Searching for GOD...

[Alan Burns]

Analogy fail.

Winning lotteries is a single, one-off event. Once the machine is started up the same number of balls zip round and around and around in it and come out at random - either somebody wins (or they don't - as happens often) but each new spin of the balls is in effect a brand-new event. Winning the lottery seventeen times in a row would indeed be odds of staggering improbability for this reason.

Unfortunately for you natural selection is nothing like this. It's cumulative, building with grinding slowness upon what has proven to 'work' beforehand. This slashes odds drastically, and using the word drastically is a major understatement. Richard Dawkins's book The Blind Watchmaker is especially good on this: there's a famous chapter detailing how Dawkins wrote a simple computer program to arrive at a target phrase in a small number of tiny but cumulative steps, keeping what worked in the last try.

I thought you had once said that you'd read this book, but I must be mistaken in that because if you had read it you would have known why your analogy was such a spectacular failure.

And Darwin's algorithm was similar to the logic used in my own algorithm for optimum design, which I entitled:
A combinatorial backtrack programming algorithm.

The odds I was referring to were not limited to evolution alone, but to the series of incredibly fine tuned instances which brought us into existence.  For example, the cosmological constant, the first living cell, the countless beneficial mutations, the existence of human awareness and conscious free will.  And I am certain they will add up to far more than seventeen successive wins of the national lottery.

[Alan Burns]

Exactly. So therefore there is less chance that harmful mutations persist in the species. I'm glad you agree.

But there is the danger that they can bring down a precious beneficial mutation.

[Enki]

SKOS

What you don't appreciate is that God is the one and only 'uncaused' entity.

It is though amazing, that the uncaused entity isn't a sub-atomic particle, it's a fantastically complex, intelligent, loving, all knowing, all powerful entity.

Who'd have thunk it!

Who'd have thunk it, indeed. Obviously you, and people like you, but certainly not me, or people like me. We have totally different views to you.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

And Darwin's algorithm was similar to the logic used in my own algorithm for optimum design, which I entitled:
A combinatorial backtrack programming algorithm.

The odds I was referring to were not limited to evolution alone, but to the series of incredibly fine tuned instances which brought us into existence.  For example, the cosmological constant, the first living cell, the countless beneficial mutations, the existence of human awareness and conscious free will.  And I am certain they will add up to far more than seventeen successive wins of the national lottery.

AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For god's sake man, try thinking before posting again. The universe only looks "fine tuned" from our perspective - how else would it look? That's what the anthropic principle entails.

And if it was "tuned" slightly differently it's entirely possible that somewhere a different organism to us entirely would exist, and moreover that the not very bright members of it would be saying just the same thing - "look at that - a fantastically unlikely fine-tuned universe so it must exist just for little old us". 

Try to concentrate just for a minute here: the universe neither knows nor cares that you exist. Really, it doesn't. You are merely the outcome of a blind, undirected, purposeless series of events that happens to have you at the end of it. If just for once you'd turn round the telescope so as to stop looking down the wrong end of it then you'd see that - it's actually very simple, however conceptually baffling you seem to find it.

Give me strength...

[Stranger]

But there is the danger that they can bring down a precious beneficial mutation.

Hang on a minute. A few posts back you were saying mutations were too rare for evolution to happen, now they are so common you could get a beneficial one and a harmful one in the same individual!

Make up your mind.

[Enki]

But there is the danger that they can bring down a precious beneficial mutation.

And because the beneficial mutation aids in increasing the likelihood of more offspring surviving, there is less likelihood of that danger wiping out the beneficial mutation.

[Shaker]

The odds I was referring to were not limited to evolution alone, but to the series of incredibly fine tuned instances which brought us into existence.  For example, the cosmological constant, the first living cell, the countless beneficial mutations, the existence of human awareness and conscious free will.  And I am certain they will add up to far more than seventeen successive wins of the national lottery.

Your certainty - as ever - would be misplaced. This is the fallacy of survivor bias that bluey was talking about last night. We exist because the conditions that permit our existence occurred - that's the weak anthropic principle, a tautology perhaps but the only variant of the anthropic principle that actually holds water. We see a universe that is the way it is because the conditions just happen to allow our existence - if they didn't, we wouldn't be here. Humans can only observe a universe in a universe whose conditions allow for humans, Alan!

Whether multiverse hypotheses are an actual reflection of reality or not, they're an instructive thought experiment. Run the Cosmosatron a very large or even an infinite number of times (which some cosmologists, not a few and not cranks, think actually happened) and you get a very large (or infinite) number of universes with a very large (possibly infinite) array of stuff in it and parameters. Most of those won't have the necessary ingredients and parameters to produce anything like the life we see on this planet, but of course it takes only one such universe - guess what, we're in it.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Analogy fail.

Winning lotteries is a single, one-off event. Once the machine is started up the same number of balls zip round and around and around in it and come out at random - either somebody wins (or they don't - as happens often) but each new spin of the balls is in effect a brand-new event, a restart of the process from scratch. Winning the lottery seventeen times in a row would indeed be odds of staggering improbability for this reason.

Unfortunately for you natural selection is nothing like this. It's cumulative, building with grinding slowness upon what has proven to 'work' (i.e. whatever has been conducive to survival long enough to reproduce) beforehand. This slashes odds drastically, and using the word drastically is a major understatement. Richard Dawkins's book The Blind Watchmaker is especially good on this: there's a famous chapter detailing how Dawkins wrote a simple computer program to arrive at a target phrase in a small number of tiny but cumulative steps, re-running the process but crucially (and this makes all the difference) keeping what worked in the last try.

I thought you had once said that you'd read this book, but I must be mistaken in that because if you had read it you would have known why your analogy was such a spectacular failure.

Just when one runs a post questioning phyletic gradualism a defender always appears
Every now and then a phenotype appears which seems globally significant and makes other developments seem like embellishments.
Another trouble with gradualism is that it does not seem to pay any attention to geographical catastrophe or worse, does not want to.

[Stranger]

The odds I was referring to were not limited to evolution alone, but to the series of incredibly fine tuned instances which brought us into existence.  For example, the cosmological constant, the first living cell, the countless beneficial mutations, the existence of human awareness and conscious free will.  And I am certain they will add up to far more than seventeen successive wins of the national lottery.

Others have pointed out the obvious logical problems with this but as an aside: what do you think are the odds against your god just happening to exist, instead of all the other gods, multiple gods, no gods at all, purple universe making pixies, the Great Green Arkleseizure, the famous pasta based deity etc. etc?

How likely is your god in comparison to the universe we find ourselves in? How much more complex is your god compared to the universe?

How come your incredulity doesn't extend to your own favourite fairy tale?

[Shaker]

Just when one runs a post questioning phyletic gradualism a defender always appears
Every now and then a phenotype appears which seems globally significant and makes other developments seem like embellishments.
Another trouble with gradualism is that it does not seem to pay any attention to geographical catastrophe or worse, does not want to.

Well ... no doubt you thought that that meant something when you wrote it, Vladdychops

[Rhiannon]

Your certainty - as ever - would be misplaced. This is the fallacy of survivor bias that bluey was talking about last night. We exist because the conditions that permit our existence occurred - that's the weak anthropic principle, a tautology perhaps but the only variant of the anthropic principle that actually holds water. We see a universe that is the way it is because the conditions just happen to allow our existence - if they didn't, we wouldn't be here.

Whether multiverse hypotheses are an actual reflection of reality or not, they're an instructive thought experiment. Run the Cosmosatron a very large or even an infinite number of times (which some cosmologists, not a few and not cranks, think actually happened) and you get a very large (or infinite) number of universes with a very large (possibly infinite) array of stuff in it and parameters. Most of those won't have the necessary ingredients and parameters to produce anything like the life we see on this planet, but of course it takes only one such universe - guess what, we're in it.

I absolutely love the randomness of that. I'm here drinking a coffee that's a little on the cold side, listening to my dog snore and wondering if I should light the wood burner. And that is mind blowing when you think about it.

All this God and heaven stuff shrinks it down. Why do that?

[Alan Burns]

AB,

No doubt, but the question remains: do you now understand where you went off the rails with your (mis)understanding of evolution?

The process of evolution by natural selection is not difficult to understand.  My point is that it does rely on the production of a vast number of beneficial mutations, each of which must be capable of giving sufficient benefit to significantly improve the chances of survival.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Rhiannon,

I absolutely love the randomness of that. I'm here drinking a coffee that's a little on the cold side, listening to my dog snore and wondering if I should light the wood burner. And that is mind blowing when you think about it.

Apart from the slightly cold coffee I am very envious, you should tape your dog snoring at put it on youtube, I bet it would have thousands of hits.

Gonnagle.

[Shaker]

I absolutely love the randomness of that. I'm here drinking a coffee that's a little on the cold side, listening to my dog snore and wondering if I should light the wood burner. And that is mind blowing when you think about it.

All this God and heaven stuff shrinks it down. Why do that?

My take? The reality is mind-blowing but abstract and impersonal - Tennyson, having one of those sepia-tinted mid-Victorian crises of faith, wrote about nature caring nothing for the single life (In Memoriam, IIRC) and that's true, which is what Alan et hoc genus omne find so chilling. On the scientific view there's no personality out there, nothing to love or link with (Larkin), and some people are terrified to the marrow by it.

I don't get it personally - there are beloved people in the world, and cats, and stand-up comedians, and interesting books, and sandwiches, and music, and peanut butter, so I don't see the need for more. But others apparently do, and fill in their perceived gaps in their own way.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Fine Tuners,

Forgot to mention, multi verses and the old fine tuning argument in a few posts, love it, looovve it!!!!! ( five exclamation marks, sure sign of a mad man )

Gonnagle.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

The process of evolution by natural selection is not difficult to understand.

Why then write posts that show you fundamentally to misunderstand it?

My point is that it does rely on the production of a vast number of beneficial mutations, each of which must be capable of giving sufficient benefit to significantly improve the chances of survival.

First, how many opportunities over the last three billion or so years do you think there have been for mutations to have occurred?

Second, you're heading toward your fundamental mistake again: little ol' you are NOT the end game, the plan, the intended outcome of evolution - the universe neither knows nor cares about the details of what evolution happens to produce, and only when you finally grasp that will you also grasp the enormity of your misunderstanding.

[wigginhall]

I absolutely love the randomness of that. I'm here drinking a coffee that's a little on the cold side, listening to my dog snore and wondering if I should light the wood burner. And that is mind blowing when you think about it.

All this God and heaven stuff shrinks it down. Why do that?

Very nicely put.  Yes, when I read AB's stuff, it sounds so parochial and small-minded and full of moth-balls, and then your post gives a sense of air and light, and real life.   

[Shaker]

Very nicely put.  Yes, when I read AB's stuff, it sounds so parochial and small-minded and full of moth-balls, and then your post gives a sense of air and light, and real life.

Damn straight. In such things, these often brain-off, thoughtless moments of being - for me, sitting with a cat on my lap watching the light slant in through the office window, or listening to Maxim Vengerov play the Chaconne from Bach's Partita No. 2 in D minor - we find life, light and air as you put it.

Alan may be happy in his preferred belief system (though I do frequently wonder ...) but I can't be persuaded that anything in life gives him anything comparable because of his desperate grasping and clawing beyond and outside it.

But eh, maybe it does, who am I to say.

[Alan Burns]

Damn straight. In such things, these often brain-off, thoughtless moments of being - for me, sitting with a cat on my lap watching the light slant in through the office window, or listening to Maxim Vengerov play the Chaconne from Bach's Partita No. 2 in D minor - we find life, light and air as you put it.

Of course I appreciate life and all its wonderful experiences.  It is what we were made for, as God intended.  But these are just tiny glimpses of the wonderful gifts in store for us if we accept Jesus as our Saviour.

[Rhiannon]

I don't know. I come back to this idea that God made the pretty flowers so that his children can admire them. That just shrinks everything, surely? Because if I tire of the pretty flowers and decide that I want a shopping mall, well, God gave me concrete and credit cards too.

There's a blackbird on my lawn right now with a beak full of worms for her young. And I'm supposed to be more important than she is? She's got no value besides being fodder for some bigger birds and fly larvae? Never understood that attitude and I never will.

[Shaker]

Of course I appreciate life and all its wonderful experiences.  It is what we were made for, as God intended.  But these are just tiny glimpses of the wonderful gifts in store for us if we accept Jesus as our Saviour.

What a dismally vending machine view of existence you have - insert belief, receive pat on head from Jesus.

Who, by the way, has been dead for a very, very, very long time and belief in whom has no gifts to me more wonderful than the world has already provided.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Of course I appreciate life and all its wonderful experiences.  It is what we were made for, as God intended.  But these are just tiny glimpses of the wonderful gifts in store for us if we accept Jesus as our Saviour.

A personal belief I don't doubt to be sincerely held, despite your inability to provide a coherent argument to suggest that it's a correct one for anyone else. 

To get back to cases though, do you now understand where you went wrong with your (mis)understanding of evolution? Only when you place yourself as the predetermined goal does your incredulity at the unlikelihood of an unguided evolutionary process achieving that have relevance. When you realise that there is no plan that culminates in you though then your objection collapses.

[Stranger]

Of course I appreciate life and all its wonderful experiences.  It is what we were made for, as God intended.  But these are just tiny glimpses of the wonderful gifts in store for us if we accept Jesus as our Saviour.

Back to your standard baseless assertion mode, I see.

 

[torridon]

Damn straight. In such things, these often brain-off, thoughtless moments of being - for me, sitting with a cat on my lap watching the light slant in through the office window, or listening to Maxim Vengerov play the Chaconne from Bach's Partita No. 2 in D minor ..

I prefer the Busoni piano transcription, solo violin kind of sets my teeth on edge :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixGv5CQky8s

[Rhiannon]

Of course I appreciate life and all its wonderful experiences.  It is what we were made for, as God intended.  But these are just tiny glimpses of the wonderful gifts in store for us if we accept Jesus as our Saviour.

Obviously this is floating your boat. But to me it gets in the way of life. Why take the time to appreciate the beauty of the pattern on a snail shell or bother hunting out the fragrance of a cowslip when the real party starts when you're dead?