If someday a computer program successfully simulates evolution you will of course call it ridiculous, correct?

I'm suggesting you can't prove that it was.


Rubbish.

Eh?


So you still hold the position that beneficial mutations don't happen?

Of course it doesn't prove its undesigned. There could be some invisible hand tweaking things. But the fact that the theory does not require a designer and stays completely intact makes it much less likely there is a designer. (and no, this isn't the same as Stu's argument that we can mix together things to create life makes it more likely that there was a designer!)

This begs the question. When you say it doesn't require a designer you are already assuming the mutations are random which is circular. Further, even if mutations are random, which mutations are harmful, which are neutral, and which are improvements may well involve design in the totality of the system. For instance, suppose you say "Heads I win $1, tails you win $1." The flip may be random but the outcome is designed to produce ONLY 2 possibilities, either of which may fit into a larger design. If the coin lands on its edge, no result. If it falls into a crack and is lost, the event itself is nullified. But nobody wins or loses $100 on the flip. And only you or I win, not someone else. The point is that a certain limited randomness may ITSELF be designed to produce results within a designed range.

If fact, it must be something like that if an omnipotent God exists and He doesn't specifically direct every event. And you can never show it's false. Therefore, evolution per se can never demonstrate ANYTHING, even concerning probability, about the existence of God.

There, see what random mutations get you?

W. T. F.

No clue what you mean by this.

Not being able to prove that random is random is important? Maybe you're a little unclear on what randomness actually is?

is that random? Prove why.

Just got to this in the new Dawkins:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli...ion_experiment

Pretty awesome experiment (it's described in much more detail in the book).

No clue why you have a problem with it.

Of course not. God's eternal plan included His intention that you type that exact sequence at that exact time. Congratulations, you have just done the will of God.

I really don't know what you're trying to say.

I mean you can't prove that something is random. Unless you know everything you can't know that something you don't know is involved in what you call a random event. Only omniscience knows if true randomness exists.

Basically, our use of the idea "chance" is just an expression that we don't know all the causes of the event.

This must be some allusion to cryptography or smth, because it is a fact that there is some distribution for the gene mutation events that has been measured.

I mean let's take a simple example - radioactive decay. Is THAT random or not according to you? Some background if you don't know - each radioactive atom has a probability of decaying, but when it will decay is unknown.

NR: no one is ever going to prove that God doesn't exist. But the more we find out that the world and the universe can operate just swell without one, the less and less likely it is that God exists.

But there will likely always be a non-zero probability that there is a God.

In fact let me just answer that question I posed, to avoid extra conversation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem

"No physical theory of local hidden variables can ever reproduce all of the predictions of quantum mechanics."

edit: point being of course that what you called "true randomness" does in fact exist, and you don't need omniscience to see that

I don't know anything about radiation. Take something simpler, like a coin flip. You can't show it's random because you don't know all the causes of the outcome.

The issue for your example is whether the "when" is unknowable. Which we can't know (i.e., whether it's absolutely unknowable, or just unknown to us).

Now you're getting into cause and effect determinism. From that perspective, I'm sure these mutations are not technically "random".

NR: see my above post. If you need explanation of what those words (hidden variables, QM, etc) mean, let me know.

Starting to read that wiki article made my head hurt. Ok, I'll try again!

The jist is that people at some point thought exactly what NR was saying - what if this "randomness" we observe in quantum mechanics (QM) is not really random, and there are "hidden variables" that control everything behind the scene. And then it was proven that's not the case. Kaboom

There is simply no possible way for the finite human mind to say with absolute certainty that God can't know what will happen in the quantum world.

And I also said that even if true randomness exists at some level, it would be trivial in that the outcome would still be certain with a limited range. That is, it will be either A or B and God can control the effect of either result - though I believe He does know which it will be.

This is just question begging again. Finding a watch that is running without any human currently enabling it to do so doesn't make the human designer irrelevant.

Edit: This is one of the main reasons I still fight evolution. It isn't the scientific idea of evolution, it's the poorly disguised devotion to the metaphysics of evolution that is the real enemy.

Sorry to disappoint you, but there is and that's the point of Bell's theorem.

Baloney.