| | | The delusion of improbability! |  |
| | | كاتب الموضوع | رسالة |
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أحمد محمد لبن Ahmad.M.Lbn
مؤسس ومدير المنتدى
عدد المساهمات : 49335
العمر : 72
| | موضوع: The delusion of improbability! السبت 14 أكتوبر 2023, 2:06 pm | |
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The delusion of improbability!
In this section of the “Delusion”, Dawkins attempts to refute what he calls the argument from improbability! It‟s sad actually because there is no such a thing as “argument” from improbability in the first place! This is a typical case of (attacking straw men), because it is obviously not by means of probability that we prove the existence of God! And those who applied probability and improbability in either sides of the debate, were apparently unaware of the true meaning and rationale of probability and what it really means, as we shall elaborate here.
Dawkins says:
‗Hoyle said that the probability of life originating on Earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrapyard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747. Others have borrowed the metaphor to refer to the later evolution of complex
living bodies, where it has a spurious plausibility. The odds against
assembling a fully functioning horse, beetle or ostrich by randomly
shuffling its parts are up there in 747 territory.‘
Now the first problem I observe with many scientists in their discourse when dealing with the question of probability is that they very often mix it up in meaning and value with “possibility”! Something may be extremely unlikely, and improbable, but is nonetheless possible! The distinction between those two meanings has to be made very clear!
Furthermore; when I say it is improbable that event X takes place, what this statement really means is that due to my experience with many similar cases to this particular case, and due to my observation that in the greatest majority of those cases, event X did not take place, I conclude that the chance that event X would take place this time, is very little! Still, what does this really mean? Does it mean that X could not possibly take place? Does it mean that it is impossible? No! It simply means that I – only a limited observer who doesn‟t know, and who is simply trying to figure out a certain pattern in those similar events by which we could acquire a common rule –
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do not know, but I have some reason not to expect that event X will take place!Probability really means no more than that!
It is the statement of an inherently limited human observer who analogizes similar cases, and tries to make an expectation of what may happen in a certain case, considering a review of similar previous cases! This uninformed guessing, in concept, is not wrong; it‟s in fact very useful to us, but only when applied in its right place and for the right purpose! Had this observer acquired an inclusive formula or rule, validated by examining all variables and causes related to the case in question, he would not have resorted to probability! He would‟ve made a statement of fact! When I add an amount of acid to an amount of alkali, I do not say it‟s probable that the outcome will be salt and water! I do not use probability here (even though anomalies are rationally possible in principle)! The phenomenon is thoroughly studied, all variables are known and the resultant is not subject to probabilistic estimates! When a fish is thrown out of the water, I know it will die! I do not say „it is improbable or highly improbable that it may live‟! I know it will not live! But when on the other hand, I have a man who has cancer, in a very deteriorated state, and the majority of cases that I saw who came to that condition, died in a few months time or so, I can only say that it is improbable that he may live! I cannot say in certainty or near certainty that he will die! Why? Because I do not know all the variables and causes in action here; I cannot determine a rule or law that says this man will certainly die within a particular span of time! Nobody can!
This is why when he does survive eventually, at odds of one to a hundred thousand or a million; people tend to call this a Miracle! Because that‟s exactly what a miracle is! It‟s an event - not by necessity supernatural (whichever way you define this term) - that defies expectations and betrays most common observations known to man! If a group of people are well established in practice of a certain craft (say carpentry), and have never seen a carpenter capable of finishing the construction of a wooden cupboard in less than two days, are met with a man who can do the job in only two minutes or even two hours; they call that a miracle! This is why the Arabic
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word for Miracle is (Mu‟jiza معجزة) which translates: Something that challenges people‟s power and knowledge (leaving them incapable of mimicking it)! Scholars define it as (the breaching of the common case خرق العادة)!
It does not mean an impossible event! That is, it is not something that the mind finds impossible! It‟s simply the occurrence of something that the mind fails to explain by means of any currently known analogy!
Perhaps among the reasons for this ambiguity in dealing with high improbabilities as compared to impossibilities, is the lack of clarity in common scientific thought in the distinction between physical (statistical) impossibility, and rational impossibility! For example, when we say that it is impossible for a ball to free-fall upwards rather than downwards (according to the laws of gravity), we are talking about physical impossibility, which may in fact be described as an extreme case of improbability (a figure with so many zeroes it can hardly be conceived of)! So it is treated as impossibility, just as it is the case in mathematics in general when extremely small quantities are rendered (negligible). Another example of this is the known fact of physics that it is impossible for a man to walk through a wall (as a definitive property of the solid state). This is physical impossibility, but it‟s not a rational impossibility such that we couldn‟t possibly believe it if it was said to happen one day! We now know that atoms in any solid matter are vastly interspaced in a manner that makes it clear that what keeps us from merging with a wall when we touch it, or from sinking in solid ground, is actually an interplay of forces and energies that bind those atoms, forces that could – at least in the realm of rational possibility – be manipulated! Now as unbelievably improbable this phenomenon really is, it is not rationally impossible!
However, when we say on the other hand that one object cannot exist in two places at the same time, or one object cannot be three objects at the same time; we are stating a rational impossibility! It cannot be expressed in terms of probabilistic estimation, because such a thing just cannot possibly happen! And thus we can see that if something is statistically impossible, it‟s not by necessity rationally impossible, whereas rational impossibilities are senseless from the very onset of linguistic expression itself; they do not
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stand a chance of moving into the realm of physical, statistical and probabilistic assessment! It may indeed happen – against all odds – that I witness a ball falling upwards rather than downwards one day, or that I actually walk through a wall; it‟s not rationally impossible! But there‟s no way on Earth that I could ever expect to one day meet with another (me) (for example), or take a journey to (nonexistence), or go back in time to change history!
This is why we say that when we fail to find a “scientific explanation” to a certain event, we do not conclude that it has no rational explanation! A rational explanation is not by necessity “scientific”, statistical or mathematical! Only materialists (who believe that what they can see is all there can be) suffer this sickness of the mind! By “scientific” they mean an explanation that comes only from the very little that we currently know from observation (empirically) - or can attempt to understand by means of analogy to the empirically observed or experimented - about the laws of the universe and the way things work in it! This materialistic rule on what explanation is to be called rational and what is not - and hence what event is to be described as rationally possible and what is not - is in itself irrational and by all means anti-knowledge! By scientific explanation they only mean an explanation that is bound to our current tool of examination and theorization (the scientific method); and quite obviously, only very little of the way the world itself runs as we see it – in its ordinary state – do we really possess any form of „scientific‟ knowledge about! The very meaning of what is ordinary about the world and what is extraordinary, what is natural and what is supernatural, is a statement of limited human knowledge! When we describe something as “natural” we simply mean that we are used to seeing it this way in nature!
So if you can‟t explain it today, this doesn‟t make it unexplainable tomorrow, and if no man will ever be capable of explaining it at all in the future, this doesn‟t make it rationally impossible!
We must admit that there should always be things beyond our human ability to understand, even in this universe itself as we see it. This is not to tell man to quit learning about the universe, of course not; but to learn how to put his
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mind in its proper size, to learn how to be humble in his personal faith, and to recognize the natural limits of his tools! Just as we can observe the existence of the mathematical infinity in numbers, and understand that no matter how much we could count, there is no approaching that value; we can also understand that it is only rational that no matter how much about the universe we learn, it will always be very little! There will always be events and phenomena that do not fall within the range of any humanly achievable knowledge! This is by no means an appeal to ignorance, but to self-respect and humility! It is not ignorance as long as we know – with reliable evidence – where to draw the line.
Among those things that we understand, accept and even find it rationally necessary that there is no way we could understand or imagine; is of course the way the creator Himself is, and the way He does what He does! This is not the infinity value; this is what is there beyond the infinity value! Something we know is there by necessity of reason, but not only do we recognize it as unreachable for our knowledge; we actually recognize the rational necessity of its being this way: out of any line of analogy or knowledge our minds can possibly contain!
There were cases in history when the creator intended to make people see an event that leaves them unable to give it any causal explanation other than recognizing it as the exceptional work of the creator Himself, for the purpose of supporting the cause of His messengers and prophets.
So if we argue that among those miracles were events that are not only external to the knowledge of the people of the time, but to all human knowledge and comprehension, does this mean that such an event must have been in the sense that the order of the universe was interrupted by it? No! The universe is one big system ordered and controlled entirely by its creator! So no matter how exceptional an event is made by the Lord to be observed by the very limited human mind; it is not external to the overall universal order itself as run by the creator! He must have created the world in such a way that those things would happen when He wills, the way He wills, and for the sake of perfectness of the concept of miracle, we are made such that no matter how far we go with our material knowledge, we cannot even
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approach the way many documented miracles were made to take place! Miracles thus do not destroy causality; they only take place outside the circle of the physically or statistically possible, but not outside the circle of rational possibility! They simply happen through causes that are out of our human ability to understand or follow (at a very far level in the chain of causes). There is no way we could know how the dead was brought back to life on the hands of prophet Jesus – for example – or how Mary gave birth to him without a father! But we do understand that there are causes and effects, and that the Earth, the visible universe, the heavens above, and all creatures therein, are created such that miracles go in exactly the way we are told they did; there‟s nothing irrational about it; nothing “rationally impossible”! As for scientific explanations; we will always know too little, and we should learn how far the tool of “science” could go!
This is why the great Muslim scholar Ibn Taymeyah stated that Islam (the Qur‟an and the Sunnah) may tell us about things or events that are beyond our ability to explain (unexplainable) (like something too grand for our minds to grasp) but it never tells us about things that are rationally impossible! Things that make us wonder how they happened, but never things that our minds find impossible to happen!
This sharp distinction is a very important meaning that I believe is seriously lacking in the western philosophy of science today, and in the discourse of people like Dawkins who claim a Miracle according to all religions to be a “violation of natural laws”! What laws? It‟s only a violation of what we could currently – or ever – explain according to our current theoretical model of the world; a violation of the way we – according to our limited knowledge - expect things to happen! It‟s a violation of what we are used to see and expect! But to speak as though we currently have the universe all figured out like an open book, and we know all we need to know to explain anything we may ever observe, and that therefore we know for a fact that “the laws of the universe” should allow for this or that and not allow for this or that; this is sheer blindness and arrogance, and is in fact a demolition of the very motive that should keep the process of scientific research itself in progress! It is only because we do realize that we know too little about the
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world around us, that we are always eager to learn more about it, and we never stop researching and re-adjusting our theories, models, equations and laws!
This discussion urges us to establish a clear definition of what exactly we mean every time we use the term: (natural laws) or (natural law)! If by natural laws we mean our limited understanding of the way the universe works, and our currently mainstream theorization and mathematical formulation of the very little that we know about it; then yes by all means miracles do – by this definition – defy those laws and break them! It is only true if by “law” we mean our humanly limited model of the universe! But if we mean the way the universe works in reality, the way it is kept in perfect equilibrium with all those diverse events taking place everywhere within it, those we know and are aware of some of their causes, those we know nothing about, and even those we will never have the ability to know or understand; then we cannot claim miracles to be exceptional to that law or to break it! This will only be speaking of something we have no authority of knowledge upon! Moreover it would be an irrational claim to make because obviously, no matter what happens in the universe; it is always in perfect balance, always progressing in anthropic perfection; and it has been going on as such ever since documented history can recall!
Those natural laws that we currently know are only the latest of our humble human efforts to describe and explain what we see in the commonly observable world! No matter how many variables and causes we manage to incorporate with our chosen formulation of a certain law of nature, it will never be final or complete!
So when an atheist insists on explaining everything by means of what he calls “natural causes” he is being dogmatically irrational and narrow-minded, more so – in fact - than any follower of any other incoherent belief system! This is because by “natural” he does not mean causes that are rationally plausible, and could be verified by the scientific method or any other reasonable method; he rather means causes that are empirically examinable and/or statistically probable; ones that should analogize one way or another to something he currently knows, understands and could
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quantify, and can only be verified through the scientific method alone! Cannot think of a mind any narrower than this! The scientific method itself cannot be validated – as a method of acquiring knowledge – by means of the scientific method, so how does a man with such a feeble mentality argue for his method, and for its basic theoretical foundations? And if he insists, then how does he know that those metaphysical causes, said to be found somewhere on the chain of causes or beyond, and currently out of reach of the scientific method, will not one day become observable, or if not; will never come to be proven true by other means of proof and plausible argumentation than direct observation and empirical testing?
That‟s the point here! Every atheist claims he is ready and prepared to accept that when it happens, and that he‟s open to the possibility, when practically he is not! He chooses to readily deny everything that comes from any source other than his labs and experiments; or to be accurate, anything that comes from the department of religion and scripture in particular! But what if something does exist, but cannot be proven to exist by means of direct observation, not now or ever in the future of our existence in this world? Does this mean it cannot be proven true at all? Do those revered scientists claim that man can only obtain evident knowledge by means of direct observation? If that were true, then they should not bother at all to examine works of philosophers or logicians or even practice any form of rational deduction whatsoever (even under the scientific method itself), and at that, no observation they ever make would ever lead them to any knowledge other than the fact that those things they observe do exist as they are!
I hope this insight is clear enough to my respectable reader!
You‟ll find that an atheist scientist would attempt everything he can do to explain any strange or anomalous phenomenon within his current knowledge of physics (and this would be very plausible of him indeed, as long as he sees no plausible, valid reason that suggests anything else to his mind or directs him to take any other root in his investigation)! But when he fails, he will readily take a leap of faith and cut the way against what he calls “supernatural causes” only because he does not believe in the possibility of
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there being anything supernatural in existence, or to be more precise; because he insists on rejecting the existence of God!
He would say that if one day he could see the “supernatural” and inspect it scientifically, then it will be natural, and only then would he accept such an explanation! But what if we offered him evidence – not by necessity from observation - that proves the existence of some “supernatural” entity with “supernatural causes” that are indeed parts of the way the world works, and are indeed active parts of the universe, ones that we simply cannot observe! Would he accept that evidence? Or would he still insist on using (highly improbable) as a synonym to (rationally impossible)?
Even Gravity, the most famous of all standard laws of nature that we currently know, may one day be seen to halt, or to reverse its effect, by means of other “natural” causes! Let‟s reflect further on the freefalling ball example. Imagine what would happen if one day you threw an apple to the ground and instead of accelerating down, you noticed that it decelerated, until it actually froze in the middle of the distance between your hand and the ground! You would automatically be shocked, and questioning your eyesight you‟d utter the words: “this is impossible! It‟s a violation of the laws of nature!” well, in fact it‟s not! It‟s only a violation of what you know and expect to see, due to a lifetime of experience with gravity on Earth! It may very well be an anomaly, one that happened perhaps due to some electromagnetic field, or even an advanced invention that may affect gravity and is being tested somewhere nearby, or something of the sort, something you simply do not know how to explain! It might as well be due to the work of some unseen creature to us that has the power to affect things in our world in such a visible way! Both possibilities are not to be excluded to the onlooker as “irrational”! All evidence is to be examined and only the most plausible explanatory argument should be accepted, regardless of what discipline of knowledge it may come from!
If I said: Beyond that direct cause that you currently do not know, is a series of other observable causes that you do not yet know either, which ends at some unobservable entities that are only the unseen beings that what Muslims call (Angels), could you accuse me of speaking an irrational
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meaning?! Of course not! This is not rationally impossible! It has nothing to do with probability because obviously we never saw anything of the sort; we simply have no grounds for probabilistic reasoning here! This is a claim that goes beyond the scope of this particular method of argumentation!
So the fact that we Muslims did not know about Angels through the tool of science, and cannot validate their existence by means of this tool; does not make it superstition! And while you may one day come to learn and explain such a phenomenon if you ever saw it, by means of visible and observable causes, you cannot deny the fact that causes do regress to the point where you must admit factors that are beyond human power to observe or imagine, beyond which is the creator Himself! So there will always be another cause beyond the last one that you know, and another one beyond that, all the way up to that End! There will always be a greater value than the greatest value you could currently count, all the way up to the point of infinity. And right now; you may not know even the closest and most direct of observable causes!
In the Heavenly revealed knowledge of Islam, we are told that there are Angels responsible for the rain, others responsible for the growth of plants, others responsible for the progress of a fetus in the womb of its mother, others responsible for recording every word that every man speaks, and so forth. Those “agents” are intelligent beings that act by the command of their Lord, with no choice or option – by creation – to disobey or revolt. They are willful, powerful, obedient creatures, part of the system, working far at the end of the chain of created causes! The question now is, am I to be called superstitious or mythical only because I believe this to be true? This accusation is really nothing but the position of a man who insists on not knowing! A denial so eloquently described in the Quran in this verse: ((Nay, but they denied that the knowledge whereof they could not compass, and whereof the interpretation (in events) hath not yet come unto them. Even so did those before them deny. Then see what the consequence was for the wrongdoers!)) Translation of the Quran (10|39)
My argument for the validity of this claim is the authenticity of the texts where those miracles are mentioned, as true revelation to a man who is
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already verified as a true messenger of the creator (who is in turn, known to exist by rational necessity)! So there is indeed a sound and rationally consistent sequence of proof and verification here that no atheist could possibly argue against by simply saying: “This is highly improbable” or “this is not scientifically verifiable”! So what I‟m out to do with this book is to first cure the mental problem – and I do believe it to be a psychological problem - that leaves an atheist inclined to deny his own maker, then I tell him that I can prove to him that this man (my proclaimed prophet) was indeed contacted by the creator and that he spoke His words by His authority, and then comes the quest of examining what scripture was indeed spoken by that prophet, and what was not!
So yes I never saw any of those Angels, but I can prove to you that the texts where those Angels are mentioned are authentic and are evidently part of none but the words of the creator Himself and his true messenger! If I could do that, then you should have no rational reason whatsoever to deny the existence of Angels and the role those texts claim them to be doing in the universe, no matter how unimaginable it may be to you, because clearly this does not in any way contradict with reason or with any observational facts that we ever made or will ever come to make! We never claimed – for example – that they drop the rain from some big bucket in their hands while hiding somewhere behind the clouds! This naïve, cartoonish image is not even remotely suggested by any text that we possess! In fact we Muslims condemn and reject the fallacious depictions of Angels as painted by renaissance artists in Christian Churches (those naked winged children), and we do not take such an issue lightly! But this is no bigger a crime than the way Michelangelo dared to actually depict the Lord almighty Himself (praise be) as an old half-naked fellow with a white beard, resting on a cloud, is it?! This is sheer paganism and blasphemy by all means! It is the influence of the Greek imagery of Zeus, not the influence of any evidently prophetic or heavenly teachings about God!
We certainly do not claim Angels to look like human children with two wings! We never said they are visible to us, or that we know how they do their jobs! In fact we know from scripture that they are gigantic creatures
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made from light, and that they are invisible to man, and unimaginably powerful; hence they are not to be analogized to man in any way! It is mentioned that they do have wings (up to six hundred wings!), ears and shoulders, but apart from that, we‟re not told much about their actual looks (they do have the power to take human form after the command of Allah) Now my question: Does any of this sound irrational or impossible to you? No, it doesn‟t! Neither do you have any grounds to dismiss them as “improbable”!
I will not resort to the Quantum ambiguity to argue for the existence of Angels like some people would do! I will not propose any relation between the work of Angels and what is observed on the Quantum subatomic level, like many ignorant or less-informed Muslims may be tempted to do! I do not hang my faith in the validity of what scripture tells me, on this mystery or on any other mystery! This is not the way I acquired my knowledge about those beings in the first place, and I do not ask for more than I‟ve been told about them, because I know that if the Lord had known that we humans needed to learn more on that level, or to know how Angels do what they do, He would have taught us! But we simply don‟t!
Those Muslims who passed before us, they never failed to do what they were supposed to do with their lives, because of lacking this knowledge, neither did they suffer any inconvenience with the way they lived because of that! This is what wisdom means after all! Putting everything in its right place, with its right quantity and quality, not a single bit more or less! Not all that can be known, should be known for a man to do what he is supposed to do with his life! I – personally - do not need to learn – for example – to speak Chinese, to live a prosperous life the way that fulfills the purpose of my creation on Earth, any more than I or any other man needs to learn how Angels do what we are told they do! It simply does not concern any of us, human beings! The wisdom of a wise teacher is known not by how much he teaches, but by the purpose and effectiveness of what he teaches (The „ILO‟). If you don‟t need to learn X for the fulfillment of the purpose of your education, then your teacher would only be doing you wrong to teach X to you! Life is not without a purpose, and time is not without a cost!
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So my faith in Angels - a soundly verified faith – does not hinder my process of inquiry about natural causes in any way, or cause me to say every time I meet something I do not understand: (Oh It must be the work of an Angel or just the work of God)! Yes it is so, but I‟m supposed to do my best to learn whatever I need to learn to fulfill and facilitate the purpose of my life on this planet! I am commanded to make use of every resource in this planet for this end, in the very same book that teaches me about those Angels and what they do in the unseen! In Islam, the scientific enterprise is not a blind inquiry that seeks to build the entire structure of human knowledge on its own, we do not resort to the scientific method to demand answers that cannot be afforded by natural science, and we do not waste our lives chasing worthless, not to mention unobtainable knowledge!
In a created system, of which I am only a small part, made for a particular purpose, I should expect my ability to obtain knowledge of the universe to be limited – by creation – by the kind of knowledge humans need, to fulfill the purpose for which they were created. We humans are here to be tested by all the givens of this life, including knowledge itself, to make the right choices; to use everything we are given for what our creator tells us to do. This statement is not a statement of science, and by no means could it be obtained or verified by the scientific method!
One of the reasons why evolutionists enjoy the idea of their claim to have descended from primates is the fictional dream that the evolution of man will continue to progress until one day – perhaps in another million years or so - he becomes an immortal, Supreme Being, free from any boundaries or limits of any sort! This is why they would often contradict themselves in their view of man and his place in the universe! While they would often claim that man is indeed an extremely tiny being in a vast universe that should not – according to their materialistic philosophy – be viewed to be made exclusively for him, they would at the same time claim that one day man will be a transcendent being unbound by its laws and limits and able to take over it entirely in a manner that makes him an actual god, in every sense of the word! No wonder they dream of time travel and invading the galaxy!
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The struggle in this system is only among those elements created precisely for the struggle! Angels are NOT parts of that struggle! It is a competitive struggle between good and bad, for man to be tested by it; it is what the system is made for! It cannot rise – this struggle – to a universal level that endangers the stability or the continuity of the system itself! It has to be limited – on creation - by the limitation of man, limitations from which he can never break free.
Man has to be limited in knowledge and power, or else the system will fail! We are not smarter now – collectively - than our grandfathers were! We just happen to enjoy a bigger accumulation of knowledge and experience than they used to have! So when we invent we start from a point that is more advanced – by accumulation, not by intelligence - than where they started! We learn from their mistakes and experiments, and because of our access to their efforts, we need not start from scratch! A man living in a civilization of Bamboo huts in some tribe in the Amazons, when he faces the problem of cutting down a tree, he is not expected to invent a chainsaw for the purpose, no matter how intelligent he may be! He will only create a handsaw of some sort! Is this because he is less intelligent or less “evolved” mentally than we are? No! It is simply because he started from a much smaller content of previous knowledge than that from which we would start today, in addressing every need and problem that he faces!
So, I‟m sorry to disappoint you, but the human power and mental capacity, is today just as limited as it was yesterday, if not even more so! The human mind is not evolving! It‟s the accumulative content of knowledge that we currently have that makes us more advanced in our grasp of natural causes, than those who came before us on our local line of progression, each civilization according to its own determinants! Once we lose that, we‟ll go all the way back to where they were! There is a limit to human knowledge, and we cannot afford to exceed that limit! The more solutions and ideas we come up with, the greater problems we create, side by side with the solutions! The higher up you go, the bigger the damage you will take when you fall! The more questions we answer, the more the questions that would arise! This property is inherent in the way we approach the universe, in the
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| | | | أحمد محمد لبن Ahmad.M.Lbn
مؤسس ومدير المنتدى
عدد المساهمات : 49335
العمر : 72
| | موضوع: رد: The delusion of improbability! السبت 14 أكتوبر 2023, 2:06 pm | |
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way we are built! We are limited by our nature as individuals, and our properties as a group of interacting beings! So yes we will always keep pushing it, but there will have to come a point where the tower will collapse no matter how high it rises! Decomposition is just as essential a process in the way this universe works, as composition! It‟s a perfect balance in a system that is perfectly designed for its purpose!
It is thus extremely pompous and presumptuous to call such an event – the suspension of a falling ball in midair - a violation of natural law, or to claim that it is impossible! No matter how little you currently know, and how much you may ever come to learn about it; it is indeed possible, as a phenomenon of nature! You can – on the other hand – call it highly improbable (as a phenomenon) because you never saw something like that before! This is an argument that builds on observation and accumulated knowledge of previous cases. Now I can argue that every time a ball falls to the ground; Angels determine the way it will behave, and that they are responsible – in ways I do not know - for keeping the system consistent with all laws of gravitation running on Earth the way we observe them, but this would not be an argument that comes from observation and empirical science, and thus it cannot be approached by probabilistic reasoning!
So to sum it up, if the phenomenon in question here is X, you may say (based on observation and previous experience): “It is improbable that X will take place today”. But you may not say: “It is unlikely or improbable that any unseen beings had anything to do with it”!
The problem thus is with the atheist‟s conviction that all causes must be limited to what is observable to man, and that the end of the chain of causes must be something perceptually and cognitively viable to us as humans! This is where an atheist‟s problem really is! It is the reason why his logic in approaching the subject matter is so spurious!
Now my question to every honest and free reader is this: Do I appear, in any way, by this reasoning here, to encourage superstitious assumptions and explanations that “fill the gaps” with fairy tales and myths or with the irrational, the un-provable, or the impossible? Absolutely not! I‟m urging
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every sane reader to be open to possibilities that could be proven true by other means than direct observation, and are not bound to our limited human abilities to observe! I‟m asking him to break free from this corrupt philosophy that controls the way atheists view the world, the process of science and the human mind itself!
This example I just gave is an example of an event that is rationally not impossible, but at the same time, extremely improbable! How likely is it that when you let go of a little ball from your hand, it will behave this way in apparently normal conditions? Very unlikely! However, your mind as a human cannot allow calling it impossible! Yes it certainly will leave you dazzled, incapable of explaining it or analogizing it to anything you have ever seen! So when a man you trust, and you know is an honest man who would never tell a lie, comes to you with a claim that he did witness such a strange phenomenon, you would perhaps question his mental fitness on the outset of it, and you may have him tested for it, but when all reasons that may have you question his honesty and his awareness of what he had seen are positively invalidated, what will you do then? At that point you will have to admit the occurrence of such a phenomenon, despite its extremely high improbability, and the fact that you cannot think of any possible explanation for it that fits it within your personal knowledge!
This is why while for example the event of Moses (peace be upon him) splitting the sea is by definition a highly improbable event (it‟s not something we see every day, or we would normally expect to see) for a man do to the sea with his cane, it cannot be dismissed as impossible! Our minds do not know of any reason to deny its possibility! There‟s a long chain of unseen and unknown causes beyond it, ending at the will of the creator beyond the system itself, just as it is the case with every natural event that takes place in the universe and that we see around us every day! The only difference is we never saw this particular event caused this way before!
One thus has to clearly define what he means when he says: I seek a scientific explanation for a given event. If by explanation, he means the direct observable causes that can be utilized by man for his benefit on this planet then we do agree with him entirely, and we are certainly following the
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same process of natural science and empirical experimentation that leads to such knowledge (if of course we think we need to obtain this knowledge)! We do that, because we are given those tools for a purpose that we know from its only right source. We know we have to make full use of all resources on Earth for that purpose. So if this is what they mean by explanation, then we have no dispute; and this is plausible, purposeful and useful science! But if by explanation they mean the materialist denial of the unseen, unobservable, that is - by necessity of reason - there at the end of the chain, and they only aim at the blind denial of what they do not know; then we certainly do not agree to that, and it is by no means to be called “good science”!
When I explain a hurricane – for example – as the effect of certain conditions of wind, humidity, temperature, and other variables I have learnt to describe such phenomena in terms of, I‟m trying to understand as much as I can of the chain of causes that leads to such a phenomenon! At that, no contradiction or rational conflict of any form would happen when at the same time I say: “It was Allah who commanded that this hurricane take place”! Because by that I clearly mean that it was by His command and power that all causes (those we currently observe, those we do not yet observe, and those we may never come to observe at all) came all in order for this exact event to take place in this exact way that it did! There‟s no “gap” here that we‟re just trying to fill with God!
Atheists would repeatedly accuse all people of religion of having to push the “god” factor further away every time a new discovery comes to argue a “natural phenomenon” to be an explanatory cause! Well, I have to ask here: Who on earth ever said that Muslims view the Lord almighty to be “hiding” somewhere in the world, acting within any chain of causes, sending thunder bolts like spears in his hand from atop a mountain, as it is the common imagery that infiltrates every pagan faith, or any „Abrahamic‟ religion that was originally monotheistic but was stained by paganism (as it is the case especially with Catholicism)? The correct and rational position to think of the Lord is that He is external to the system and to the entire chain, as we explained earlier!
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Atheists would also raise the objection that what is called “Divine intervention” is totally improbable and maybe even impossible, because it is likely to destroy the system‟s balance and consistency! Well, this objection indicates clearly how little those people think – or rather how little they choose to believe - of the creator of the system! It‟s as though they have cut Him away from it, and are now objecting to the ways “theists” are trying to put Him back in (may His names be praised)! The creator is not a limited being in the system who does not know the consequences of his actions! He is – by necessity - in lordly control and dominion upon every single thing that takes place in the universe, no matter how little or mundane!
So while you, the limited human mind, may take centuries to imagine in what way a certain action could affect a natural process that is in direct proximity to that action, He, the creator, is the only being that possesses complete knowledge of the way every single thing in this universe is linked in effect to everything else, throughout space and time! The way a hurricane in America in one season affects a flock of migrating birds flying somewhere over Siberia in another season, is something you, the limited man may never manage to figure out! We know by necessity of reason that He not only knows that, He intends it (creates it) precisely and perfectly, and all its simultaneous effects taking place everywhere else, for purpose! A hurricane may only be seen by our limited eye to have taken down homes and killed hundreds of people; but we cannot claim that only this is what the Lord intended by it! Each and everything that this hurricane caused, everywhere in the universe, all the way to the end of time; is intended by the creator of the universe for a purpose that is previously determined in perfect wisdom! A sane man who respects his own mind cannot expect anything less of the creator of the universe. A hurricane may destroy an evil group of people, and hence do mercy to many by terminating those people‟s evil; it may at the same time bring punishment to those who deserve it, hence do justice upon those who deserve it, here before the afterlife! It may at the same time, cause many natural and ecological benefits, little of which is what we could really follow at our current level of scientific knowledge! All catastrophes of nature do nature good, and have a positive effect on it! So
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often do we find ourselves saying: “if it wasn‟t for this disaster, I wouldn‟t have had this good that came to me!”
The point is, all events that take place in the universe are by definition “divinely controlled”, and there is no such a thing as “divine intervention” because the Lord in reality does not Intervene, He never let go of it, so that his actions when they take place would be deemed exceptional or “interventional” to it! He runs it all continuously in seamless perfection! Everything is only as He chose and willed!
It seems to me that it is Western Christians – not pagans - that should be blamed for the spread of this pathetic notion of what they call “divine intervention” in western cultures of today.
A clear example of certain events that many Christians would falsely call divine intervention is when you survive a sinking ship and come out alive! Or when you get lost in the desert and somebody manages to rescue you! Or when you – for example – book a ticket on a flight, and you get delayed for some reason, so you miss it, and the next morning you learn in the News that it crashed and no one survived! At that moment you‟d feel “thankful” that you were delayed! Thankful to whom exactly, that‟s what the whole thing is about! The Lord did not “intervene” to save you like Christians may believe! He was running the whole thing from A to Z, and His choice to save you did not come as an intervention! He did not do a miracle to save you! He did not have to break the progress of life for your sake! He simply had all events in the universe progressing in the only way that would lead – inexorably – to this event of yours, and to all other events that took place in the universe at the same time that yours was taking place! It may be – to you – extremely unlikely that this may ever happen to you again in your life! This is why you could say it is highly improbable, but it happened anyway! And because it is that improbable, and your life was obviously “spared” from imminent death, it impacts you deeply, and makes you think of the proper way to feel and the right thing to do in reaction to that! Yes indeed He had mercy on you, and yes He answered your prayer, and you ought to be grateful to Him for that, but the point is that what He did was not an “intervention”!
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When we say it was the creator who saved you, do not imagine Him as some invisible figure tampering – for example – with the engines of some cars to cause a traffic jam in your way to the airport so that you would be delayed! This is what you, the limited human would do if you learnt that it is certainly going to crash! The Lord, on the other hand, holding the fates of all humans in His hands, and the paths of all causes and events in the universe, causes this traffic jam with all ordinary causes, just like He causes every similar event everywhere, because just like every other traffic jam, it was planned – so to speak - to take place in this exact place, at this exact time; for countless purposes, and not for your sake alone, or to impact your life alone!
It is meant not only for you to be kept from reaching the flight that may have taken you to your death, but also for a business man to miss a business meeting that would have doubled his fortune, and for another man to have enough time to reconsider alone in his car a fight he just had with his wife, and decide to turn around in the next turn and apologize to her, and for another man to read an article he may have never had the chance to read anywhere else, and for another man to miss a conversation that would have destroyed his career if he were to be part of it …. Etc.! All those storylines, and hundreds, even millions of others, have this little traffic jam placed in their path in this particular point in space and time for a certain purpose, impacting their lives in ways very few of them could anticipate, ways by which they are all tested, whether they know it or not! Would this man be thankful and reconsider his evil choices? Would this woman bored to death waiting as she is, put her mind and heart in something that is good for her, or would she curse the “luck”, the traffic, and perhaps start a fight with another driver; and so forth?
This is how unimaginably complicated and intertwined the system is, with all its long chains of purposeful causes and events; ultimately controlled and mastered all simultaneously by none but the creator Himself! Yes God saved your life and you should be grateful because if He so willed He could‟ve let you die; but He did not „intervene‟ in the chain of events to do it, in the sense that is usually implied by the common use of the term „intervention‟! “Intervention” in this meaning is nothing but a pagan conception of the way
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God runs the universe! And it is from there that the atheist objection to the concept came to arise!
So it should be reasonably clear that no matter how many “natural” causes we may ever come to discover, the fact still remains that the First cause at the very far end, beyond the system, is the Almighty Creator and there‟s not a single rational reason to believe otherwise, and clearly, there never will be! We do not put the creator in any “gaps” within the system that we do not understand! In fact whoever does that is a Pagan – or influenced by paganism - who is easily to be proven false by texts of the true religion maybe even many centuries before the discovery of any fact of nature that could debunk him comes to pass! Knowledge, again, is not only obtained by direct observation! It is not exclusively, fundamentally, or even mostly; a scientific endeavor!
Reiterating to the issue of probabilistic logic in atheistic argumentation, and after this long – but necessary – discussion, I repeat that things that may be labeled (improbable) simply because we never saw anything like them, cannot by any right or reason be labeled “impossible”! It should be fairly clear now to every reasonable man of science that things that are by necessity or by definition external to our scope of materialistic observation or experience cannot be submitted to probabilistic logic!
Yet, we can see the professor - and many of his Christian denigrators actually, not just his atheist fans - lay too much weight upon statistical probability as though it determines with certainty - the kind of certainty that is demanded when dealing with the question of whether or not “creatures” where “created”! - the possibility or impossibility of a certain event taking place! As though this relatively primitive “guessing game” (that‟s all it‟s really is! Just guessing) qualifies as rational evidence to prove or disprove the possibility of a certain event, not to mention refute a rational necessity!
It is clear to me now, that this conceptual confusion is somehow due to the original definition of probability by mathematicians as a Real number ranging between 0 and 1, so that the value (0) represents “impossibility”, while level (1) represents “certainty”!
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If we pondered on the way by which we determine the degree of probability, we will see that no matter how many cases we study, even if they all proved to be in favor of X, (hence giving a P value of (1)) this still does not mean by necessity, that X should happen every time, or that the next time we study a similar case, we could be certain that X will take place! If I examined ten cases, I may conclude that P(X) = 1! But if I examined a hundred cases, how do I guarantee that P(X) should still be (1) all the same? Even if it was, how can I dare claim that this means the next time I witness a similar case; I should be certain to expect nothing but X? This is a fundamental problem with the way probability is applied and the nature of conclusion many scientists may feel tempted to draw from it! No, (P(X) = 0), does not in any way mean that X is impossible! Neither does (P(X) = 1) mean that X is certain!
However it must be said that mathematicians are not to blame for this misconception! The theory of probability does indeed make a clear distinction between “certain” and “almost sure”! Although, it still needs to be confirmed and made clear that the meaning “almost sure” does not at all mean certain! However, the problem is with the way scientists view this terminology and apply it in their research!
When a man rolls a die, he knows that whatever he does, he will always come up with one out of six possible outcomes. This is because his definition of the sample space is based on a strictly determined set of possibilities that he decided by his own design. So unless something anomalous or totally unexpected comes to take place, he knows with near certainty that the dice would never give him a result of (7) for example! He designed it so it has only six faces with six values from 1 to 6. And since he does not possess any reliable knowledge of the exact way that the laws of nature will affect this die as it rolls on the ground, he does not know which of the six faces will be facing up when it comes to rest; he only knows it has to be one of the six faces. Now applying probabilistic reasoning here, we know that there is a (1/6) chance that he gets the result (2) for example in a particular roll. But what does this value mean? What good does it do this man in such a game? How is it helping him get the value he desires in any
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given roll? Well, in reality it does nothing at all! He only knows a set of possibilities, but not the particular element of this set that he should expect in every roll that he makes. Now suppose this man kept rolling the same die for tens of times in a row, and every time he got only one of two values: say (3) and (6) for example; he doesn‟t seem to get any other value, could he make the prediction that it is improbable that the next time he rolls, he gets any value other than those two values? No he couldn‟t, even if statistical calculations suggest it! To say that the number (6) for example shows up very rarely in the rolls of this man no matter how many times he rolls, this doesn‟t give us any rule to make a reliable prediction about the occurrence of the number (6)! One that would make him feel safe to bet his money on it! So to say that it is 1:1000 probability that the next roll gives the value of (6), based on the observation of previous rolls on the hands of that man (frequency view), this is a meaningless application of probability and it is indeed misleading! We cannot know the rule by which any sequential incidence of values may be taking place in the sequence of rolls by this man, and we cannot even postulate it theoretically; so what‟s the meaning or the use of such an application of statistical probability? Perhaps in another experiment with other conditions this frequency of occurrence will have a different meaning or significance, but in a dice roll it clearly means nothing at all!
Now what I did here was to utilize a commonly used example in probability literature to demonstrate that it is not always plausible to rely upon probabilistic reasoning for inference of future predictions even when the subject matter is open to natural observation and comparison! That is to say, even though probability may apply here, it is wrong to actually apply it! No matter how many times it turns out to be in your favor, you could still lose your money in the game! Which is exactly why gambling is prohibited in Islam!
The problem is clearly a problem of philosophy: How exactly a scientist interprets his observations in probabilistic terms, and what conclusions he builds upon this terminology or interpretation! This philosophical misinterpretation has indeed affected the minds of laypeople and even
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intellectuals in the West today, under the influence of atheistic philosophies of science.
It may be highly unlikely that disease X will kill you, but it still could! So learning about this probabilistic estimate concerning your condition should not – by any means - change the way you view your position as a humble creature always seeking the mercy of his creator! Yes there are measures you can and you should take against highly probable dangers and risk factors; but even the most improbable of all dangers are equally possible, and can befall you any time even when you least expect them! So if X and Z are two opposite events; the meanings of high probability of X, and high improbability of Z are not the same, and should not have the same impact on your conception of either of them, and the difference between the two meanings varies a lot from one certain case to another! There are indeed cases where probability estimates should mean nothing at all, and have no impact whatsoever on your decision!
Now the problem with applying probabilistic logic in this issue in hand here, the issue of creation, is indeed much deeper than this! It is absolutely meaningless, and makes no sense at all, either for the argument or against it! It goes without saying, that we have never witnessed any process of origination of life from inanimate matter before, not to mention the origination of inanimate matter itself from nothingness or from another form of physical material the likes of which we have never seen! So by what human reason can we possibly attempt to describe creation – or the Darwinian proposition – in terms of probability? To say X is probable is to say: “Out of my previous experience with similar cases I think it is very likely that X will happen, or X is the right explanation”! But when we speak of the origin of the universe itself; what experience could there be, and where is the set of events that could be examined in such a way to begin with? There is no empirical basis for observation of frequency! And even if we had one, how many cases do you think you need to have observed before coming up with the claim that it is highly improbable that the event took place by a single act of creation or by whatever it is that you propose in its stead?
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Some Christian apologetics may argue earnestly that since every physical variable that we know of in the universe could have taken any other value, and yet it was fixed within the only range that allows for our existence, then it is exponentially improbable that all those values were fixed this way without a willful and determinate creator! (The Anthropic principle) Well, I say the fact that all those “variables” were indeed “fixed” and determined by none but the creator Himself is too obvious to be denied! But to insert the probabilistic reasoning in this argument is to commit the very same crime that atheists commit against mathematical probability and the philosophy of natural science! The event of creation (or the origination of the universe) is a singular event that happened only once; there are no other universes with other values for those variables that do not permit for life; we never saw any, and we never will; so what on Earth would bring mathematical probability to such an argument? Those apologists - I dare to say – are following blindly on the logical footsteps of atheist philosophers of science!
There is not a single event in the universe as we now observe it that could be analogized to such a unique event (by necessity of reason) to begin with! So it‟s bogus to apply probabilistic reasoning here!
Probability does not apply to the origin of the universe or natural life for the reasons we explained. But as for the example of the Boeing 747, and the monkey typist, it may, under specific conditions and controls, apply to them, such that we may say that though it is highly improbable that some billion hurricanes may end up assembling the craft, or a billion hits on the typewriter may produce a meaningful paragraph or even a single phrase; it is not impossible in principle under certain conditions and controls.
Let me explain.
In the Christmas lectures (Growing up in the Universe) by Dawkins, in the third lecture: „Climbing mount improbable‟ he mentioned the Boeing 747 example, and stated that for a hurricane to assemble it in one shot by chance; that‟s impossible! But if that was to take place gradually on a very long span of time, in gradual „steps‟ of chance; then it will not be impossible, and the improbability will drop considerably! Perhaps if a couple of million
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hurricanes succeeded in randomly moving those same pieces around, placing those pieces in place one random step at a time, then eventually, we may come to see a complete Boeing after all!
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT1vXXMsYak&ap=%2526fmt%3D18&feature=PlayList&p=ED4BA3683D0273ED&index=2)
This, I should say; is sheer and utter nonsense!
Let us first speak of the Boeing and the hurricanes in further detail. Imagine that the pieces of the Boeing were scattered in an open desert, and the first hurricane passed over those pieces, what do you expect would happen? Well, I suppose that the hurricane would most likely throw those pieces much farther apart from each other, and get them scattered over vast distances in the desert! This means that we are speaking of near impossibility that any two pieces would even as much as come close to the place where they should both fit in the design of the Boeing, because of the first hurricane alone!
Now, what do you expect, my kind reader, the next hurricane would do? Well, I suppose that if the spacing between the pieces was greater than the width of the hurricane (which is what we should expect under the devastating effect of the previous one), then it is only likely that the second hurricane would pass over a limited number of the pieces, not on all of them! And in doing so, it will carry those pieces along and get them thrown away even farther than before, from the rest of the already messed up lot! So we can see that the introduction of more hurricanes would actually make it far more hopeless for any two pieces to even get anywhere close to each other as they fly through the air, not to mention get attached to one another by chance! Now the important question here is: am I speaking of an improbability that is growing exponentially greater with each hurricane in this example? No! You wish! It was already as good as impossible from square one! The initial conditions being laid out as such, make for no chance that any fruitful assembly would ever happen, not in a billion billion years! This is also true of a case where we get a monkey, and place it to a typewriter, and ask it to keep hitting the buttons merrily as it wishes! Not in
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a Billion years could you expect to get any composition of letters that makes any sense!
So what experimental measures could we take to shift the problem from the area of near impossibility to high improbability? (Mark the word: Measures) Ok, let‟s broaden our imagination and design certain restrictions and conditions. Should we perhaps get the pieces of the Boeing tied up to one another and to the ground with some loose ropes, so that we would avoid the problem of the hurricane causing them to scatter and get thrown miles apart beyond any hope of return? Should we perhaps add some strong fences around the area where the pieces were initially scattered? Should we fix some magnets in the pieces so that whenever – or if ever - it happens that they fly near one another, they may get drawn to each other and the probability of their getting attached in the right spot would elevate? I‟m pretty sure that Dawkins would find these ideas interesting, and would even think that they could make it imaginable that a multitude of hurricanes could somehow get this poor craft assembled after all! He may then estimate it to take place in only a few Billion years rather than a billion billion years! He may propose something similar to this in the typewriter for the monkey! If perhaps some device was added to it that would only get a letter typed if it hits its right place in the sentence, then perhaps given a sufficient span of time, and a very patient monkey, we would eventually get ourselves an intelligible sentence! The sentence that was already determined and was controlled by this new device in the typewriter! Such a previously determined rule would make it possible in theory, and perhaps boost the probability to the level of „highly improbable‟!
But wait a minute! I thought you were making an example for the origin of life in the absence of any previously “designed”, “determined”, “controlled” or conditioned medium for any particular purpose whatsoever! After all, the particles involved in the first reaction of origins were – according to your faith – not previously „manufactured‟ as “pieces” according to any previous blueprint, were they? There is supposed to be no previously determined design or rule that tells every two organic compounds where to go in a previously “designed” scheme for the structure of a cell, not
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to mention those additional rules and algorithms of control for the „random progress‟ that we had to add to the Boeing and the monkey‟s typewriter! There is no initial condition and no control rule whatsoever, because there is supposed to be no previous purpose of assembling an aircraft or typing a precise paragraph in the first place!
So obviously we are not talking about an improbability, but rather initial impossibility, no matter how many billions of years may pass! You have only established that in order for any chance event to have any constructive effect, there must be a previously determined rule for what has to go where, or what is to be “selected” and to remain in place! Without that rule; there are no “pieces of a Boeing” to begin with! No reasonable definition of the word “piece” can be claimed at all! So even by your false application of probability to the event of origins, you have no choice but to acknowledge that in order for the origination of anything at all to be as much as “highly improbable”; some initial condition has to be defined in advance, in addition to some previously determined rule of assembly according to which only the “right” random addition is selected and kept in place!
Now if this – in meaning- is not DESIGN (purposeful creation and programming), I wonder what other word the professor finds for it in his dictionary!
This is the problem that Darwinians refuse to admit! In order for a random factor (like mutation) to work constructively with the previously determined code (like natural selection) the way they claim it did; this does indeed demand a previously determined plan, one that would – at least – define what piece, organ, cell, or organism works and what doesn‟t!
Anyway, I do not find this example worthy of any further commentary.
I hope I have made my point clear that probability is irrelevant here, and is not properly applied; neither by evolutionists, nor by many of their opponents!
As for the irrational idea of (gradual accumulation of events of chance “accumulating the luck”; or as often propagated metaphorically by Dawkins:
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climbing up mount improbable); this idea is fundamentally flawed, rationally and linguistically, and is by no means any more rational than the (1*1*1 = 1) parable for justifying the trinity, as we shall come to elaborate later on! Just as it is the case that (1*1*1) will never give us (3), (0+0+0) will never result in (1)! (0+0+0 = 0)!
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