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From: arnold@ucsfcgl.UUCP (Ken Arnold%CGL)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.origins
Subject: Re: Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! (On Creationism and Religion)
Message-ID: <433@ucsfcgl.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 1-Feb-85 19:36:26 EST
Article-I.D.: ucsfcgl.433
Posted: Fri Feb  1 19:36:26 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 4-Feb-85 04:12:15 EST
References: <202@decwrl.UUCP> <528@mhuxt.UUCP> <239@ihu1m.UUCP> <322@cybvax0.UUCP> <945@ihuxn.UUCP> <331@cybvax0.UUCP> <259@scgvaxd.UUCP>
Reply-To: arnold@ucsfcgl.UUCP (PUT YOUR NAME HERE)
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Xref: watmath net.religion:5481 net.origins:705
Summary: 


In article <259@scgvaxd.UUCP> dan@scgvaxd.UUCP (Dan Boskovich) writes:
>Haven't you heard of the ICR (Institute of Creation Research) based in
>San Diego? There are hundreds of Biologists, Chemists, and Physicists
>who believe in creation science on the basis of scientific evidence alone.
>There is as much SCIENTIFIC evidence behind Creation theory as there is
>the Evolutionary theory. Please don't make statements that are not based
>on scientific facts such as: (Creationism is not science. It is religion.)
>If you would like some names, facts, etc. I would be glad to furnish them
>upon demand.
>					 Dan

I saw the director of ICR (name escapes me, this was in 1981) give a
talk in Berkeley.  Quite a show.  His "scientific" arguments were
totally fallacious.  For example, he stated that "evolutionists"
believed that the whale evolved from a cow-like animal (reasonably
true), and he "debunked" this by wondering whether it was the front end
of the cow that turned into a whale head first, or was it the tail that
turned into a fluke (he showed a picture of both possibilities).  Since
no scientists argues that either happened, this was a debunking a
*self-invented* argument.  It is easy to show your opponents are stupid
if you get to put words in their mouths.

He also threw up a slide of a simple amino acid, and showed how
improbable it would be that this sequence necessary for life would
assemble at random from the "primodial soup".  This is true, but (a) it
is not necessarily true that any given amino acid arose randomly (as
opposed to arising under natural selection pressures), and (b) it
assumes that this amino acid is the only possible life-supporting one
of its kind.  There might be billions of alternatives which would work
as well, but only one is necessary.  His argument is akin to the
following scenario:  Let us roll 1 million dice (6 sided).  When they
are rolled, any given result is wildly improbable (6 ^ 1e9), but I am
guaranteed that I will get one result.  Then this guy comes along and
says "Oh, that particular configuration is so improbable some
intelligence must have set it up".

In fact, despite Dan's assertion, he gave NOT ONE single piece of
scientific evidence to back up creation.  He spent his entire time
"debunking".  These are wildly distinct activities; to argue (with good
rhetoric but bad science) that a theorem is true is one thing; to have
scientific evidence to back up a different view is another.  Since his
lecture was precisely to explain "Scientific Creationism", he clearly
either had nothing to explain or did not think it would stand up to
scrutiny.  If you do have something better (i.e. scientific evidence),
I would be interested in seeing it posted.  I have yet to see any that
even masqueraded as fact -- all I have seen (on this and other
occassions) is continual "debunking", very little of it very effective,
scientifically speaking.
-- 

		Ken Arnold
=================================================================
Of COURSE we can implement your algorithm.  We've got this Turing
machine emulator...