Dan,

Could you please give an example of some data that atheists have conveniently relaxed their scepticism with?

Thanks.

P.S. You needn’t bother with the “I’m not taking to you because you’re rude to me” act, especially since it was so apparent to myself and others that your accusations of rudeness (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9980#164102) were merely fabricated in order to avoid doing the honorable thing and addressing or retracting some false claims that you had made. Speaking of which, we can now add this to the list...

“In school children are taught that hydrogen, following long periods (14 billion years, Per.) of time and improbable events, became people. And they’re discouraged from applying scepticism towards this account.” (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10185#166852)

Whether or not you ignore me, I will continue to respond to you so long as you continue to assault truth, reason and logic. As I’ve said before, Dan, I don’t do what I do to get a reaction, I do it because I care about the truth.

If you choose to ignore me then that’s fine, as that in itself will be revealing enough to fulfill my purpose here.

Dan,

So, you grasp that the odds of a straightforward event happening "at least once" increase with time and number of attempts. You cling to the idea that just beacause numbers get bigger, their behaviour in this regard is in some way different. For instance, rolling 100 on a theoretical d120, given 2exp10 rolls of 2exp10 dice approaches the same unity.

Let us consider a convenient modern example:

You no doubt consider it "unlikely" that a random sequence of 100 of the usual 4 bases in an RNA strand would form a catalyst.

In actual fact, 100 micrograms of such material yields thousands of molecules that display *just one* arbitrarily chosen catalytic activity (ligase). Of the dozens or thousands of catalytic activities that might be applicable in a pre-biotic chemistry, I would expect to find at least hundreds of differing molecules displaying each such catalysis, all coexisting in the same 100 microgram sample.

Not so meaningless, or mundane, really, is it?

Multiplying the probabilities of exclusive events considered in the light of limited opportunities is not analogous to the *summing* of probabilities of non-exclusive outcomes given a vast excess of opportunities. Chemistry is not dice-rolls. For each *defined* outcome there are *more* than one way to get there, and since mixtures are dynamic, *all* ways get tried repeatedly.

Your argument is bunk.

The existing evidence of great sweep of biological evolution, demonstrates the dishonest intent in your basic argument. (are you *deliberately* bearing false witness, or just spouting a throwaway quote from pastor?)
Our already detailed knowledge of how fusion proceeds in stars is well established. Why conflate this with the emergence of life, except to misrepresent the matter? Again, is it just dishonesty?

That details of the emergence of the earliest cellular life are murky is not an excuse. Good work has been done in this area and you are remiss to not acknowledge it yourself. Ilya Prigogine established a thermodynamic analysis of simplified pre-biotic metabolism. Any university library will provide you with at least a few volumes on "protocells", and so on.

Catch up, Dan.

Rusty

Michael, if evolution theory is not about probability, this could only be a very good thing considering how truly we recognise the unlikelihood of its components.

I’ve already mentioned Flew above. The late Sir Fred Hoyle said, ‘Once we see, however, that the probability of life originating at random is so utterly minuscule as to make it absurd, it becomes sensible to think that the favorable properties of physics on which life depends are in every respect deliberate … . It is therefore almost inevitable that our own measure of intelligence must reflect … higher intelligences … even to the limit of God … such a theory is so obvious that one wonders why it is not widely accepted as being self-evident.’

Nobel Prize winner, Francis Crick, said: ‘What is so frustrating for our present purpose is that it seems almost impossible to give any numerical value to the probability of what seems a rather unlikely sequence of events … . An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle …’

Evolutionist Robert Shapiro, at this point would prefer to abandon all scepticism, ‘One escape hatch yet exists for spontaneous generation. Why need the event have been probable? We can just stare at the odds, shrug, and note with thanks how lucky we were … After all, improbable events occur all the time.’

So Michael, am I correct in hearing you say evolution theory is not a certainty but only 99.999%?

Dan - No one actually knows what the probability of life originating on its own is, so I don't think we can say it's "too" improbable.

But if there is any possibility at all - no matter how small - when you have billions of planets over a period of billions of year, it is certainly possible that life will originate on at least one of them that has the right environmental conditions (like Earth).

Dan - Can I ask you a question? You're obviously a thinking person, so I'd be really interested in hearing your response.

I am often surprised when I hear theists make the argument you are making - That life could not have originated without a creator. And here's why - my question is:

If you believe that the logical answer to how humans got here is "god created us", doesn't that just raise a much larger question:

"How did god get here?"

Rather than resolving the problem, it creates a far greater problem, for if there were a god, he or she would have to be far more complex and intelligent that we are in order to create us. So how did god get here? Was he/she created by another god? If so, how did that god get here?

And I'm begging you - please don't say the answer is "god has always been here, he is eternal", because I think we both know that's no thinking person's answer at all, that's a total cop out.

Oh and sorry, I didn't answer your question - I'd prefer not to put a percentage on it, just like I wouldn't put a percentage on this table existing in front of me - there is a very high chance that this table is real, but it's possible that my five senses are giving me false information, it's possible I am hallucinating, it's possible I am dreaming, it's possible that all I am is a brain in a jar that a mad scientist is doing experiments on. My point was that it's cocky for atheists to say they are "100% certain" that god does not exist, just as it would be cocky for Christians to say they are "100% certain" that god does exist. I believe god does not exist, because that's what the evidence conveys to me, but it's possible that my five senses are giving me false information. I would never say I'm 100% certain, unless I knew everything about everything, which I do not.