Prager: Monkeys and Atheists

Townhall.com ^ | 5-27-03 | Dennis Prager

[Neanderthal]

"According to news reports, instructors at Plymouth University put six Sulawesi crested macaque monkeys in a room with a computer and keyboards for four weeks. Though one of the monkeys frequently typed the letter "s", the other monkeys ignored the keyboard, preferring to play with one another and with the ropes and toys placed there. When they did pay attention to the keyboard, one smashed it with a stone and the others repeatedly urinated and defecated on it."

Sounds like a bunch of liberal humanities majors and one hard science guy who liked to type "s."

[Servant of the Nine]

This led Jastrow to the sobering conclusion that many scientists have vested, non-scientific interests in some of their beliefs, especially the non-existence of God.

Yes, they/we do.

Believing in God, it is far more respectable to burn in Hell forever than to worship a God who would create a world like this.

So9

[My2Cents]

Though one of the monkeys frequently typed the letter "s", the other monkeys ignored the keyboard, preferring to play with one another and with the ropes and toys placed there. When they did pay attention to the keyboard, one smashed it with a stone and the others repeatedly urinated and defecated on it."

Sounds like people in my office.

[dighton]

Inflexible Logic

[Outraged]

According to the science correspondent of Britain's Guardian newspaper, "assuming each monkey typed a steady 120 characters a minute (itself a preposterous assumption), mathematicians have calculated it would take 10 to the 813th power (10 followed by 813 zeros) monkeys about five years to knock out a decent version of Shakespeare's Sonnet 3 . . . "

Not to mention the keyboard would quickly become extinct in the world described above...In fact you would need an overseer/creator in order to guide along the evolutionary process by providing more keyboards...lol.

Silly atheists...God is a jealous God and will deal unkindly upon you who pervert faith founded on your finite anti-faith.

[PatrickHenry]

This is a very poor-quality article. The idea that if the monkeys *did* type something meaningful, it would actually prove anything at all about the existence or non-existence of God is absurd.

Besides, *real* monkeys ruin the experiment. The original idea about "an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of typewriters" was intended merely to mean that given enough time, if random keystrokes kept being punched, something would emerge. Real monkeys are too busy grooming each other, and make lousy typists.

[jlogajan]

The argument that infinitely complex intelligence came about by itself, unguided by any intelligence, can only be deemed convincing by those who have a vested interest (intellectual, emotional, psychological) in atheism.

Then who created the creator?

[My2Cents]

No one. Otherwise he wouldn't be God.

[Ten Megaton Solution]

Ten raised to the 813th power....or some such nonsense.

I do wish people as ignorant as Prager would stick to things they might be able to understand, such as why anyone would want to believe in an irrational capricious God in the first place.

Running numbers? Okie doke. There's approximately 200,000,000,000 stars in this galaxy, and approximately a trillion (1,000,000,000,000) galaxies like this one in the portion of the Universe we can see. That means there's about 200 billion trillion stars available to cast light on any planets that happen to be around.

Now, lets be stingy and say that only 1 star out of a thousand could support life (real estimate is about 1/3)...that means there's about 200 million trillion stars out there able to support life. Lets assume, also, that only one of those out of million actually has a planet supporting life.

That means there's about 200 trillion life bearing planets in the universe.

An interesting thing for a God to create, if She truly did Create Woman in Her own image.

[jlogajan]

No one. Otherwise he wouldn't be God.

The argument is that nothing complex can come into existance without a more complex creator. So if the argument has merit, the creator needs a more complex creator, and so on ad infinitum.

Believers shouldn't dabble in logic -- they're not qualified.

[D. Brian Carter]

I am definitely not a religious man, and subscribe to no dogma, but it is, in my opinion, MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for God NOT to exist. The scientific odds of God not exisiting are so preposterous that this is a completely useless argument for me to even engage in... if one does not believe in the existence of a god, any god, and especially if that person tries to use scientific reasoning to support that assertation, they are living in a fantasy world, just as fantastic as the fantasy world they suppose believers live in (whoa, that's a mouthful. Was I really able to construct a thought of that magnitude on accident?).

[D. Brian Carter]

According to the science correspondent of Britain's Guardian newspaper, "assuming each monkey typed a steady 120 characters a minute (itself a preposterous assumption), mathematicians have calculated it would take 10 to the 813th power (10 followed by 813 zeros) monkeys about five years to knock out a decent version of Shakespeare's Sonnet 3 . . . "

To put 10 to the 813th power into perspective, remember that a billion is 10 to the ninth power.

So, it would take 10 to the 813th power just to construct this sonnet... can anyone out there extrapolate that to every known piece of literature written up to this point? To every construction of any kind mankind has created? To every miniscule device, invention, idea, thought, blah blah blah blah blah? Is there any need for any more argument?

[ThinkDifferent]

The scientific odds of God not exisiting are so preposterous

How are you computing this probability?

[whereasandsoforth]

Well, who created the keyboard the silly little monkeys would be pounding upon?

The possiblity that this world and all creation happened by chance is as about as likely as pouring three tons of molten steel on my driveway and having it cool into a perfectly working 1957 Buick.

[D. Brian Carter]

I'm not going to argue about this. See my other post. I can't prove my point of view, just as you can't either. And as I said, I'm not a religious person, I'm not talking about dogma, or Jehovah, or Yahweh, or Allah, or Buddha. I'm just talking about some larger power than any of us humans can comprehend. It's ludicrous to think otherwise, IMHO.

[onedoug]

Assumes a finitude, whereas God is infinite.

[tom h]

Seems to me you're trying to pick a fight, but I for one , and hopefully everyone else, will not fall for it.

Consider an increase to your valium dose. It might help you become less discouraged about the world.

[onedoug]

And only one you.

[Raymond Hendrix]

Most of the founders of the major fields of science were believers. Maybe it is atheists who should not dabble in logic if your memory is that short. The Blind Atheist