I doubt 1 in 1000 Biology PhDs doubt evolution. Brilliant or otherwise. And I can't think of a brilliant PhD in any of the sciences who denies evolution. Even many of the intelligent design proponents with PhDs accept evolution and common descent (including those NR keeps citing).

But I think NR's position in this thread is far from wholly unreasonable.

If the position you're referring to is " advanced life forms may be rare in the universe." it's hard to see how that is unreasonable, except maybe having a position on the topic.

If the position on you're referring to is " it's rare because Marcy changed his mind on it's rarity" that does sound unreasonable. Wholly? yeah, I'd say even wholly.

I mean the former, of course. But I don't even think the idea of fine tuning is unreasonable on the surface. Incoherent at its root, but still not wholly unreasonable.

As I said it isn't just Marcy.

http://www.amazon.com/Rare-Earth-Com.../dp/0387987010

Both these guys seem very competent:

RTB has mentioned this book and others many times, none of them by IDers or theists.

I haven't read any of the books but if we're just counting heads the number seems to be growing that think intelligent life in the universe is rare or non-existent. Marcy was just the latest.

Being a mod is killing your brain cells.

Are you ignoring my point about the uncertainty? Both estimates are inherently worthless. I am studying physics at the aforementioned school, but I don't have a Ph.d yet so I'm not sure how many Idaho masters it would take to make this even money.

Have you ever read or listened to anything by Dr. Kenneth Miller? You should forgo anything by Dawkins, since you obviously don't trust him and I agree he seems to have an ulterior motive or at least a common motive that has to do with repudiating religion. But Kenneth Miller is a devout Christian who also understands evolution. He made mincemeat of Behe at the Dover trial. And did I mention Miller is also a devout Christian?


There's no disputing that. Bunny and I went through this when discussing the likelihood of life elsewhere in the universe. While I think it's absurd to think we are the only life, it wouldn't surprise me if intelligent life is extremely rare or even if we are currently the most intelligent organism in the universe. The small window (75 years?) with which we've possessed the technology to detect other intelligent life, and that another technologically advanced species exists with this technology, before one of us goes extinct might exceed any realistic probability.

I don't understand. The OP implied that this Marcy fellow changed his estimate of a planets having life from about one in a billion to about one in a sextillion. I said that isn't such a big change. Assuming you have to parlay a lot of factors. Nothing more, nothing less.

If you say that he should have realized his original estimate had a big margin for error I agree. Did he say it didn't?

Even the ones who make pronouncements about biology? Most Physics Phds don't know much about poker either. But every one that I know that got into poker is a great player (Mark Weitzman, Bill Bertram, Michael Binger, Jimmy Warren, Tom Weideman)

Biology is much more memory and much less thinking than physics. You have to be able to think expertly to get a degree in physics. That is the germaine point. Not how much of each subject we presently know.

I just find it odd that he is even talking about it to begin with and that was the reason for my initial post in which I said I couldn't really take him seriously.

I don't know who's right in this but I do think you're way underestimating the difficulty of understanding biology, by which I don't mean the subject in school but the real thing in the real world.

http://rrteaching.blogspot.com/2007/...an-physics.htm

It may be easier to make A's in biology but I don't think it's easier to fully understand the subject.

This seems to work:

http://rrteaching.blogspot.com/2007/...n-physics.html

Lol, i think you need to fix the link.

Here's another interesting comment on this:

http://northstatescience.blogspot.co...iological.html

They even quote from my favorite scientist, Dawkins:

And from the article:

I don't really like the logic of biology being harder than physics because it deals with more complicated objects. That would make string theory and particle physics the easiest subjects in science and I think it is pretty obvious that they are not and have not been historically. For some strange reason that nobody understands, the universe uses very difficult math on a fundamental level. If you poll all high energy theorists 95%+ will say that the math to describe the most basic particles in the universe does not exist yet. Also, Ed Witten wins a Fields Medal and nobody bats an eye. I think it will be a very long time before a biologist wins a Fields Medal.

As in, a biological system is a harder thing for physicists to model than an atom?

True, but biologists don't stand a chance of modeling either...

Those who make pronouncements about biology are probably likely to have studied biology to some extent.

However, anyone who denies evolution is also likely never to have studied biology.

If a top physicist were to publicly deny evolution (I don't think this has ever happened), then I would consider the likelihood of that physicist having never studied biology to be greater than the likelihood of that physicist having studied biology (based on conditional probability). I would at least want to see clear evidence of a background in biology if that were the case.

I have to agree. While I stand firmly behind the biologists in the Great War, it's much harder to become a credentialed physicist than a credentialed biologist. Also, the average physicist is much smarter than the average biologist.

I don't think this implies that there are no brilliant biologists (and I don't think crazy outliers like Ed Witten are necessarily fair to invoke here, especially given that physicists must work with math on a regular basis while biologists generally don't, making them more likely to win Fields medals regardless of their intelligence). But in general, physicists > biologists.

I don't disagree with that or with the idea that a physics Ph.D. is harder than one in biology. But there's an acid test for which subject is actually harder. Let a few brilliant physicists enter biology and see if they can make new discoveries about life, etc., that biologists have so far failed to make. There can even be a selfish motive as the field is surely more open to new discoveries than physics - for instance, make a microbe that can turn garbage into hydrogen as Venter is trying to do - instant trillionaire.

That doesn't mean biology is necessarily harder. I think theoretical physics and math are the fields to which your level of success is most strongly correlated to your intelligence.