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From: rlr@pyuxn.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.origins
Subject: Re: If You've Got the Time...
Message-ID: <896@pyuxn.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Jul-84 17:40:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxn.896
Posted: Fri Jul 20 17:40:47 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 21-Jul-84 04:38:22 EDT
References: <896@akgua.UUCP> <895@pyuxn.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Piscataway N.J.
Lines: 42

> If the Rationalist Materialist explanation of the origins
> of life on Earth are correct then we sprang from the chance
> combination of elements into amino acids and the chance
> union of amino acids into proteins.  The argumentation that is
> usually advanced is that over the long eons of time the various
> combinations were "tried" by nature until the right ones matched
> up.  The question on the floor today is "Was there enough time
> for this process to take place and thus validate the explanation ?"
> I submit that the answer is no.

1.  This assumes an agent (nature) doing the "trying", when simple random
events offer a better description.

2.  This also assumes some sort of linear flow to probabilistic events. (i.e.,
if there is a one in a billion chance of something happening, we would
have to wade through a billion trials before the event occurred)
A probability only represents a likelihood of an event occurring.  An
extremely improbable event can occur three times in a row and this
would still not "violate" the probability or infer that there is an
agent "directing" the events to happen.

After the fact, one may proclaim that "what happened was highly unlikely", but
that has no bearing on whether or not the event was "caused" or "directed" by
some agent.  "We" (our planet) didn't have to have "tried" all the
possibilities; we just happened to have "tried" the ones that happened
to work.  Who knows?  Perhaps there are millions of planets out there
where other combinations, some unsuccessful, some successful (though not
necessarily like ours) are being "tried".  This planet was one (THE one?)
on which there was "success"---on which life resulted.  (Of course, the words
in quotes, like "try" and "success", are quoted for a reason:  because use
of those words may make nice allegory, but they imply some external agent
doing the "trying" and determining the criteria for "success", and there's no
need for such an agent in the current model, and no evidence to require one.)

One might still ask "Among all the improbabilities of the infinite, then, why
here, why us?" But asking that question makes a bold assumption---that there
is something out there that determined a "why" and acted on it.  A bold
assumption about the way one might LIKE the universe to be organized.  That
"liking" doesn't make it so, much as one might wish to believe that one's
existence is not simply a result of normal physical interactions and chance..
-- 
If it doesn't change your life, it's not worth doing.     Rich Rosen  pyuxn!rlr