Proof

Originally posted by jaywill
[b]==========================
Well lets see who chickens out first.
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What's that suppose to mean ? If one has nothing else to do for the rest of his life but to go back and forth on this Internet argument, he has not "chickened out" ?

Some kind of test of endurance here ?

============================= is really impressively thin. It will be hard for you to undermind this realization.

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Which is more likely:
1. You winning the lottery six times in a row.
2. The following six people winning the lottery in the order given: James Connelly, John Jackson, Gordon Winston, Kenneth Smith, Vanessa Williams, Jane Merredith.
Assume that both you and the above six people all bought one ticket in each lottery.
================================== [/b]

Seems you demand some answer from me on this. Okay.

I assume that these six names are arbitrary. I don't know if these are celebrities whose names I should recognize.

But regardless, these six people win six lotteries? And they win in the order of their names.

Which is more improbable ? Not sure.

This is the way I would go about finding out.

I would want to know how many people beside me got tickets.
How many tickets there were.

You have to use multiplication to decide how many ways the first ticket could be won, times how many ways the second ticket could be one ... to the Nth ticket.

N tickets purchased by N people of which I am number something.
A long permutation calculation would give the odds of me getting the ticket.

You end up dividing with some huge number as the denominator into the 1 win (mine) as numerator. I think this has to all be multiplied by six for six wins before the division. And I think you have to figure in how many times the game was played of which these six are a consecutive group of wins for me.

Something similar would have to be multiplied out for the six individuals, knowing the same info. You would have to account for the exact order that you specified.

I have not guessed here. I have told you something of the kind of method I would use.

Let me know when I'm suppose to get a realization that biological life amidst the cosmos is no big deal.

Originally posted by jaywill
[b]=================================
================================
Which is more likely:
1. You winning the lottery six times in a row.
2. The following six people winning the lottery in the order given: James Connelly, John Jackson, Gordon Winston, Kenneth Smith, Vanessa Williams, Jane Merredith.
Assume that both you and the above six peo ...[text shortened]... w when I'm suppose to get a realization that biological life amidst the cosmos is no big deal.

who are you talking to?

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
who are you talking to?

The above post was to twhitehead.

Originally posted by jaywill
You know, I think some of you Evolutionists should stop saying this.

But its true. Evolution is a process. The Theory of Evolution discusses how life changes over time via that process and how life changed in the past via that process.
We do not know exactly how life started and there is no good reason to assume that it started solely via evolution. So we give it another name 'abiogenesis'.
Because the processes involved are different, if you criticize my ideas about abiogenesis, then anything you say can not have a negative impact on my ideas about evolution.
Yes, evolution and the Theory of Evolution strongly imply that abiogenesis took place. But even if you proved that abiogenesis did not take place, it would not in any way shed doubt on whether or not evolution takes place or that we descended from a common ancestor.

Originally posted by twhitehead
But its true. Evolution is a process. The Theory of Evolution discusses how life changes over time via that process and how life changed in the past via that process.
We do not know exactly how life started and there is no good reason to assume that it started solely via evolution. So we give it another name 'abiogenesis'.
Because the processes involved ...[text shortened]... hed doubt on whether or not evolution takes place or that we descended from a common ancestor.

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Evolution is a process
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If you atheists can ask me "Where did God come from?" can I also ask a similar question of you ?

Where did this "process" of evolution come from ?
Have any ideas on that ?

Originally posted by jaywill
[b]========================
Evolution is a process
===========================

If you atheists can ask me "Where did God come from?" can I also ask a similar question of you ?

Where did this "process" of evolution come from ?
Have any ideas on that ?[/b]

The answer at this time is no one knows for sure. We do know that the Universe was at one point hydrogen and helium which condensed to form stars. To make a long story a brief as possible, as the stars formed and condensed because of gravity, the pressure formed all the other elements which were then blasted into space when the stars exploded. Somehow some of these elements linked together to form amino acids, and eventually RNA, DNA and proteins. At some point, these chemicals began to reproduce and once this happened, evolution kicked in and which ever chemicals reproduced the best survived and led to all life that is on earth today. Today most life is in the form of plants and animals and all plants and animals are made of cells and it is safe to say, for example that trees and Humans had a common ancestor in the form of a cell that divided with one of the cells evolving into trees and the other into humans. Going back to the start of this paragraph, it is pretty well accepted by the scientific community that all the atoms in each of us was at one time billions of years ago part of a star!

Originally posted by twhitehead
But its true. Evolution is a process. The Theory of Evolution discusses how life changes over time via that process and how life changed in the past via that process.
We do not know exactly how life started and there is no good reason to assume that it started solely via evolution. So we give it another name 'abiogenesis'.
Because the processes involved ...[text shortened]... hed doubt on whether or not evolution takes place or that we descended from a common ancestor.

Abiogenesis is the proposal that life emerged from non-life. It can be viewed as
a special form of spontaneous generation, which has been discredited.

Originally posted by RJHinds
Abiogenesis is the proposal that life emerged from non-life. It can be viewed as
a special form of spontaneous generation, which has been discredited.

It is true that advanced life cannot be spontaneously generated, but no one has been able to prove that very primitive life can't be spontaneously generated. Pasteur proved that flies are not spontaneously generated. It is probably true, however, that life today has evolved so much that if really primitive life appeared today, it would be immediately consumed by the more advanced life.

Originally posted by 667joe
The answer at this time is no one knows for sure. We do know that the Universe was at one point hydrogen and helium which condensed to form stars. To make a long story a brief as possible, as the stars formed and condensed because of gravity, the pressure formed all the other elements which were then blasted into space when the stars exploded. Somehow so ...[text shortened]... ommunity that all the atoms in each of us was at one time billions of years ago part of a star!

We creationists believe the "somehow" was acts of God.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I must be misunderstanding you here, but you appear to have dismissed the tooth fairy using one argument, then claimed the same argument is not valid for your own God. What did I miss?

What I'm saying is there is a defeater for Agerg's belief in the tooth fairy; i.e., it isn't disbelieved without evidence, as he claims.

Originally posted by epiphinehas
What I'm saying is there is a defeater for Agerg's belief in the tooth fairy; i.e., it isn't disbelieved without evidence, as he claims.

Referencing what you posted earlier:

If you are claiming that God is an invention of man in order to dismiss God's existence, you are committing the genetic fallacy, i.e., dismissing a belief based on how that belief came to be held.

It doesn't seem very rational to reject God simply because polytheism exists.

You claim a number of things about my position of belief that are either not true or caricatures of what is true.

As far as the tooth fairy goes (temporarily neglecting the faith I profess in this entity in another thread) I am fully aware that humans make things up, and have done so throughout history. I am naturally skeptical - indeed when graced with a new mathematical assertion or theorem (within some area of maths that interests me) I insist upon seeing and working through its proof before I'm comfortable with itReveal Hidden Content, I am just as (actually more if I'm being honest) skeptical about claims of alien abduction, gods, ghosts, and whatever else. Lack of valid evidence is sufficient (and sometimes necessary) reason for me to dismiss a claim.

Originally posted by Agerg
Referencing what you posted earlier:

If you are claiming that God is an invention of man in order to dismiss God's existence, you are committing the genetic fallacy, i.e., dismissing a belief based on how that belief came to be held.

It doesn't seem very rational to reject God simply because polytheism exists.

You claim a number of things abou ...[text shortened]... vidence is sufficient (and sometimes necessary) reason for me to dismiss a claim.

I know how you are from the other thread. You have already
stated you will not investigate things that disagree with your
world view because you have already judged them silliness.
You seem quite happy in dismissing Christianity with out making
attemps to really understand it. I agree that you are skeptical
of anything you can't understand and will dismiss it as silliness.

Originally posted by RJHinds
We creationists believe the "somehow" was acts of God.

Just because we at this time do not know the "some how" does not mean that the answer is god. At one point, for example, we did not know what caused rainbows and so they were attributed to god, and we did not know what caused disease so it was attributed to god. We now know both, but not with the help of incurious people with your attitude.

Originally posted by 667joe
Just because we at this time do not know the "some how" does not mean that the answer is god. At one point, for example, we did not know what caused rainbows and so they were attributed to god, and we did not know what caused disease so it was attributed to god. We now know both, but not with the help of incurious people with your attitude.

The only way I could see that it was caused by "God" or none of it was.(as you seem to think so)
I could move forward on either of these premises because they are both holistic/inclusive and not divisive ideas.

Originally posted by jaywill
Which is more improbable ? Not sure.

Well I will tell you then. The probability is exactly the same. It demonstrates something very interesting with regards to your "I won the lottery 6 times in a row" scenario. The only reason why you winning the lottery 6 times in a row is seen as improbable, is because it is special. If I mention the winners before the lottery takes place, it too becomes special (and thus improbable).
However if I mention the winners after the lottery takes place using the knowledge of who the winners actually were, the argument suddenly fails. The only reason the winners are special is because they won.
So when you say "us being here is improbable" you are really saying "we are the series of lottery winners". It is incorrect however to draw an analogy to someone who won the lottery 6 times in a row as the odds for that are completely different as in that case the winner is essentially specified before the event, whereas in our case the winner is not known until after the event.

Did you follow all that?