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 creationism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label creationism. 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:
Monday, November 19, 2007
God Still Kills Mommy
Here's the second of my two long overdue items on women's issues. This one relates to another point I brought up in the Carrier-Roth Debate.
But it's my interview in the "Special Features" section of The God Who Wasn't There that needs correcting. That's where Brian Flemming shows a larger chunk of his interview of me on the UC Berkeley campus (since many ask, we filmed by Sather Tower). Over the past year or two I've been asked several times about my claim there that without modern medicine 1 in 5 women die as a result of childbirth.
This statistic I had second-hand from several sources I'd read long ago and simply took for granted. Following my usual practice, when someone leads me to doubt my sources, I dig deeper to check, and correct myself if I'm wrong. Though I've already responded to several people on this already, going back more than a year now, it eventually occurred to me I should just blog it. So here you go.
But it's my interview in the "Special Features" section of The God Who Wasn't There that needs correcting. That's where Brian Flemming shows a larger chunk of his interview of me on the UC Berkeley campus (since many ask, we filmed by Sather Tower). Over the past year or two I've been asked several times about my claim there that without modern medicine 1 in 5 women die as a result of childbirth.This statistic I had second-hand from several sources I'd read long ago and simply took for granted. Following my usual practice, when someone leads me to doubt my sources, I dig deeper to check, and correct myself if I'm wrong. Though I've already responded to several people on this already, going back more than a year now, it eventually occurred to me I should just blog it. So here you go.
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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