The Law of Parsimony Favors Intelligent Design - B

FYI: it's customary to quote your sources, whether they're cited or not, when you draw from them word for word. Probabilities: "I meant 1 in 10 raised to the negative 1,018. If my opponent believes that I have erred I would ask that you consult his resident mathematician." I would ask you consult this children's website: http://www.mathsisfun.com.... As "10 raised to the negative 1,018" is the reciprocal of "10 raised to the 1,018", "1 in 10 raised to the negative 1,018" is PRECISELY "10 raised to the 1,018". The result is the same in the case of [(1 in 10) raised…)] as in [1 in (10 raised…)]. My opponent will excuse my unwillingness to engage in an esoteric discussion of probabilities many googols of times greater than the probability that 1=1. "Less than 0.01 per cent over four billion years", in being a valid probability, is certainly more tenable. It's also quite a bit less than "billions of times more remote than the probability of a copy of Oxford Dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop", no matter how we define the latter. And as you reread your deceptively-quoted source, note that its figure is not referring to the probability of "life" generally but of "intelligent life" evolving from simple life. Your source doesn't even mention the probability of life itself emerging on Earth, probably because it's considered in the mainstream to be a virtual certainty. Applying statistical methodology to the rapidity with which Earth (once habitable) evolved life, http://arxiv.org... estimates the probability to be near unity and >13% at 95% confidence. And that's just the probability of life emerging given a SINGLE habitable planet. There are most likely billions of habitable planets, which makes the probability of even intelligent life emerging a virtual certainty, even if we use the low-end probability of life (13%). "If I walked in the woods and saw a fully assembled log cabin, I would not insist that the trees happened to fall in such a way as to construct the cabin" because there is evidence of another cause. I've seen beings (people) who are capable of designing log cabins; I presumably see the evidence of their tools, the existence of which I've previously verified; I can see how such a structure would serve certain proven interests of such beings; I've even seen footage of such such a feat. But a log cabin is exceedingly simple in comparison with two of the major factors of its production: men and trees, of which there appears to be no intelligent designer. Whatever your theory of genesis, for example, I'm sure you'll admit that humans are an evolved species. To be less contraversial, if you walked into the woods and saw a fully assembled monarch butterfly, would you insist that the caterpillar happened to alter its anatomy in such a way as to construct the butterfly? Of course you would. And I doubt you would suspect the caterpillar of any intelligence at all, much less a butterfly design. Multiverse: How did I know, when first you pleaded for abstinence from semantics, you would use a dictionary as source? On wiktionary.org, I find this in the usage notes: "Though some technical definitions require that an algorithm always terminate in a finite number of steps, this distinction is not generally observed in practice." Even YOUR OWN LINK contains a variety of definitions, a minority of which stipulate a finite number of steps, one of which explicitly allows an infinite number of steps, none of which mention universes. It would have been better if you'd provided a source for this: "parsimony does not look at the parameters but the steps." But let's go with "steps", for the sake of argument. Max Tegmark's (extreme) Multiverse (http://arxiv.org...) makes one assumption: everything can be reduced to computable, decidable mathematical structures. It denies all reality beyond mathematical structure, and thus assumes no universes beyond what you assume when you deny their existence. How can you deny a mathematical structure? Tacitly, you're recognizing it only to deny that it has material, spiritual, or other representation, or that it represents mind, matter, etc. Multiverse rejects all such dualism, and thus so far assumes at least as little as you do. But then you begin to make assumptions: you assume that a universe of particles or other extra-mathematical features conferring "reality", which mathematics can at best correspond to; additionally, you assume an intelligent designer is behind it. A good analogy would be an egalitarian population that's conquered by one or two (of their own or foreign). Previous to the introduction of the category "boss", the vast population was the focus. After the introduction of "boss", the focus is the boss(s). Though the population has increased if anything, the focus has decreased. Similarly, ID if anything contains more assumptions than Multiverse, but it introduces a "real"-"unreal" classification and focuses on the real. Multiverse, like ID, is so-named because the number of its focus, not the number of its assumptions. At the very least, Multiverse must be ruled false (thus making parsimony a moot point) before it can be ruled anti-parsimonious. As the history of scientific progress has been a progression toward pure mathematical description, such a ruling would be ill-founded. God and Complexity: "A certain game designer said "mass quantities of information can easily be produced from much smaller quantities of information"" in the program. But the program did not intelligently design the game; the "game designer" did, and his simple program came at the behest of his complex vision. He and the computer designer are each more complex than the game. In order for your intelligent designer to be less complex than a log cabin, his "intelligence" would have to redefine the word. You credit him with designing a universe, when by your own definition of entities simple enough not to have required a designer, he couldn't had a computer game or even a log cabin in his nonexistent mind. But let's suppose there could exist a mind simpler than a log cabin and that that mind created some simple thing that by chance evolved into our current environment. Then chance has proven itself capable of greater complexity than design, thus destroying your argument from complexity! Sierpinski has a mere concept of infinite and visualizes perhaps a few repetitions of the fractal. He designs only the algorithm, and it is only by the external effort of the unintelligent, complex computer that he gets a very complex triangle. Did the intelligent designer have the assistance of a computer before it was invented by his "design" homo sapien? Having designed "sequential, intricate, and organized patterns", we can infer by "microcosm" that all of such are designed? Ok, I don't know if you can see this, but I hold in my hand a paperweight. I created it by smashing a rock with a hammer, upon which an appropriately-sized fragment broke off. Am I to infer by microcosm that every broken rock is so deliberate? I now breath out carbon dioxide. Am I to infer by microcosm that all carbon dioxide originates in the breathing process? "Actual infinites do not exist in the real world" requires explanation. "Since motion requires time, the initial singularity must have been motionless. But all things at rest stay at rest unless acted upon." Both motion and rest require time! Motion and rest are defined as and necessarily observed as difference or lack of difference between consecutive moments. With no known prior instant, it is just as presumptive to expect rest as it is to expect motion