[clug] Mandrake 10 CDs.

Nigel Cunningham ncunningham at linuxmail.org
Wed May 5 09:37:44 GMT 2004


Hi.

Thanks for your reply.

On Wed, 2004-05-05 at 17:30, Darren Freeman wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-05-05 at 16:44, Nigel Cunningham wrote:
> > Evolution (n): A hypothetical process whereby infinitely improbable events occur 
> with alarming frequency, order arises from chaos, and no one is given
> credit.
> 
> 1) Evolution requires finitely improbable events

I'm not talking about micro evolution, but macro. Multiply individual
probabilities of the billions upon billions of events required to
achieve what we have around us and it ends up being infinitely
improbable. Not literally infinitely, of course, but it might as well
be.

> 2) The frequency is not alarming if you consider that it requires
> millions of years

Fare more than that millions. One has to allow for steps backwards as
well as forwards.

> 3) Order arises out of chaos all the time - grow a crystal and you will
> see that sometimes an ordered state is thermodynamically favoured. All
> that is required is that more disorder be created elsewhere to
> compensate. In the case of evolution, we have the Sun driving the
> system, and its entropy is constantly rising due to nuclear fusion.

If we allow for an eternal universe, we should have complete entropy by
now.

> 4) Whether credit is given has no relevance to whether it is happening
> or not. Plenty of people give a deity or aliens or whatever credit for
> evolution. Others are thankful even though they don't know what to give
> credit to. It doesn't have any bearing on whether it happened or is
> happening.

True, but you're missing the point. (The point being that Someone should
be getting the credit).

> Creation (n): A hypothetical process whereby infinitely implausible
> events occur with an alarming lack of evidence, whole groups of people
> believe it anyway without question, and mock the remaining hypotheses in
> taglines despite the likelihood of an ensuing flamewar.

:> My goal is not to mock but to make people think (and not a flamewar
but a discussion - let's take this off list). I fully agree that whole
groups of people believe in creation without question, but the same can
be said for evolution. Can you, for example, say you have carefully
investigated all the assumptions involved in evolution and all the
possible interpretations of each piece of evidence? No one could. We all
have to accept somethings without questioning them, assuming their truth
because the interpretation fits in with our world view. 

> Plus Evolution is a pretty cool mail client, so don't mock it. It beats
> LookOut! and to a lesser extent other non-free clients.

It is. I'm using it right now (if you noticed I was using Opera before,
I was giving it a try, but switched back). A good piece of software
doesn't make for a good choice of name though :>

Nigel
-- 
Nigel & Michelle Cunningham
C/- Westminster Presbyterian Church Belconnen
61 Templeton Street, Cook, ACT 2614.
+61 (2) 6251 7727(wk); +61 (2) 6254 0216 (home)

Evolution (n): A hypothetical process whereby infinitely improbable events occur 
with alarming frequency, order arises from chaos, and no one is given credit.



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