DNA + Microevolution+ Bayes =Macroevolution

[PairTheBoard]

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I understand what you're saying now, and I have to agree. There doesn't seem to be any way to assign a probability of God's involvement for event.

Of course, I'm going to say that's because we're dealing with an unfalsifiable made up entity. What's the probability that an apple falls without Wotan's involvement? But I think your point stands and look forward to David's response.

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I am only discussing a God who does stuff that is considered physically impossible (or unlikely to an incredible degree, such as lining up all the molecules of the Red Sea.) Not Ready is tougher to argue with on these points than other theists because he only cares about a handful of miracles of this type, all a long time ago, and is willing to admit that most of the others could be frauds.

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What happens to your arguments if NotReady admits that All such accounts in the Bible were allegorical and making use of symbolic language?

PairTheBoard

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Then its off to other forums. Where some people still think they should play AJ offsuit under the gun. I'm surprised you didn't realize that.

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Will you be giving Religious arguments to convince people not to play AJ offsuit?


Focusing on the literal Parting of the Red Sea. Suppose this were to happen today, with TV cameras rolling and scientists taking measurements. Suppose the scientists are baffled and cannot explain it. This would NOT be proof that God did it. It might convince a lot of people to Believe that God did it. But it would still not make sense to talk about a "probability" that God did it, unless you are speaking loosely. Strictly speaking, you have no mathematical probability model to apply. Loosely speaking, if you say the probability is high it just translates to saying that it convinces you. In other words, it causes You to Believe. It has brought about a Religious Belief for You. However, scientifically speaking, even this "miracle" cannot be distinguished as other than something science just can't explain yet.

So how is the Biblical Account different? The difference is in the nature of the Report. It's not the Report of TV cameras rolling and scientists taking measurements. It's an account in a Book full of allegories, symbolism, morality tales, and metaphors.

The legitimate line of attack on NotReady's position has nothing to do with psuedo-probability statements about God which just amount to statements of Religious Belief couched in ill applied math sounding terms. The legitimate line of attack is to look at the Credibility of a Literal Reading of this particular Biblical Account. NotReady "can read". The question is, how well can he read?

PairTheBoard

[hasugopher]

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This approach has been considered.

Some German guy wrote in a book that perhaps "The first bird hatched out of a reptile egg"

The obvious answer to this would be: what did that first bird mate with in order to sustain the new kind of animal?

Same concept applies to your theory.

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LOL. Welcome back. The first bird never existed. Does that help?

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Why focus on the details of my comment when they have no relevance to the overall point?

When these massive changes in genetic make-up occured to create new kinds of animals, how did they reproduce?

That would have required the same freak evolutionary accident to not only happen twice at the same time, but in the same general geographics, and the recipients of the new genome would have had to be male and female respectively. (Unless the new creature was self-reproductive, but how many of those exist today?)

While I realize that having a 1^548761184623214782:1 chance of happening is still a CHANCE... at what point do you decide that it just didn't work that way?

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Just so you know, regardless of how many times you multiply (1) by itself, you still get (1).

You're welcome.