From: kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub)
Subject: Re: "Bales is lying" thread
Reply-To: kv07@IASTATE.EDU (Warren Vonroeschlaub)
Organization: Ministry of Silly Walks
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 18:16:09 GMT

  I wanted to stay out of this, but I have to keep up my #2 standing :-).

In article <7694@tekig7.PEN.TEK.COM>, bobb@tekig1.PEN.TEK.COM (Robert W Bales)
writes:
> JM> Hence, this is not evidence FOR creationism.
>  
> RB> I mentioned "design" rather than "creation."
>  
> >Since he asked you for evidence of Creationism, "design" doesn't meet the
> >request.
> 
> Evidence of design is evidence for a theory from the list of theories which
> involve design.  It is a short list: creation.

  No.  In fact, I can't think of a single theory of how life got here that
doesn't include the appearance of design.  Did you miss my posting about how the
creatures whose brains were entirely programmed by a random number generator
nonetheless gave the distinct appearance of design.

  Shortened list of theories supported by the appearance of design: Creationism
(I think, as I hae never actually seen the theory), Evolution, Little green men
from another planet, Vedic creation, "It is all just a projection of your mind",
. . .

  Aside from Last ____dayism, I can't think of a single theory that isn't
supported by the _appearance_ of design.

> Evidence of design is evidence for creation.

  And almost every other theory.  therefore it is evidence for no theory. 
(Otherwise I could cite as evidence for evolution that the universe exists, that
life exists, that purple cows with five horns don't exist, and hundreds of other
things that only vacuously support evolution)

  Furthermore, evolution predicts poor design, creationism predicts excellent
design.  Which one do we see?

> But the issue is NOT the probability of the feather's being the way it is,
but
> rather the probability that that state was caused by evolution.  By analogy,
> if we flip a coin and get 10,000 heads in a row, the probability that we got
> 10,000 heads in a row is 1, but the probability that the coin was a "fair"
> coin is quite low.
> 
> >A feather -COULD- just as easily evolved in some other way,
> 
> How do we know?

  Because there is no evidence that is the only way feathers can exist.  Bsides:
if your argument is this is the only way a feather could evolve then the
probability that a feather would look like that because of evolution is 1. 
Congratulations: you just found that feathers are supporting evidence for
evolution.

>>and you would look at THAT feather and claim it was designed!
>
>Sorry, but David doesn't know what I would do when faced with a situation that
>doesn't exist!

  On the contrary.  Since you have given no reason why _this particular_ feather
design is more important than any other, other than this one exists and the
others don't, it is a valid conclusion.  Not one of your comments would fail if
the design of a feather was completely different.

  Until you can explain why _only_ this design of feathers would be support for
creationism, you have provided no evidence for creationism.

>Since my claims are based on the characteristics of the feather, if those
>characteristics were different and did not support the conclusion, my
>conclusion would be different.

  But no set of different characteristics would fail to support your conclusion.
Therefore your statements a vacuous.

 |  __L__
-|-  ___  Warren Kurt vonRoeschlaub
 |  | o | kv07@iastate.edu
 |/ `---' Iowa State University
/|   ___  Math Department
 |  |___| 400 Carver Hall
 |  |___| Ames, IA  50011
 J  _____