Today, critics compel me to compose a long and dull commentary on probability and biogenesis, which will nevertheless be terrifyingly important to some people. The rest of you can skip all the way down to the last section marked "conclusion" and just read that. Everyone else, bear with me. In Sense and Goodness without God I briefly summarized the conclusion and justification for a naturalist theory of the origin of life (on pp. 166-68). Among the points I make is this:
Showing posts with label biogenesis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label biogenesis. Show all posts
Friday, May 01, 2009
Statistics & Biogenesis
Today, critics compel me to compose a long and dull commentary on probability and biogenesis, which will nevertheless be terrifyingly important to some people. The rest of you can skip all the way down to the last section marked "conclusion" and just read that. Everyone else, bear with me. In Sense and Goodness without God I briefly summarized the conclusion and justification for a naturalist theory of the origin of life (on pp. 166-68). Among the points I make is this:
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Yockey on Biogenesis
Was the origin of life so amazingly improbable only God could have done it? No.
Wasn't that a deliciously brief answer? Well, okay, first a quick recap, for those who don't like deliciously brief answers: I've argued this at dizzying length at the Secular Web in "Are the Odds Against the Origin of Life Too Great to Accept?" which led to a much briefer and considerably more rigorous paper, still my best known contribution to philosophy:
"The Argument from Biogenesis: Probabilities against a Natural Origin of Life," published under peer review in Biology & Philosophy (19.5, November 2004, pp. 739-64). In that article I catalogued and analyzed seven frequently-repeated errors or fallacies deployed by creationists who try to argue that the origin of life ("biogenesis") could not have happened naturally. I even took the trouble of explaining exactly what they could do to avoid all seven errors and make their argument work. Unfortunately for them, actually doing this requires knowledge we don't yet have, which is their most fundamental mistake: they are arguing from ignorance, and arguments from ignorance are, well, ignorant. We simply don't know enough to say whether natural biogenesis is improbable.
Oh, you want to know what those seven typical errors are? Okay. Just a quick list:
Wasn't that a deliciously brief answer? Well, okay, first a quick recap, for those who don't like deliciously brief answers: I've argued this at dizzying length at the Secular Web in "Are the Odds Against the Origin of Life Too Great to Accept?" which led to a much briefer and considerably more rigorous paper, still my best known contribution to philosophy:
"The Argument from Biogenesis: Probabilities against a Natural Origin of Life," published under peer review in Biology & Philosophy (19.5, November 2004, pp. 739-64). In that article I catalogued and analyzed seven frequently-repeated errors or fallacies deployed by creationists who try to argue that the origin of life ("biogenesis") could not have happened naturally. I even took the trouble of explaining exactly what they could do to avoid all seven errors and make their argument work. Unfortunately for them, actually doing this requires knowledge we don't yet have, which is their most fundamental mistake: they are arguing from ignorance, and arguments from ignorance are, well, ignorant. We simply don't know enough to say whether natural biogenesis is improbable.Oh, you want to know what those seven typical errors are? Okay. Just a quick list:
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