werldhed wrote:
@tnf: I'm curious, what method do you use to argue against students who bring up arguments like Dembski's? I suspect I'll have to deal with such questions soon enough. Personally, I find one point ID propentents have a hard time grasping is that there is no statistical probability that shows it's very unlikely humans could evolve. We are not a "goal." It's like picking biological outcomes from a hat. What are the chances you'll pick all the right mutations to arrive at where we are today? The probability is 1 -- we ended up this way because that's what happened. if you picked a different set of mutations that gave us all tentacles, the ID people would just be asking, "What are the chances all the correct mutations would happen to give us tentacles?" The chances are all exactly the same. It's like asking, "If you drive around randomly, what are the chances you'll end up where you end up?" It's a pointless question because you don't have a destination.
They will spout of a probability - saying to odds of whatever nucleotide sequence 'randomly' assorting is infitesimally small.
Here is a method that I developed that works well -
Ask them what the odds of last week's lottery numbers coming up were. It's usally around something like 1 in 2 or more million (that might even be off by a large margin) - in any case, its large.
Now, ask them what the odds of the previous weeks numbers coming up were - same thing as before. Now ask them what the odds of that two week sequence of numbers coming up is (the individual probabilities multiplied together.) Now, add a third, fourth, fifth week in there. Pretty soon you've got a given sequence of numbers that have come up that have an almost infitesimally small chance of arising. But guess what? Those numbers DID come up. In the early phases of molecular evotion, those random collisions that occurred were producing random results like the lottery numbers. The problem that Dembski types fall into is that they say that the sequence of nucleotides/amino acids/whatever that produce a given complex system was the 'target' from the beginning, and then use the probability arguments afterwards. In doing so, they completely miss the fact that there was no initial 'final goal.' No matter what the odds were, order evolved. Back to the lottery numbers. Lets say that a given 4 week sequence represents the structure of a crude molecule. Now, lets say that this sequence (this molecule) has the ability to catalyze the formation of more of itself (very simple catalytic activity) - from a statistical perspective lets say that it simply increases the odds of more of 'itself' being produced by a factor of 1/1000 even. Even at that small factor, the probability of that particular sequence (structure) arising again is COMPLETELY different than it was before the original molecule with the simple catalytic activity was created randomly. Pretty soon there will be an exponential changes in the frequency of that molecule being found. Now, from here it is not a huge leap to polymerization of simple monomers - monomers that are, at first, catalyzing their own formation and polymerization....
Make sure they realize that the process begins randomly, and, as such, picking a given structure or DNA sequence or whatever and giving the 'odds' that it would form is meaningless. Once some non-random events begin to happen (the situation mentioned above) we cannot make meaningful probability calculations. There is an underlying assumption under Dembski's work that these probabilities don't change much. Even if he does address this issue (I think his "No free lunch" stuff does to some degree, but don't quote me on that...) there is really no debate about this situation. You can't apply statistics and probabilities based on systems that require randomness to a system that is not random.
Let me know if that 'lottery number' example makes sense...I didn't describe it very well here...it is kind of tough to put into print because I am a pretty animated speaker and usually am throwing all sorts of diagrams and shit on a whiteboard while doing this (sort of like goodwill hunting). But at the least it helps them realize that there is a MAJOR flaw in the logic. "The Blind Watchmaker" by Dawkins does a pretty good job discussing this topic as well...using the example of a monkey at a keyboard....but you could substitute Kracus for the monkey in your example.
