Replies

To: f.Christian

Have you heard the story going around about the bio prof in a well-known NorthEast university who is speaking about evolution and notices three guys snickering in the back of the room? "You guys must be fundamentalist Christians" snorts the professor. One of the three replies "No, we're math majors; like, we understand the laws of probability..."

17 posted on 9/27/02 11:07 AM Pacific by piltdownpig

As someone with a BS in math, I'd say, no they don't understand probability.

The odds of flipping a fair coin heads 16 times in a row is 1 in 65536. That doesn't mean it can't happen; flip coins long enough and it will.

We call the lottery a tax on those who don't understand probability because the odds are millions to one against winning.

But somebody wins them every week.

Personally, I don't have a problem between Darwinism and ID (or, more generally, evolution vs. creationism): the former posits how while the latter posits who. No conflict there. I have no problem believing that evolution is the tool the Creator used to build the universe, any more than I have a problem believing a machinist programmed a CNC machine to carve out an engine casing.

However, there is one question the creationists can't answer: if God created the universe, who created God? They either have to tell you "it's turtles all the way down" or they have to posit that, at some generation, a "creator" was spontaniously "evolved", said "creator" being more powerful and complex than we "mere" humans that couldn't possible have evolved spontaniously.

"The universe is the way we percieve it because, if it weren't, we wouldn't be here." (The "Lesser" Anthropic Principle) (I can never remember wording of The "Greater" Anthropic Principle.)

Ragards.