I hope, if this story actually occurred, that the engineer or scientist concluded that since according to the model of flight he was using, bumblebees couldn’t fly, and manifestly, bumblebees do fly, bumblebees must fly by a process other than how airplanes or birds fly. This is a worthwhile conclusion to make, since it opens up a new area of study, devoted to learning what process bumblebees do use to fly.
Analogously, though it is correct that “pure chance” can’t produce the chemicals of life, the correct conclusion is not “therefore God did it” but rather, “therefore some process other than pure chance is involved in producing the chemicals of life.” Sadly, however, this conclusion is a lot less useful that the engineer’s conclusion about the bumblebee, since we already know that chemistry works by laws other than ‘pure chance’ (for example, when hydrogen and oxygen react together, by a bizarre coincidence, H2O is what almost always results, rather than the mixture of H34O27, H57O81, etc. that one would expect from ‘pure chance’).
Isaac Asimov mentioned something similar: even if you limit it to two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, why is it always “HOH?” You’d expect to see “OHH” and “HHO” equally often. But, in fact, you never see them.
Heck, our evolution in this specific environment kinda has me dubious of the notion of colonizing other planets. We could send, at immense expense and using technologies not yet devised, an intrepid crew to establish a base on some Goldilocks planet somewhere, and then they all get poisoned because there’s too much selenium or some damn thing. The notion of a Star Trek-like “Class M” planet that is comfortably Earthlike will be useless - even if a planet is superficially similar to Earth, it’ll likely have too much of some elements and not enough of others to match our fairly specific biological needs.
Anyway, the idea advanced by the op is ridiculous, and advancing such a theory can only be done by someone who is ignorant of math and determined to remain so.
Yep. Other people on that list: William Dembski, Duane Gish, Ken Ham just to name a few.
HaHA! Chemistry jokes!
OT: I’d propose an experiment: what is the probability, given the start of the universe, that I would walk across the room? Then, same question after the fact. Before, it’s 1:<insert arbitrarily obscene number here>; after, it’s 1:1. Calculating the probability for something which indisputably happened is a complete waste of time. Yeah, it was unlikely that the world would exist exactly the way it has - infinitely unlikely. But there are infinitely many alternative states in which it could equally exist. The analogies to drawing a random hand from a deck of cards are quite apt here. I don’t think most mathematicians think evolution is impossible. I do dare say that any who do believe this are wrong and overstepping the bounds of their fields in a massive way.
This whole argument is pointless unless the mathematicians can show that an intelligent designer spontaneously coming into existence is significantly more probable than a random molecule coming into existence.
To clarify: Why the hell is a magical all powerful omniscient being considered more probable than the molecules we see all around us every day?
but - the intelligent designer was able to will himself into existence, into the new place he just created for his existence… it was part of his design process.
If I had the hypothesis that an intelligent designer existed and was a magical elf, can someone describe what kinds of evidence I should expect to find that would tend to prove me right or wrong? Elf footprints? Elf DNA? Is there anything definitive that can be said about the nature of an intelligent designer?
as for evidence one would expect to find? the idea behind ID is ‘deistic’ in nature (dude created stuff and left it to its whims) and is not a ‘personal’ god - so there is no current interaction - without that current interaction, there is not going to be obvious objective evidence.
As God told Bender “If you do things right, its like you didn’t do anything at all”.
Brian, chances are if something did create us it would be extremely large if physical. Far too large to even be detectable. Chances are it is something not physical in which case you will have no way to detect him beyond your ability to be able to sense the presence of a very poweful force in the universe. Unless this foce interacts with us in some way it is really irrelevant for all intents and purposes. If it does exist it seems clear that his physical designs are totally dependent on the physical laws that govern them. We can’t comprehend its time frame or its state so it boild down to you either have faith or you don’t and neither side will ever be able to conclusivley deny or confirm.
What you describe sounds like magic, and as such, it seems like there’s no more reason to believe it than to believe that tiny invisible magic fairies created the universe.
Say we all died out tomorrow and a million years from now some aliens came to visit. They find fossils of cows and miniature poodles. Once they understand the ecosystem of the past they would be able to deduce that both of these were intelligently designed because it would be hard to find a way for cows to survive for long in the wild. There are lots of examples - many of our horses would be too fragile to survive for long, since they are bred for speed and are very prone to injury.
Finding evidence of intelligent design of species should be simple unless the designer was hiding for some reason.
I’m not a mathematician, but I am a computer scientist, and this is a question I worked through when I was reevaluating the beliefs with which I was raised. Interestingly enough, it’s computer science that makes it easy to understand this problem and resolve it with some basic artificial intelligence principles, not unsurprising evolutionary computation.
On it’s face, evolution IS impossible given the time scales we’re talking about if evolution is an exhuastive or brute force search. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the rough numbers crunched, but IIRC, if that were how it worked, we’re many orders of magnitude off of the amount of time required. But, of course, if this were the only way to solve these sorts of problems, that entire branch of computer science would be futile.
Instead, when looking at how evolution actually works it has a number of factors that make it far more efficient than an exhaustive process. For instance, we’re generally dealing with offspring of fairly successful individuals with small changes, so we’re not just taking random stabs in the dark. Or more specifically, sexual reproduction does a lot to help make this process more efficient, which also explains why so many forms of life use it. Once these sorts of things are taken into account, it fits fine within the sorts of time scales we’re talking about.
So, sure, I could see mathematicians think that evolution is impossible, but only if they’re uninformed about the processes in play, which I’m sure some may be since they’re mathematicians, not biologists. But ultimately, it’s an argument from ignorance.
It’s far-fetched because for “something beyond our ability to comprehend”, people have no trouble filling message board posts, along with books and entire TV channels, with information about this being. They’ve even figured out his gender!
Heck, you’ve apparently comprehended quite a few things about it yourself.
It would be extremely large. How do you figure? Even too large to be detectable, whatever that means. It wouldn’t be physical, and it would be undetectable, but it would also be a powerful force in the universe. How are these criteria not contradictory? It’s dependent on physical laws, but nevertheless, with all these testable criteria, you just have faith or you don’t?
Such a thing sounds logically impossible to me, which I guess is in line with its being “beyond comprehension”. Of course, so does being incomprehensible at the same time as having this particular list of attributes.
I had to look it up, but was amused by the a line in the wiki summary regarding the planet and why the colonization failed: “abnormally high concentration of beryllium”. Abnormally high? The only reason we find Earth’s beryllium level “normal” is because it was set long before we showed up, determined through the random vagaries of planet formation (and even before then, the random vagaries of nebula formation). I’d kinda like to see a scene where a bunch of explorers beam down or land their shuttle or whatever, look around, and one of the scientists says “Well, can’t colonize here, the crust is 980 parts per million of zirconium.” The captain can ask “Is that a lot?” and the scientist can explain that for a lifeform that evolved in an environment with less than 200 ppm of zirconium, i.e. us, that yes, it’s a lot.