keep playing with words. How is an intelligent designer of the universe any different from the concept of 'God'?

Other points made:
https://able2know.org/topic/229102-460#post-6692817
(replace 'god' by 'ID' if you really need it)

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

Quote:

You can't argue ID without adopting a religious viewpoint no matter how much you claim not to.

Now you have moved into the realm of telling other people how they think. No interest in going there. Thank you for your time.

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@Leadfoot,

You all are confusing long odds with impossibility, and impossibility with improbability. As long as there is a chance, it is not impossible.

How does your idea of ID hold up to your formula?

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

Quote:

How is an intelligent designer of the universe any different from the concept of 'God'?

If what you are trying to say is that any designer would of necessity have power far beyond what we can relate to, that would no doubt be true.

The reason it’s different is that you cannot separate 'God' from the stereotype that is in your head. That’s why you keep referring to Religious concepts like Omnipotent, instant (or 6 day) creation, etc.

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

Ok now address the points made, Mr. Courage...

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@InfraBlue,

Quote:

You all are confusing long odds with impossibility, and impossibility with improbability. As long as there is a chance, it is not impossible.

How does your idea of ID hold up to your formula?

I haven’t said anything about impossibility. It's even possible that Russell's tea pot is in orbit around the sun too. There's a chance ya know.

How does ID hold up as a hypothesis?
ID holds up 100%. It is a plausible explanation for everything we see and leaves nothing unexplained unless you simply say an intelligent designer is impossible.. Now go read your post above.

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

You seem to be implying impossibility.

What exactly am I supposed to read in my post above? Your formula is neither here or there in regard to evolution or ID.

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

OK, here is the post with the 'points' you wanted me to address.

Quote:

LOL... You're most welcome.

I found your idea that some god would grow ferns on earth for hundreds of millions of years just so that human beings, after millions of years of going about without the use of fossil fuels, would enjoy a mere two-hundred-year period of economic boom during which we **** up the earth, its oceans and its climate before going burst... I find this idea deliciously irrational, and quite a little self-centered.

Not to mention the broader idea that this god of yours (assuming it's the same god as above) would create this humongous universe filled with millions of galaxies, each with millions of star systems, just so that he could then 'terraform the earth' and create life on our tiny tiny planet... How ridiculous is that?

I guess being at the center of the universe and the sole preoccupation of God is far too enjoyable an idea for you to ever give it up.

So... enjoy! :-)

I’ve read it several times now and still don’t see your points. You basically are criticizing the intelligent designer for doing things the way they appear to have been done. Not fast enough, wasted space, etc. You say it’s rediculous to do it this way. Then you seem to bring in the unrelated subject of man ******* up the place. - You haven’t made a point about ID so far.

Your thinking isn’t hard to trace:

ID = God. God = religion. Religion => God did it in 6 days - ergo, ID is wrong if it took longer.

Trouble is, each step is wrong. You are not engaging the ID argument as it really is. You and Izzy are apparently incapable of separating the two subjects. If so, thanks for your time but there is no room for discussion with that limitation.

1 Reply

@InfraBlue,

Quote:

You seem to be implying impossibility.

What exactly am I supposed to read in my post above? Your formula is neither here or there in regard to evolution or ID.

Nope. Show me where.

What you were supposed to see is the absurdity of saying that because something is not impossible then you shouldn’t question whether it happened or not.

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

Quote:
You seem to be implying impossibility.

What exactly am I supposed to read in my post above? Your formula is neither here or there in regard to evolution or ID.

Nope. Show me where.

It's where you ask about placing bets.

Leadfoot wrote:

What you were supposed to see is the absurdity of saying that because something is not impossible then you shouldn’t question whether it happened or not.

I'm not saying you shouldn't question whether it happened or not. I'm saying you're wrong in implying that it couldn't happen.

What's truly absurd is making the assertion that your ideas of ID hold up to your formula "100%."

1 Reply

Why do people deny evolution?

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