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To: bvw
Just to note that you chose a "belief system" yet appear to be unable to call it what it is.

You assume here that the questions, "what do you believe about..." and "what do you believe is most likely..." are the same question. They are not. For example, I dismissed the answer "Don't know" from the first question because it doesn't answer the question of what I think is most likely, but very well could answer the question of what I believe.

In the last question C and D are more or less equal.

I don't believe tht C and D are anywhere near equal. Take, for example, people's beliefs about their family. "C" could be correct, and me and my siblings have one-nanosecond old, spontaneously generated memories about our common descent from our parents, or "D" is correct we could merely have been all children of the same parents, who actually lived during an actual stretch of time.

If "C" is correct, it is incredibly fortuitous, because the odds greatly disfavor all of our memories in this matter being in agreement (i.e., none of us remember having different parents, and no one else "remembers" being a child of my parents.) This, in combination with all of the near-infinate other temporal relationships of this type, both biological and physical, in the entire universe, would make a spontaneous recent generation near infinately unlikely. When compared with the odds that the apparent temporal agreements in biological and other natural relationship exist because they reflect a real connection and actual descent which occurred in past times make the latter explaination much more likely. So, C and D are very much not "more or less equal."

Your choice of C and exclusion of D indicates you are not a solid believer in random processes by the way, at least so I suspect.

I didn't choose C as the answer to either question. I found "B" in the first, and "D" in the second. Further, I am not a believer in "random processes" where non-random processes are indicated. For example, natural selection is a non-random process.

1,753 posted on 02/04/2005 10:58:04 AM PST by WildHorseCrash
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To: WildHorseCrash

Sorry to have mixed up your C&D response on the second.


1,762 posted on 02/04/2005 2:35:52 PM PST by bvw
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To: WildHorseCrash

I hope to respond by Sunday. Until then I have to go observe the experiment in the coin tossing lab.


1,764 posted on 02/04/2005 2:43:49 PM PST by bvw
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To: WildHorseCrash
You assume here that the questions, "what do you believe about..." and "what do you believe is most likely..." are the same question.

No, I did not. I considered that difference when I wrote the question. I hope this clarifies.

1,802 posted on 02/06/2005 11:47:44 AM PST by bvw
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