lynk09
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Joined: 8/3/2009
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ORIGINAL: NihilusZero
Can we go back to my deck of cards/bridge example? Humans have a habitual quirk of being iffy with grasping the likelihoods and unlikelihoods wrought from statistics.
1) Your argument is a false dichotomy: Even if, statistically, the "odds" argument was sufficiently sound to suggest "design", not only is it informatively useless, it says nothing about whether the "designer" (which is always what it comes down to) is even sentient to begin with and, if it is, what it is. You may as well be arguing for a race of purple gnomes that exist in an alternate universe exactly 60 seconds ahead of ours who, at every moment, use ice cream cones to paint the world we inhabit 1 minute later.
I wasn't only making an argument from improbability here, but one that does inform us, to an extent, as to some of the qualities of the designer, in that he likes to design exactly like us (consider for example, what I said before about modularity as well).
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2) Statistical fallibility: A) "that the genetic code is "one in a million"" is a silly and erroneous presentation of evolution that suggests the genetic code popped up out of random emptiness, when the odds of it having been wrought when the molecular evolution that preceded it prefaced it are not nearly so unbelievable.
http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/32109513/ns/sports-baseball/
I don't know what "random emptiness" means. There are those that believe the code arose through Darwinian evolution, and those that believe it's a frozen accident, or some combination of the two. None of the so called theories behind the origination of the genetic code are established. What we do know is that if we take all kinds of codes from horrible to pretty dam good, and we ask a bunch of questions about them, like how good are you at error minimization, the code that currently exists, the one that is in use now, always pops out as the the one of the best out of a million. I think in a study , only one random variant was better. The one that was better had no similarity whatsoever to the one we currently use. In a second study, they estimated that the number of codes that would actually realistically work in a biological setting were much smaller, concluding that our genetic code may indeed be the best.
Best in terms of error minimization. The genetic code also takes advantage of engineering logic, in that it is a parity code. Hamming came up with error coding theory in 1950, but it appears that someone else did 3 billion years ago with our genetic code. Lots of eerie examples like this.
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About a week and a half ago, Mark Buehrle pitched a perfect game. Rough statistics place the odds of doing that very thing (retiring 27 batters in a row) at about 1 in 16,500.
Let's say, however, we've arrived at the game right before the last out. In order for Buehrle to log the perfect game (as far as our statistical analysis is concerned) he only needs to retire one batter. The odds of that? Based on average stats, 2 out of 3. So...the odds of him pitching a perfect game when he has already logged 26 straight outs are much different than expecting him to pitch the perfect game from scratch.
There are a lot more factors to consider when estimating the probability of someone throwing a perfect game , such as ERA. There are whole formulas I believe. In general, the probability for a pitcher to throw a perfect game is extremely low, which is why it's such a big deal when someone does it. I always did hate it when I am watching my favorite show on tv, and it suddenly cuts to some boring baseball game of some pitcher who just might pitch a perfect game, only to have the batter hit a single.
Lots of fields use probability arguments in order to rule out such things as "flukes" even to straight up rule it out. For example, in Biology, if two genes have a sequence that is more than 33% similar (usually), it is said to be homologous (share a common ancestor), why? Because it is too improbable for that to be simply a coincidence. They must be related.
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ORIGINAL: lynk09
That we can't find how it evolved simply strenthens that conclusion. (this goes back to my point #3).
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This is a natural argument from ignorance. I had already made mention of it last time (argumentum ad ignorantium). Your apparent rebuttal to this is:
Let me try replacing certain terms for effect:
"If we (as humans) never find a romantic human partner, despite the emotional and physical time spent on the endeavor, isn't it a good idea to say that our current theories of mating are false and start looking for a different way of looking at the problem (sheep, for instance), rather than say "argument from ignorance"?
Not necessarily sheep. But if you do continually fail , then why not try working out? Getting a better paying job, improving your sense of humor and overall personallity. Obviously if you continually fail at something, it means you are doing it wrong!
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So...in every science class of the future where design is taught, every time a child asks a question: "How did this come about?" we can answer, "The designer did it!". And if the child follows that up with "How did the designer do it?"...well...we'll just make a phone call; assuming we've found a reliable communication means to the designer by then.
I mean...I sure hope this designer is not some other type of sentient creature other than human-esque. It would really suck if a giant cosmic beetle was the source of all the "design" and the freakin' insect can't even speak human!
But surely, no one means a "cosmic beetle" when they're speaking of a designer, right? 
This isn't really an argument though right? This is you just taking the piss.
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That's because "random mutation" is a misrepresentation of how evolution works.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_HVrjKcvrU
I've seen that video hundreds of time, nowhere does it say that random mutation is not an integral part of the Darwinian mechanism. It is. See here:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIIC1aRandom.shtml
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ORIGINAL: lynk09
Just today, two people succeeded beating one in 3,904,700 odds by matching all but the Mega Millions PowerBall numbers. Is 1 chance in about 4 million "wildly improbable" enough? What about two people doing it? And that's just the lottery!
What if you have the same two people winning it for a year? I would certainly conclude that they have rigged something.
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How about the odds of 11 people getting struck by lightning on two separate incidents on that very same day? "wildly improbable"?
What if we combine the odds of the two events happening the same day?!?
Thats not that improbably during a thunderstorm, the 9 people were in the same room. And the other two were working in the field. How is that improbable? Now, what if the same two people get hit again, the same day , in a completely different area. Now thats improbable.
< Message edited by lynk09 -- 8/5/2009 12:32:18 PM >
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RE: Define God - 
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I also do not believe in what most call formal religion. I consider myself Wiccan, because it's the closest thing to what I do believe, but there are even some Wiccans that would raise an eyebrow at me I imagine. lol 
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