Duh, Poseidon.
I’m with the OP. It is foolish to think that mousetraps just sprang into existence.
They aren’t fascinating. They are strawmen and appeals to ignorance.
Let’s look at this one:
In this one the author mistakenly thinks that all people who support a biological theory about speciation have the same opinion on a cosmological matter.
oh, I’m open to debate. I find it interesting that it takes more faith to believe in evolution than it does in a creator. Probability, my fiends. (friends) Your “theory”, (which it still is) of evolution requires an astronomical amount of things lining itself up into neat little rows in order to work.
The sun has to be the right type, it has to be the correct distance away. The earth has to spin the correct speed, it has to have water, oxygen, have a magnetic field, that magnetic field has to be the correct strength, it has to have a moon, that moon must be the correct distance from the earth. There must be trees, plants, some sort of food source for whatever life springs forth and it must be there before that life gets there. Where did those seeds come from? That magical comet or asteroid planted them, right? On and on and on, conditions had to line up perfectly, no, PERFECTLY, in order for life to even be POSSIBLE, let alone probable and abundant and varied. If you believe all of that happened on its own, we’ll, we’re just the luckiest folks living in the whole wide universe! I’m going to play the lottery!
Someone who doesn’t even know what the word “theory” means when it come to science really shouldn’t attempt to debate the subject in question.
The places where it didn’t happen, didn’t have life.
On the other hand, if humans spontaneously appeared on trillions of different planets, and mostly just immediately choked to death, THEN we’d be extremely lucky to be created on the fully-oxygenated earth. Needless to say, the real universe doesn’t work that way.
Before you buy that ticket you should know something that obviously has escaped you…there are over a hundred billion star in our own galaxy. And there are over a hundred billion galaxies that we can see…probably many, many times more. What you are seeing here on earth is the equivalent of the lottery winner after the fact. I mean, once that person has won, then the odds of his or her winning is 100%. That’s the most basic misconception you have in the above. There are plenty of others, but it might be best to start small…baby steps and all that.
-XT
To be even more astonished by your luck, play bridge instead. Deal yourself a hand of 13 cards from a standard 52-card deck, and take a look at it.
OMG!!! Do you have any idea how astronomically IMPROBABLE it is that you should have received those particular 13 cards, in that particular order?? It would have required dealing yourself one bridge hand per second for something like millions of years to give you even a reasonably probable chance of getting the hand that you just got! It’s a miracle!!
Oh wait, no it isn’t. Because if you deal yourself a bridge hand from a deck of cards, you’re going to get SOME combination of 13 cards. All combinations are very improbable, but they’re all equally improbable.
In a somewhat similar way, the physical conditions of the universe and the solar system have been “dealing cards” in the game of “increased organization through local entropy reversal”* for all of their existence. Sure, it’s probabilistically very unlikely that we ended up with the particular circumstances of life and consciousness that we happen to have, just as it’s probabilistically very unlikely that you ended up with that particular bridge hand of 13 cards that you dealt. But it’s not all that unlikely that we would get some form of life and consciousness somehow somewhere, which is why your “incredibly lucky” argument is meaningless.
- We need a catchier name for this game. How about “BioBridge”?
oh, do tell how the universe works then? because I see a “theory” that says chemicals exploded, shot out in every direction, grouped together, reformed itself into planetoids, cooled off, grew plants and an atmosphere and life just decided to shoot forth and party! That’s AWESOME!
It’s a real bummer that we’re going to destroy it all with nuclear war or accidents then huh?
What is the probability that a being as complicated as God could spontaneously pop into existence? It’s like the most complicated watch ever made just appearing at random in the middle of a desert.
This is going to be fun, we’ve got a genuine Gish Gallop.
Creationist Boilerplate Bullshit #7, of course.
It does not take more “faith” to believe in speciation, which we can and have observed, in the fossil record which we can and have observed, in endogenous retroviruses, which we can and have observed, in molecular clocks (etc…) than in the unverifiable, unfalsifiable existence of an ancient Sky God.
You don’t understand probability.
The traditional Creationist Boilerplate Bullshit is to lay out a sequence of allelic changes and claim that they happened one after another, as if in a straight line. They, of course, ignore the fact that there have been trillions of trillions of organisms over billions of years and while evolution is not ‘directed’ there are indeed strong selection pressures.
I’m just gonna quote Asimov on this one, since you’ve hit on yet another bit of Creationist Boilerplate Bullshit: “Creationists make it sound as though a ‘theory’ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.”
Theories are the strongest, most resilient models that science has at its disposal. We don’t see CBB drawn up to attack gravitation as “only a theory”, because the utter idiocy of such a dodge would be readily apparent. The “only a theory” bit of CBB is designed precisely to play on the lack of scientific literacy of the lay community.
You do not seem to be open to debate, as this was already addressed and refuted.
Out of the trillions and trillions of planets, of course a small percentage will be suitable to life. Claiming that this is somehow proof of Creation makes no more sense than claiming that tossing a coin until it lands on its edge is proof of Odin’s Love. Further, we do not know the sum total of facts or factors having to do with life. We have one highly limited example of life which has developed on the Earth. For all we know there are varying conditions which allow life to develop. In scientific terms, which I realize you’re unfamiliar with, we have a single experiment with zero replicability. Drawing absolute generalizations based on such a sample is fallacious.
Again, you do not understand probability.
There are hundreds of millions of sperm per ejaculation, and your parents most likely had to have sex more than once in order to conceive you. That means that you are, quite possibly, 1 out of billions. But it couldn’t have been any other way because for you to exist at all you’d have to have beaten those odds and if you did not, then we’d never know. It’s selection bias in its most blatant form.
Now go ahead and buy a lottery ticket.
“probabilistically” is that even a word? you’re argument is cute though. you’re comparing 13 cards to ten quadrillion quadrillion possible chemcial combinations. Did you think that up all by your lonesome?
Please watch this. It’s a lecture given by a Catholic. It addresses your key concerns: teleology, probability, abiogenesis, whether the word “theory” is an epithet and whether science requires faith.
If you want a more concise reason for why we’re not the luckiest folks in the universe, check this out.
Argumentum ad catch phrase.
Do you not understand the distinction between the layman’s use of the term ‘theory’ and the scientists?
Explain this further, please.
What is this ‘correct’ distance?
Ah, I see the problem. You need to read some actual science, not just creationist material.
Let’s recall that, on your model, plant life can grow absent the Sun.
I suspect supermegaman is secretly a member of the Tennessee legislature.
The Big Bang wasn’t “chemicals” exploding: there weren’t any substances that we call “chemicals” back then. The expansion of matter and formation of stars, planets etc. AFTER the Big Bang are quite well described by the same theories of gravity and thermodynamics that explain familiar phenomena like the revolution of the earth around the sun. (You do acknowledge that the earth revolves around the sun, don’t you?)
From here:
Guess what isn’t a theory?
“Intelligent design”
You know why? It’s not an actual explanation of the phenomenon. There is no ‘model’ of intelligent design.
no, but I do LIVE in Tennessee 
GO VOLS!
Yeah.
Do you now understand what the word “theory” means when it comes to science?
Where are you getting these figures? Kimstu wasn’t really even trying to argue at this point. Rather, this was an earnest example to demonstrate that the probability against ANY combination is astronomical given enough variables.
The fact of the matter is that some chemical combinations (water, simple methane, ammonia, and such) are VERY probable simply because their chemical constituents are so ubiquitous–and so reactive. The odds against simple life just aren’t as long as you might make them out to be.
supermegaman, I’m getting the impression that you’re not really interested in discussion here. I do hope that I am wrong and that this is not merely an addition to a certain branch of Scandanavian folklore.