So exactly what question were you asking again?

As I quoted you. What you said in that post is fundamentally wrong. Please explain why you are not wrong.

The title of this thread is:

Craig Ventor's work could turn the atheistic arguments on their head

Now while there may be holes in some of the arguments I have made, my main point, the one given in the title of this thread, still stands. Your best counter argument has been to call it theological mumbo jumbo.

More bull s hi it. I make the simplest philosophical point and you have no answer. My best argument was to dismantle your entire point. Your best counter is to carry on being an idiot.

I forgive you for your ad hominem.

Just answer the black swan problem in relation to your argument. If not stfu.

Didn't think so

Only if you establish where THOSE intelligences came from. Again, ultimately you're just shifting the goal post somewhere else. We're ultimately interested in where original intelligence came from that wasn't created by some greater intelligence. And if your answer to that is theism, we're right back at square one anyhow.

Fine...I will rephrase my arguments in your "swan" terminology.

Sure there is a chance that a black swan exist, but then there is a chance the tooth fairy exist too. Your point isn't valid until you provide some unambigious evidence that black swans do indeed exist. The only evidence you can provide can also be used for swans of other colors...it isn't unambigious. A Venter's success would show without a doubt that white swans exist.

happy?

Your response is about the best proof for my point. You do not understand the problem, have no real knowledge of the philosophy of probability or logic as far as anyone can see, and have no real response to anything I have said.

Also let me get this straight. The whole point of Popper is that my point is completely vaild until YOU show that there IS NOT a black swan.

Also I should add that Popper was vindicated when they discovered a black swan around 20 years after he died.

What Stu is trying to argue is that Ventor's work affects the prior probabilities involved in the beginning of life on earth. What Jason tried to show him is that his argument doesn't change the prior probabilities at all.

Sort of, but more I'm argueing it is a mistake to automatically assume past unknown probabilities are that much different from known current probabilities. I think you need very good reasons to think the two are different. Apparently all you atheist arguing against me think your world veiw is a sufficiently good reason.

Stu, how can you ignore the drastically changed circumstances? The question is: how likely is life to have naturally occurred, in the absence of all other life and technology? I understood the point you were trying to make, and its a nice thought experiment, but that's as far as it goes.

When looking at what is simpler, you still have to put it in context.

I'm not ignoring drastically changed circumstances. I'm saying atheist would be if they ignored the fact that creating life is very easy(should that fact come to be).

alright if you can prove god existed when life emerged i'll admit there is a good shot he created it

edit....ugh what atheists argue that life is hard to create? I don't have a doubt that we will figure it out

Suppose we figure out how to create life. Why would you favor an unproven process over a proven one?

Creation of life by humans would be the proven process. Since there were none at that time, wtf are you talking about? How many times do I have to tell you - why are there no DVD-R's in the fossils?!

Eddi, were talking about creation by intelligence not specifically human. A human intelligence will prove it can be done but that is only incidental.

Would it really surprise you to learn that somewhere in this universe exists DVD-R's that are a million years old?

Still waiting on an answer to the black swan problem.

Humans exist now. Humans did not exist back then.

How is this so difficult for you?

Lol no. That's not incidental at all. We will have more information about the probabilities of life emerging, given the existence of intelligent beings.

Maybe it's me, but if a statistics and probability professor posted in one of my threads and told me I was wrong, I'd probably stop insisting I was right.

The whole argument is very simple to undo - hance the reason Stu just tries to change the subject and ask new questions instead of answering simple ones. We could create a million different variants of life in the lab and it would have zero bearing on how life was originally created.

Just as adding extra balls to a lottery does not change the odds of past draws.

Just as seeing millions of white swans tells us nothing about the liklihood of a black swan existing.

I would like to make two points. First, in the context of my Post #85, the probability that life on Earth emerged as the product of an intelligence can never exceed the probability that before life existed on Earth, there existed an intelligent entity that attempted to create life on Earth. Second, observing white swans does increase the chance that there are no black swans.

To address the first point, recall:

In that post, I proved that

This means that, no matter what else we may assume, it will always be the case that P(B | C) ≤ P(D | C). Of course, this should be obvious, since B implies D.

To address the second point, let

X = "There are no black swans."
A_n = "We have seen n white swans and no black swans."

Let us assume that, for all n, P(X | A_n) > 0 and P(A_n+1 | A_n) < 1. We then have

P(X & A_n+1 | A_n) = P(X | A_n)P(A_n+1 | X & A_n)
= P(X | A_n).

On the other hand, we also have

P(X & A_n+1 | A_n) = P(A_n+1 | A_n)P(X | A_n+1 & A_n)
= P(A_n+1 | A_n)P(X | A_n+1).

Combining these gives

P(X | A_n) = P(A_n+1 | A_n)P(X | A_n+1) < P(X | A_n+1).

In other words, P(X | A_n) is an increasing function of n.