I hereby extend my shepherds crook and drag back all the straying sheep to the topic :)

PROB BAB BIL IT YYYYYYYY....

Ok, AJ the estimated age of earth is 4.6 Billion years old.

Now.. we should only be examining probability within that one closed system.. our solar system. (I think you can see why)

So... 4.6 billion? seems like a very short time for all the chemicals to suddenly develop arms and legs :)

Given the fact that nothing.. nada.. nyet.. has been discovered on places like Mars..where you would expect at least 'something' if the same probabilities exist.... surely....there would be a tiny simple hint.. a microbe or 2... but thus far?

Narting.

I return to remind of the evidence (yes.. real legal tangible) for the resurrection of our Lord..

"Now.. we should only be examining probability within that one closed system.. our solar system. (I think you can see why)"

Why would that be?

The probability that someone will Pools is very different to the chances of any individual winning it, the individual who winds can look at their chances and refuse to accept the money because the chances that they won were so remote but that does not make the win any less valid.

If you entered and won would you refuse to take the money because of the low probability of you winning?

It might be convenient for you to ignore the rest of the universe but the sheer scale of the universe both in size and time frame is significant when we consider the possibility of life occuring.

It happened here so we are in a position to wonder what the chances are of that.

R0bert

Porky: << I return to remind of the evidence (yes.. real legal tangible) for the resurrection of our Lord.. >>

"Real legal tangible"? At best, it's hearsay; at worst it's fiction. I think the probability of the latter is somewhat greater than the former.

Speaking of probability, R0bert's right - Porky's arbitrary restriction of the "PROB BAB BIL IT YYYYYYYY" to our solar system is at best flawed. At worst it's the kind of intellectual mendacity we've come to expect from our resident fundy polymath.

No Robert and CJ... it aint.....

"Closed system" we begin with 'n' chemicals and 'n' infuences on them.

They might be different in other solar systems.. in fact they are different in our own.. Mars.. Venus.. etc. But given that 'life' should not be limited in definitio to the way we can observe it here,
there is no reason, by the atheist logic that a slightly different form of it could not emerge on those planets.

Now..given that we have life on Earth, but NOT on these other planets (that we know of) yet we have had the same amount of time for it to occur.. and given the increddddible amount of time needed to advance from 'swirling chemicals' to become Robert's and C.J.s.. (I can't mention Pericles here.. he is a life form yet to be determined :)

Ya'da thunk that there would be SOME kind of hint... a sign... a fleece.. a something.. which would encourage belief in 'life forming by chance' on one of these other planets in our own solar system. Gee .. a protein here or there might be enuf eh?

Nope..it appears there is nothing.
Thus.. on at least a BALANCE of probabilities.. the idea of life just 'occuring' is in the realm of 'faith/wild guess' :) and this makes CJ's "at best hearsay" look preeeeeeeeety jolly GOOD!

Which in turn reflects back to "In the beginning...God created the heavens and the earth"

"Ya'da thunk that there would be SOME kind of hint... a sign... a fleece.. a something.. which would encourage belief in 'life forming by chance' on one of these other planets in our own solar system. Gee .. a protein here or there might be enuf eh?

Nope..it appears there is nothing."

We've had a handfull of men on the moon with a very hostile environment and very basic technology, we've had a small number of probes on the surface of mars (and brief attempts at Venus etc) doing basic sampling at the edge of the capabilities of current technology and David's ready to declare that there is nothing else in the universe (thats called confirmation bias I think).

Thats a bit like having won lotto looking nextdoor and not noticing a new Lamborgini in the neighbours driveway (when you looked and with the garage door closed) and declaring that there is no lotto, never has been, never will be, the the money is from an unknown rich aunt who has fabricated the claims of a lotto win for some reason only known to her.

"Which in turn reflects back to "In the beginning...God created the heavens and the earth" - that's just one of the alternatives.
If we are going to do the "and then magic happened" thing why not use the dreamtime stories, their origins are much older than your prefered myth's, they are culturally and geographically relevant to Australia and you do seem very concerned with cultural relevance.

David you are clutching at straws yet again.

R0bert

Dear Poly.

As previously noted. You may have missed it?

"To become PM, one doesn't need to compete against 22 million folk. Maybe twenty people, four or five times." - O.

Arms and legs were not zapped by natural processes, out of thin air. It was a process, with stages having, a series diminishing options, against ecology happenings.

No theist can hold that it is impossible for a god [by the common definition] to create an evolutionary process. Are saying it, is beyond your God's power to create Evolution?

What do you think of the COBE pic? Foxy loves it, and so do I.

My posts to runner are meant to elicit comparable testable approaches from Creations as Science applies. You can measure blackground radiation.

What is Genesis' position on the assumed unification of gravitation and electromagnetic forces at enormous density, killions of degrees kelvin and low enthropy? Can quarks assume fields, wherein only fields exist? Because, E=mc2, is merely a potental, because the field is too excited to create mass? What verse in Genesis helps us? What predictiosn to Creations make in this regard? Particle accelerators will soon provide feedback from nature herself