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From: colonel@gloria.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Probability and evolution
Message-ID: <138@gloria.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 5-May-84 22:33:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: gloria.138
Posted: Sat May  5 22:33:29 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 9-May-84 01:54:31 EDT
References: <1350@uw-june>
Organization: SUNY/Buffalo Computer Science
Lines: 21

[Why isn't this going on in net.origins?]

This discussion of probabilities seems rather naive.  The probability
of a meteorite's striking your house may be very small, but if you find
a hole in your roof and a meteorite in your bathtub, the probability
becomes very high.  To put it generally, a-posteriori probabilities are
meaningful only with respect to the current data.  The probability
of mankind's developing spontaneously in a lifeless universe, GIVEN
THAT WE HAVE DONE SO, is 1.

What both creationists and evolutionists appear to overlook is the
statistical principle that I first encountered in Kasner and Newman's
_Mathematics and the Imagination_:

	"Probabilities mean nothing with respect to a single case."

To ignore this reduces Creationism to disbelief in reality, and
Evolutionism to a proof that we probably don't exist.
-- 
Col. G. L. Sicherman
...seismo!rochester!rocksvax!sunybcs!gloria!colonel