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To: Blood of Tyrants

The Bible contains forty or fifty stories about miracles. Evolution requires countless billions of outright zero-probability events, each a sort of a mathematical miracle. It turns everything we know about modern math and probability theory on its head upside down.


31 posted on 08/01/2014 4:25:33 AM PDT by aardwolf46
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To: aardwolf46
aardwolf46: "Evolution requires countless billions of outright zero-probability events, each a sort of a mathematical miracle.
It turns everything we know about modern math and probability theory on its head upside down."

You clearly misunderstand both evolution and probability.
Basic evolution theory combines two observed-confirmed facts:

  1. Descent with modifications -- meaning off-spring are not identical to their parents.
    This is caused by both genetic diversity within our DNA, and by more-or-less random mutations in every new generation.
    The probability of generational modifications is nearly 100%.

  2. Natural selection -- meaning survival of the best adapted.
    The probability that some off-spring are better adapted for survival than others is nearly 100%.

Of course, "zero probability events" you refer to may relate to various hypotheses on abiogenic origins of life.
Indeed, such concerns are one major reason all such scientific speculations are still "hypotheses", not confirmed "theories".
So long as they depend on low probability events, they cannot be repeated in a laboratory, and will remain, perhaps forever unconfirmed hypotheses.

But do not be surprised if, even in our lifetimes, a long series of high-probability natural chemical reactions can be demonstrated as leading to precursors of life capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution.

34 posted on 08/01/2014 5:22:31 AM PDT by BroJoeK (a little historical perspective...)
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