Thank God for atheists.

“Now to achieve something truly meaningful along the long road for hydrogen to become a person requires unlikely probabilities of much higher magnitude.”

Dan – I’m not sure whether you understand the process of evolution. Probability is no weakness in the theory. There is low probability of CERTAIN CHARACTERISTICS coming into being, but not that the process will take place over millions of years. That is a certainty. It is a natural, accumulative process. It’s not like evolution anticipated or had “in mind” the goal of creating a human being. Dawkins explains it better than me:

“The whole sequence of cumulative steps constitutes anything but a chance process...
Mutation is random in the sense that it's not anticipatory of what's needed. Natural selection is anything but random. Natural selection is a guided process, guided not by any higher power, but simply by which genes survive and which genes don't survive. That's a non-random process. The animals that are best at whatever they do-hunting, flying, fishing, swimming, digging-whatever the species does, the individuals that are best at it are the ones that pass on the genes.”

...the molecules that write the best instructions produce the most successful DNA, etc...

“I think it’s dangerous to talk about things in terms of 100% certainties.” (Michael Gate, 30/3/10)

“There is low probability of certain characteristics coming into being, but not that the process will take place over millions of years. That is a certainty.” (Michael Gate, 4/4/10)

Atheists being conveniently selective about when to apply their skepticism and when to declare certainty is what I’m talking about.

Ha ha you know I actually deleted the sentence “That is a certainty” when I was revising the comment and then accidentally posted the older version of my comment without updating it, because I didn’t like the use of the word ‘certainty’ – I agree, I shouldn’t have used that word.

But my point is that the "theory" of evolution is not at all about probability.

(Probability of evolution occurring, that is.)