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To: powderhorn
Yes, that's really special. You've demonstrated that you can read from a non-technical dictionary and yet still not understand what we're talking about in regards to data.

Your claim above that data is only something that you can print, in the context in which you made that statement, reveals you to be out of your league. Put simply, this debate is over your head.

735 posted on 04/12/2002 12:08:11 PM PDT by Southack
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To: Southack
Yes, that's really special. You've demonstrated that you can read from a non-technical dictionary and yet still not understand what we're talking about in regards to data.

I am familiar enough with the issue to know that you won't find a reputable technical dictionary that defines data as "things."

But of course we can clear up the matter by overlooking the misuse of this word and get to the heart of what you are attempting to say. Given what we know, it is difficult to attribute the existence of life to anything other than purposeful design because it's just too complex to come about without design. At this point we are very close to being on the same page...except that I would stress that the argument for design is dependent on the notion that what we know is all there is to know.

The hard reality is that there is no way to plot out the probability of anything happening without knowing the conditions, the factors that could enhance or prohibit something from happening. We don't know--and never will know--if there were any special conditions in the universe that would make a transition from non-organic to orgaic matter more probable at the time life came about in the universe. We've only been able to analyze a small percent of what the universe is made up of. "Given what we know," just isn't enough to make any probability statement.

743 posted on 04/13/2002 12:37:09 AM PDT by powderhorn
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