Oh those clever etcetera--What RAZD said

I don't agree that this clearly indicates that RAZD was assuming that life started naturally.Lookign at this setence in particular: I read this as saying: "if an event occurred we cannot use the improbability of it happening without supernatural intervention to conclude that it had a supernatural cause"If a miracle were ruled out a priori the question of evidence and arguments would not arise.Thus the event in question is the beginning of life, without taking a position on natural versus supernatural causes.
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That is your opinion. It is not an opinion I share..

Given that you clearly misrepresented the significance of RAZD's probability calculation I'm not about to take your word for it.Nor am I about to reread 300 posts in the hope of finding something that probably isn't there.If you can point to specific posts - numbers will do - that verify your assertion please do so..

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In the fist sentence, RAZD forgot to specify the kind of life event: abiogenesis or special creation. It is a safe assumption that he meant abiogenesis.

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Or maybe he DIDN'T mean either. As I pointed out at least some part of it appears to inclusively refer to both.And since there is doubt then I think that we should accept RAZD's own explanation of what he meant: hereAnd since we are referring to the original thread, it should be pointed out that the section Faith chose to quotein the OP does not beg the question. This statement is undoubtedly true, and does not assume that abiogenesis has happened. A

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Of course it is true in the abstract, but it only appears not to assume anything about abiogenesis if you ignore everything else he has been saying, particularly the previous paragraph:

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But there are two problems in your assertion. First it is not clear that RAZD is referring to natural abiogenesis rather than life.Secondly it states "if there is evidence". Thus you cannot argue that the statement directly begs the question even in context. You would have to argue that the evidence RAZD had in mind begged the question which is getting rather tenuous to say the least.I must also point out that I have already discussed the sentence you chose to bold and pointed out that it makes more sense if RAZD is talking about the origin of life in general, as he later claimed. The fact that RAZD talks only of Life - rather than the means by which life arrived - you also choose to bold - is also consistent with my reading. Surely the fact that the very text you chose to emphasise can be used to argue agaisnt your cliams is evidnece enough that the matter is not clear-cut.I should add that if the context is necessary to understand your assertion you should have included it in your post. Ypu cannot expect others to automatically agree with you when you leave out information that you yourself claim is necessary to understand your assertion.I might also add that you seem to have had no problem in ignoring these statements: I do not see how you can fairly complain that others "ignore" text - text which you did not consider significant enough to quote, and which at most only implies the meaning you infer - when you have ignored explicit statements from the same post.n

I mostly agre with this. I would add that on my reading, the missing step is supplied by the assertion that a low probability of a natural occurrence of an event is insufficient to assert a miracle.Personally I suspect that RAZD's argument is a little confused.I would suggest the following revisions.1) The raw probability of abiogenesis has little relevance - the more useful number is the probability of abiogenesis given that life exists.2) At a minimum we would need to be able to compare the probability of abiogenesis with that of any proposed alternatives. Thus even if we had a reliable estimate of the probability of abiogenesis we could not use that as evidence of a creator, without also dealing with the probability of a creator accounting for the origin of life3) Since both quantities we would like to compare are not objectively knowable and subjective estimates vary wildly it is utterly impossible to construct a sound argument on this basis. Indeed it could be equally well argued that the probability of a creator producing life was - given our current knowledge - lower than that of abiogenesis.i

[quote] But I think the most important point here is that your arguing includes a catch 22Firstly you argue that

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he is clearly not speaking of life but of the origin of life from non-life, because that's what the mathematical model purports to be describing, certainly not life itself, as there's no way anyone is saying "life cannot happen." This wouldn't even make sense as an abstract statement because it's too absurd.

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So you claim that we must read RAZD as speaking of abiogenesis, not the origin of life and therefore he is begging the question.But later you say

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I don't recall your argument, but my point is that his fallacy is obvious in this statement, as he is misrepresenting the mathematical model as arguing for the improbability of LIFE, rather than abiogenesis, which shows how the two are practically synonymous in his mind, thus begging the question the model aims to challenge.

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Where you claim that he is begging the question BECAUSE he is speaking of the origin of life, not abiogenesis. The very reading you rejected as absurd.And while the quotes you ignored are not relevant to this partoicualr question they ARE very elevant to you assertion that RAZD was offering a legitimate calculation of the probability of abiogenesis. They make it VERY clear that RAZD rejected the possiiblity of such a calculation.So while your claim of "question begging" relies on a reading so uncertain that even you can't decide what is meant - surely indicating that there is room for legitimate disagreement - there is no uncertainty about RAZD's view of the legitimacy of the probability calculations he offered.So we see that you accuse others of ignoring the context when in fact they disagree with you on the interpretation and inferences to be drawn form that context. Yet you ignored the context of the probability calculations even though that is absolutely clear and explicit.A certain saying about motes and beams comes to mind..

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I did not make a distinction between "the origin of life" and "abiogenesis."

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You made a distinction bewtween abiogenesis and in your words "life happening". And the latter should be read as referring to the origin of life - how else could life be said to "happen" in the context of discussing abiogenesis and creation.

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I see no other way of reading it than what I spelled out. I do not understand the problem.

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Here's the problem. You assumwd a contradiction - one not required by the actual text. Therefore your reading is incorrect and even irrational. If you claim that you are incapable of reading it in any other way you are asserting that you are incapable of reading the post correctly because of our own irrational nature. I'll leave you to decide if that is really what you wanted to say..

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I assumed nothing. There IS a contradiction in the text. I demonstrated it.

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Both statements are false. The contradiction was assumed. not demonstrated.

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The problem seems to be that you share the confusion between statements about the origin of life and the existence of life which is what led to the question-begging.

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This is also false. To speak of life "happening" - as you did - surely refers to an event - and thus the origin, not the current existence. THge sdispute between creationism and abiogenesis is over HOW life originated, not whether it had an origin or not. This whole dispute is a fabrication and an evasion.

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I'm sorry PaulK, I disagree with your assessment and refuse to read
another word you have to say on this subject since as usual you have become abusive on top of misunderstanding what is being said.

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This is also false. I did not become abusive (indeed I have restraiend myself in all my dealings with you), I did not even criticise you - I simply pointed out the implications of your own statement. I specifically left the question of whether that was meant up to you. You seem to feel free to attack others - one of the purposes of this thread is to belittle people who disagree with you. Yet when a statement is made that you take as critical of you you start whining about abuse. Beleive me, if I wanted to become abusive it would be a lot worse than anything you've seen. And it would be no less than you deserve.But thanks for confirming once agian that "question begging" is just a lie you use to dismiss points you don't want to - or can't deal with.
Maybe you've forgotten your past use of this tactic. I assure you that I have not.

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I thought my point was that EvC's bias is not all that conscious but shows up in assumptions and question-begging they aren't even aware they are expressing

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But the fact is that you "find" these things whether or not they are there. Few of your assertions of "question begging" stand up at all/ Typuically they are completely unfounded.This situation is unusual in that the text CAN be read in a way that would beg the question. That is why the dispute is over whether that reading is correct.The evidence, then, is that if there were a clear case of question begging on the evolutionist side it would be noticed and accepted as such.
However it is also clear that creationists will make false and unfounded claims of "question begging" - and in ways that appear like a deliberate attempt to shut down lines of discussion that they do not want to be followed.