No, you are just trying to put an extra layer of confusion in between the 'final cause' and the creation.
And on an earlier post you claimed that the odds against life are huge, which is interesting. It is true that the odds are incredibly high against a dozen die all coming up 6's at once, but if you roll the dozen die and collect the 6's each time it will generally take less than a dozen rolls to get all 6's.
Perhaps the greatest disservice to science came when people started trying to compute odds of unknown variables and come up with finite results. True, math may be unreasonably effective sometimes, but it is useless without data to back it up.
Now you are attributing personal motives to me of which you can have no direct knowledge whatsoever.
You wrote: "True, math may be unreasonably effective sometimes, but it is useless without data to back it up."
Which seems to miss the point that where math is unreasonably effective, the data "backs it up."
I have to tell you of my very strong sense of where "contemporary science" is nowadays. It's as if the entire scientific community has willfully shut itself up in a very small, cramped, and by now thoroughly stuffy and foetid room — and promises to destroy anyone who tries to open a door or window, so to let in light and fresh air. Metaphorically, to me the situation is akin to that described by Plato in his famous Myth of the Cave....
Because science is fundamentally a public enterprise (according to Einstein and Bohr at least), this is a very concerning situation to me.
JMHO FWIW.
The odds are nothign like a dozen die comming up all sixes- the odds are overwhelmingly impossible:
“A commenter suggested that he could throw five decks of cards into the air and the combination that would fall to the floor, the order of those cards, would illustrate to me the reason I am wrong about statistics. The odds would be wildly against that particular order of cards to have occurred and would be completely unlikely to occur again should he devote his life to throwing cards up in the air. Yet it happened!
Here is the answer: Throw the five decks of cards up in the air until they fall to earth in one neat stack, sorted by suit and consecutively by value. Then we can talk. For you see, the Huxley Horse argument is still misunderstood. The absolutely ridiculous odds against a horse ever evolving were one over (In Huxley’s own words):”The figure 1 with three million naughts after it: and that would take three large volumes of about 500 pages each, just to print! ... no one would bet on anything so improbable happening; and yet it has happened.”
http://radaractive.blogspot.com/2006/06/odds-against-evolution-beginnings.html
THE PROBABILITY OF THE OCCURRENCE OF A UNIVERSE IN WHICH LIFE CAN FORM
Coincidence is a mathematical term and the possibility of an event’s occurrence can be calculated using the mathematics of probability.
The calculations of British mathematician Roger Penrose show that the probability of universe conducive to life occurring by chance is in 10 to the power of 10 to the power of 123. The phrase “extremely unlikely” is inadequate to describe this possibility.
Taking the physical variables into account, what is the likelihood of a universe giving us life coming into existence by coincidence? One in billions of billions? Or trillions of trillions of trillions? Or more?
Roger Penrose*, a famous British mathematician and a close friend of Stephen Hawking, wondered about this question and tried to calculate the probability. Including what he considered to be all variables required for human beings to exist and live on a planet such as ours, he computed the probability of this environment occurring among all the possible results of the Big Bang.
According to Penrose, the odds against such an occurrence were on the order of 10^10^123 to 1.
It is hard even to imagine what this number means. In math, the value 10 to the 123rd means 1 followed by 123 zeros. (This is, by the way, more than the total number of atoms 10 to the 78th believed to exist in the whole universe.) But Penrose’s answer is vastly more than this: It requires 1 followed by 10^123 zeros.
Or consider: 10^3 means 1,000, a thousand. 10^10^3 is a number that that has 1 followed by 1000 zeros. If there are six zeros, it’s called a million; if nine, a billion; if twelve, a trillion and so on. There is not even a name for a number that has 1 followed by 10^123 zeros.
In practical terms, in mathematics, a probability of 1 in 10^50 means “zero probability”. Penrose’s number is more than trillion trillion trillion times less than that. In short, Penrose’s number tells us that the ‘accidental” or “coincidental” creation of our universe is an impossibility.
Concerning this mind-boggling number Roger Penrose comments:
This now tells how precise the Creator’s aim must have been, namely to an accuracy of one part in 10^10^123. This is an extraordinary figure. One could not possibly even write the number down in full in the ordinary denary notation: it would be 1 followed by 10^123 successive 0’s. Even if we were to write a 0 on each separate proton and on each separate neutron in the entire universe- and we could throw in all the other particles for good measure- we should fall far short of writing down the figure needed.
In fact in order to recognize that the universe is not a “product of coincidences” one does not really need any of these calculations at all. Simply by looking around himself, a person can easily perceive the fact of creation in even the tiniest details of what he sees. How could a universe like this, perfect in its systems, the sun, the earth, people, houses, cars, trees, flowers, insects, and all the other things in it ever have come into existence as the result of atoms falling together by chance after an explosion? Every detail we peer at shows the evidence of God’s existence and supreme power. Only people who reflect can grasp these signs.
DNA Molecules and the Overwhelming Odds Against Spontaneous Generation
Within each cell there is an area called the nucleus which contains the all-important chromosomes. [133] Chromosomes are microscopically small, rod-shaped structures which carry the genes. Within the chromosomes is an even smaller structure called DNA. [134] This is one of the most important chemical substances in the human body or in any other living thing. Increasing scientific understanding of DNA molecules has revealed enormous problems for materialism.
DNA is a super-molecule which stores coded hereditary information. It consists of two long “chains” of chemical “building blocks” paired together. In humans, the strands of DNA are almost 2 yards long [approx. 1.82 meters], yet less than a trillionth of an inch thick [approx. 0.0000254 microns]. [135
In function, DNA is somewhat like a computer program on a floppy disk. It stores and transfers encoded information and instructions. It is said that the DNA of a human stores enough information code to fill 1,000 books each with 500 pages of very small, closely-printed type. [136] The DNA code produces a product far more sophisticated than that of any computer.
Amazingly, this enormous set of instructions fits with ease within a single cell and routinely directs the formation of entire adult humans, starting with just a single fertilized egg. Even the DNA of a bacterium is highly complex, containing at least 3 million units [137], all aligned in a very precise, meaningful sequence.
DNA and the molecules that surround it form a truly superb mechanism a miniaturized marvel. The information is so compactly stored that the amount of DNA necessary to code all the people living on our planet might fit into a space no larger than an aspirin tablet! [138]
Many scientists are convinced that cells containing such a complex code and such intricate chemistry could never have come into being by pure, undirected chemistry. [139] No matter how chemicals are mixed, they do not create DNA spirals or any intelligent code whatsoever. Only DNA reproduces DNA.
Two well known scientists calculated the odds of life forming by natural processes. They estimated that there is less than 1 chance in 1040,000 that life could have originated by random trials. 10 to the 40,000th is a 1 with 40,000 zeros after it! [140]
How can one gain some conception of the size of such a huge number? According to most Evolutionists, the universe is less than 30 billion years old [141], and there are fewer than 10 to the 18th (1018) seconds in 30 billion years. So, even if nature could somehow have produced trillions of genetic code combinations every second for 30 billion years, the probabilities against producing the simplest one-celled animal by trial and error would still be inconceivably immense! [142]
In other words, probabilities enormously favor the idea that an intelligent designer was responsible for even the simplest DNA molecules.
Chemist Dr. Grebe:
“That organic evolution could account for the complex forms of life in the past and the present has long since been abandoned by men who grasp the importance of the DNA genetic code.” [143]
Researcher and mathematician I.L. Cohen:
“At that moment, when the the DNA/RNA system became understood, the debate between Evolutionists and Creationists should have come to a screeching halt. …the implications of the DNA/RNA were obvious and clear. Mathematically speaking, based on probability concepts, there is no possibility that Evolution was the mechanism that created the approximately 6,000,000 species of plants and animals we recognize today.” [144]
Evolutionist Michael Denton:
“The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle.” [145]
Famed researcher Sir Fred Hoyle is in agreement with Creationists on this point. [146] He has reportedly said that supposing the first cell originated by chance is like believing “a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.” [147]
The notion that… the operating programme of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order. [140]
—Evolutionist Sir Fred Hoyle
Many, if not most, origin-of-life researchers now agree with Hoyle: Life could not have originated by chance or by any known natural processes. [148] Many Evolutionists are now searching for some theoretical force within matter which might push matter toward the assembly of greater complexity. Most Creationists believe this is doomed to failure, since it contradicts the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
It is important to note that the information written on DNA molecules is not produced by any known natural interaction of matter. Matter and molecules have no innate intelligence, allowing self organization into codes. There are no known physical laws which give molecules a natural tendency to arrange themselves into such coded structures. [149]
Like a computer disk, DNA has no intelligence. The complex, purposeful codes of this “master program” could only have originated outside itself. In the case of a computer program, the original codes were put there by an intelligent being, a programmer. Likewise, for DNA, it seems clear that intelligence must have come first, before the existence of DNA. Statistically, the odds are enormously in favor of that theory. DNA bears the marks of intelligent manufacture.
Dr. Wilder-Smith was an honored scientist with three earned doctorate degrees. He was well-informed on modern biology and biochemistry. What, in his considered opinion, was the source of the DNA codes found in each wondrous plant and animal?
“… an attempt to explain the formation of the genetic code from the chemical components of DNA… is comparable to the assumption that the text of a book originates from the paper molecules on which the sentences appear, and not from any external source of information.” [150]
“As a scientist, I am convinced that the pure chemistry of a cell is not enough to explain the workings of a cell, although the workings are chemical. The chemical workings of the cell are controlled by information which does not reside in the atoms and molecules of that cell.
There is an author which transcends the material and the matter of which these strands are made. The author first of all conceived the information necessary to make a cell, then wrote it down, and then fixed in it a mechanism of reading it and realizing it in practice so that the cell builds itself from the information…” [151]
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/origin-of-life.html
LeGrande: No, you are just trying to put an extra layer of confusion in between the 'final cause' and the creation.
More to the point, it is not only possible but also quite common to speak of phenomena in nature without addressing origins. Darwin's theory of evolution is a case in point. His theory addressed speciation of life but not the origin of life. It was not a theory of biogenesis/abiogenesis.
Likewise here, among the properties of living things are the functions of maintenance, repair and replication. One can speak of these functions, that they are machine-like or temporally non-local or purposeful (final cause) without addressing origins.