174 thoughts on “ID proponents: is Chance a Cause?

  1. Well, other people can answer it too.

    Here is mine:

    Is chance a cause: No. In that, I agree with Casey Luskin.
    Do I think that evolutionists think it is? No.
    What the heck are we arguing about then? I have no idea.

  2. 1. No
    2. Yes
    2a Metaphysical reasons. Since philosophy was born in ancient greek the alternatives were determinism or “chance”, “chaos”. And that are the alternatives today as KN said in his post. A fully determined universe do not like to darwinists because led to teleology and to a Ruler.

  3. OK, thanks, Blas. I’m glad you agree that chance is not a cause.

    Now all that remains is to convince you that evolutionists don’t, either, except in the “informal” sense of “not predictable”.

    In fact, I’d argue that “chance” would be just as apparent in an absolutely deterministic one than in an indeterminate one. Look at the double pendulum “gif” – it’s motions are absolutely determined, yet cannot be predicted by any means, unless you’ve already seen the entire thing, and remembered all the moves.

    So to is effectively “chance”, and were you to stick your finger in the hittable area for a moment, whether it hit you, would be as much “chance” as being hit by a meteor as you go out to post a letter. And yet the meteor trajectory was almost completely determined by Newton’s laws of motion, and your decision to post the letter was entirely the result of the operation of your will.

  4. I don’t think that anyone considers “chance” to be a cause, but rather to be a euphemism for “within expected probabilistic deviations given the materials and forces involved”.

  5. William J. Murray:
    I don’t think that anyone considers “chance” to be a cause, but rather to be a euphemism for “within expected probabilistic deviations given the materials and forces involved”.

    Well, that wouldn’t particularly be a “euphemism” William, merely a shorthand, even it worked. But the two are rarely interchangeable. If I said that your arrow had hit the target “within expected probabilistic deviations given the materials and forces involved” would you interpret that as saying you had hit the target “by chance”? Or would you think I meant “that’s as good as anyone is likely to get, given the deviations expected from the slight breeze and the irregular surface of the target”?

  6. Here’s an alternative: “chance” is the name we give to variability that we cannot predict in detail, but only in terms of an expected probability distribution.

    So while I can predict with high certainty that it will rain this week, I cannot tell you with any degree of certainty whether it will happen to rain on the barbecue I planned for Friday afternoon. If it does, that will be “unlucky chance” especially if it only rains a few times this week. But the fact that we get an inch of rain this week is much less “chancy” and may be a near certainty, because we know what causes rain, and those causal factors are in abundance this week.

  7. Bruce Sheiman:

    Human Life = Laws of physics X chance + randomness+ accidents+ luck X 3.5 billion yrs. The laws of physics for our present universe arose by chance (from a multitude of possible universes); the first forms of life developed by chance (arising by primordial soup combinations that resulted from the laws of physics plus accidents); the first concept of life developed purely by chance (genetic mutations and environmental randomness); and humans evolved by more improbable occurrences

  8. coldcoffee:
    Bruce Sheiman:

    Well, I certainly disagree with Bruce Sheiman – or rather, I don’t so much disagree as find this passage extremely non-informative. It’s possible that with more context it would make more sense. For instance I have no idea how he is distinguishing between “chance”, “randomness”, “accidents” and “luck”. Do you have a link to the source?

    I’m wondering whether he is our own “BruceS” in which case it would be interesting to read his response to my OP.

  9. I think when someone says something arose by chance, they mean it happened purely by accident of circumstance.

    But I also think its a bit of silly point to parse too thinly. Sometimes people mean it was undirected by anything, sometimes they mean it was just a lucky break, and sometimes they mean it was not determined in any way. I think most people don’t have such a hard time figuring out the meaning based on the context of how it is stated.

    I also think evolutionists run away from this word, because imaging this world ending up this way by accident seems ridiculous. But that is basically what evolution is all about.

  10. Lizzie:
    OK, thanks, Blas.I’m glad you agree that chance is not a cause.

    Now all that remains is to convince you that evolutionists don’t, either, except in the “informal” sense of “not predictable”.

    In fact, I’d argue that “chance” would be just as apparent in an absolutely deterministic one than in an indeterminate one.Look at the double pendulum “gif” – it’s motions are absolutely determined, yet cannot be predicted by any means, unless you’ve already seen the entire thing, and remembered all the moves.

    So to is effectively “chance”, and were you to stick your finger in the hittable area for a moment, whether it hit you, would be as much “chance” as being hit by a meteor as you go out to post a letter.And yet the meteor trajectory was almost completely determined by Newton’s laws of motion, and your decision to post the letter was entirely the result of the operation of your will.

    Lizzie:

    So to is effectively “chance”, and were you to stick your finger in the hittable area for a moment, whether it hit you, would be as much “chance” as being hit by a meteor as you go out to post a letter.And yet the meteor trajectory was almost completely determined by Newton’s laws of motion, and your decision to post the letter was entirely the result of the operation of your will.

    You see here you are changing the concept of “impredictable because I do not know all the variables” to “impredictable because it is not determined”. If “chance” do not exists, it is already determined that I will be hitted by that meteor when I will go to the post office. We cannot predict that it will happen, but the laws of the universe are already settled if the universe is deterministic.

  11. I was listening to an old podcast of skeptic guide to the universe, and they were talking about a skeptic frind that had recently passed away at a young age. they were very sad about it, they were contemplating the meaning of his passing, and how hard it was, and how they couldn’t find good words to say to him, when they all knew he was going to die soon, and they also dedicated the last part of the show to him with a quote, because they know he would have enjoyed the quote, so it was for him.

    Now they are all atheists of course. They all feel life has zero meaning, other than it was an accident of molecules. And yet deep done, they clearly have a hard time believing that for themselves. They actually believed there was some meaning in dedicating the last part of the show to hm. They referred to him as a person, and not just a pile of molecules that no longer binds together. They believe he is an entity that is more than just a random combination of chemicals, even though by reason, this is what they claim to believe.

    No one really believes that all of this is just an illusion created out of accidents, when you really come down to it.

    If an atheist really believed as they claim, then a person is nothing more than a rock, that just so happens to assist us in our pre-programmed need to continue our survival. We only care about others survival because if we didn’t we would be less likely to have the best society to replicate our dna in.

  12. Now they are all atheists of course. They all feel life has zero meaning, other than it was an accident of molecules.

    You really need to talk to more atheists. My life has the meaning I give it, just as yours does. The fact that you choose to take your meaning from a book of bronze and iron age myths doesn’t make it magically more real.

    I love my family. I love my friends. I grieve when people I love die. That’s part of being human.

    Your attempt to leverage a personal tragedy to support your sectarian views is ghoulish and cruel. Is that what you think your Jesus would do?

  13. Lizzie & Blas,

    Lizzie, ‘evolutionists,’ as I mean it, are ideologues for the ideology of evolutionism. They are not simply proponents of evolutionary biology, cosmology, geology, etc. Will you confirm or deny this? As far as past experience with your categorisations, you will contend that ‘evolutionists’ are just ‘scientists,’ ideology-neutral or ideology-free, who study and promote evolutionary theories.

    Please define ‘evolutionist’ here in case you’ve already self-reflected on what this term means to you, Lizzie. Admittedly, there may be multiple definitions, so could you clear the air by saying what you mean by ‘evolutionist’ in your OP?

    Blas, repeat question: do you consider yourself an ID proponent or not? Please just humour me with a direct answer. As I’ve said previously, there is no requirement for an Abrahamic believer to be an IDist/ID proponent and the top Abrahamic thinkers (even Italians!), including scientists, philosophers and theologians, almost all reject IDism. Yet you seem to want to endorse it here at TSZ.

  14. Patrick: You really need to talk to more atheists.My life has the meaning I give it, just as yours does.The fact that you choose to take your meaning from a book of bronze and iron age myths doesn’t make it magically more real.

    I love my family.I love my friends.I grieve when people I love die.That’s part of being human.

    Your attempt to leverage a personal tragedy to support your sectarian views is ghoulish and cruel.Is that what you think your Jesus would do?

    Why do you love a bunch of replicating accidentally constructed clumps of molecules?

  15. Why do you love a bunch of replicating accidentally constructed clumps of molecules?

    For exactly the same reason you do — I’m human.

    And, apparently, I’m better at being human than you are.

  16. phoodoo:

    I also think evolutionists run away from this word, because imaging this world ending up this way by accident seems ridiculous.But that is basically what evolution is all about.

    LOL! Phoodoo still doesn’t understand non-uniform probability distributions or how feedback works I see. Oh well.

  17. Patrick: For exactly the same reason you do — I’m human.

    And, apparently, I’m better at being human than you are.

    Not for the same reason at all apparently.

    I DON”T believe life is just an accidental series of replicating chemicals. YOU DO.

  18. For exactly the same reason you do — I’m human.

    And, apparently, I’m better at being human than you are.

    Not for the same reason at all apparently.

    I DON”T believe life is just an accidental series of replicating chemicals. YOU DO.

    Ah, thanks for all the caps, that makes your point much more clear.

    What you believe doesn’t matter. What you have objective, empirical evidence for does. You can wrap yourself in your fantasies if they make you feel better, and if they’re the only reason you have for caring about other people I strongly encourage you to continue to do so.

    I prefer to associate with people who recognize our shared humanity, our capacity for empathy and love, and the idea that it is all the more precious because we have only a brief period of existence.

    Contra your reprehensible initial comment, it is your human nature that gives you the capacity to care about others, DESPITE your religious beliefs. (See, I have a caps lock key, too.)

  19. Gregory:
    Lizzie & Blas,

    Lizzie, ‘evolutionists,’ as I mean it, are ideologues for the ideology of evolutionism. They are not simply proponents of evolutionary biology, cosmology, geology, etc. Will you confirm or deny this? As far as past experience with your categorisations, you will contend that ‘evolutionists’ are just ‘scientists,’ ideology-neutral or ideology-free, who study and promote evolutionary theories.

    Please define ‘evolutionist’ here in case you’ve already self-reflected on what this term means to you, Lizzie. Admittedly, there may be multiple definitions, so could you clear the air by saying what you mean by ‘evolutionist’ in your OP?

    Blas, repeat question: do you consider yourself an ID proponent or not? Please just humour me with a direct answer. As I’ve said previously, there is no requirement for an Abrahamic believer to be an IDist/ID proponent and the top Abrahamic thinkers (even Italians!), including scientists, philosophers and theologians, almost all reject IDism. Yet you seem to want to endorse it here at TSZ.

    No I´m not an ID supporter.

  20. phoodoo:
    No one really believes that all of this is just an illusion created out of accidents, when you really come down to it.

    If an atheist really believed as they claim, then a person is nothing more than a rock, that just so happens to assist us in our pre-programmed need to continue our survival.We only care about others survival because if we didn’t we would be less likely to have the best society to replicate our dna in.

    Nobody believes that we are nothing more than a rock or that life is created by accidents (although accidents are involved, they are not all that are involved, and if they were all that are involved evolution would be impossible).

    You are promulgating a silly strawman, common among ID/creationists, and you have been corrected on this point so often that it is extremely difficult to assume you are acting in good faith.

  21. Gregory, can you cite one example of a particular evolutionist and the evil done as a result of evolutionism? Some crime against humanity or some specific opportunity in science missed?

    A direct answer would be appreciated.

  22. Blas:
    You see here you are changing the concept of “impredictable because I do not know all the variables” to “impredictable because it is not determined”. If “chance” do not exists, it is already determined that I will be hitted by that meteor when I will go to the post office. We cannot predict that it will happen, but the laws of the universe are already settled if the universe is deterministic.

    Another way to think about it: physics is the only scientific subdiscipline which is causally complete.

    So when we use chance in a biological explanation, it can be taken as a short form for saying the causes are to be found in a (lower-level) scientific discipline, ultimately in physics.

    And depending on your interpretation of quantum mechanics, you could believe that there are uncaused events in physics.

    Using chance in this way does not mean biological explanations are not useful and the best scientific explanations.

    As for determinism, I suggest the Sean Carroll article which I linked to in a post on a different thread which explains how a physicists can still believe in determinism in a quantum world. (Although I would not venture to call such a person a determinist).

  23. phoodoo:
    I think when someone says something arose by chance, they mean it happened purely by accident of circumstance.

    Yes, indeed. As I’ve said, I have no problem with that kind of informal use of the term – the meaning is usually clear.

    But I also think its a bit of silly point to parse too thinly.Sometimes people mean it was undirected by anything, sometimes they mean it was just a lucky break, and sometimes they mean it was not determined in any way.I think most people don’t have such a hard time figuring out the meaning based on the context of how it is stated.

    Again, I agree. But that is exactly why I made such a fuss of the idea of rejecting “chance” as “the null hypothesis” in Barry Arrington’s coin-toss thought experiment. Once you are in the realm of statistical hypothesis testing, we need precision, and as my OP showed, there are many many kinds of “chance” hypotheses, and some of them will even produce 500 heads, or the equivalent in biochemistry or other material systems. Therefore the fact that we can confidently reject “fair coin, fairly tossed” as an explanation for 500 heads-up coins on a table, has no bearing on the question of whether we can infer “intelligent design” by rejecting a “chance” hypothesis. There are simply far too many processes that can be, in some sense or other, described as “chance” – it’s simply not something that can be tested as a null.

    I also think evolutionists run away from this word, because imaging this world ending up this way by accident seems ridiculous.But that is basically what evolution is all about.

    No. The reason “evolutionists run away from this word” is that it is constantly produced as a stick to beat us with in contexts where it is at best meaningless and at worst thoroughly misleading. Barry’s 500 coin example is a prime example. It is perfectly obvious that the coins were not tossed. That doesn’t mean that therefore we should infer a designer from homochirality, as Sal Cordova claims is a comparable inference.

    If IDists want to use the word in the context of hypothesis testing, then they need to be crystal clear about what they mean. And if all Barry meant was “fair coin, fairly tossed” then there are no grounds for Sal extrapolating to say that homochiral molecules cannot have been the result of “chance”. Sure, they can’t have been the result of virtual molecule tossing, but nobody claims they are. They could perfectly easily have been the result of some other stochastic process, for example on of the ones I used in my OP, and which abound in nature, and which tend to produce uniform results.

  24. I’d like to quote something that Richard Hoppe wrote a while back, and reposted at my request recently, at Secular Cafe:

    A common remark I hear from Christians and other religionists is that an atheist must feel very alone, very isolated, very afraid of death. Not a chance.

    Late every night, rain or shine, I walk my big dogs, Sherlock and Watson, usually between 1:00 am and 3:00 am. I live out in the country on 3.5 acres, and while there is some light pollution from my neighbor’s yard light, the meadow up on the north end of the place is shielded by trees and there’s a good view of the north and east sky from overhead to the horizon and half-way to the horizon in the south. When it’s clear the stars are bright. The Great Bear circles around its smaller sibling, the one with Polaris at the end of its handle. Depending on the time of year Casseopia swims in the Milky Way or Orion stalks the sky to the south. Thousands of stars are in view, and there’s an occasional meteor, the moon, or a planet or three for variety.

    And every night that I see the stars I think — consciously think — that I am made of star stuff, to steal Carl Sagan’s phrase. Every atom in my body heavier than helium (and virtually all the helium, too) was manufactured in stars by the fusion reactions that produce their heat and light. At the end of those stars’ lives the heavy elements — carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, iron and so on — were flung into space when the stars went nova. Later, another star and its planets — our solar system — condensed out of the clouds of elements generated in those earlier stars and in the end, after many millennia of chemical and biological evolution, those elements made me and my dogs.

    So I am literally part of the universe: I am made of elements manufactured in stars. And I am aware of that fact every night when I walk my dogs.

    And then there are my dogs, Sherlock and Watson. Both are strays — they chose us, coming to the house out in the country without identification. In spite of our best efforts to find them, their previous owners never appeared, and so Sherlock and Watson have stayed with us.

    Sherlock is a Doberman/Rottweiler cross, the best-natured dog I’ve ever had. Watson is a setter/something cross and a goofball. Sherlock was in very good shape when he showed up, with a brand-new collar but no ID. Watson was full grown but was near starving to death — though full-grown he weighed just 40 pounds and every bone in his body was visible. Now they’re both around 70 pounds and are sleek and healthy.

    And they are my cousins. That’s a fact of biology: My dogs are my cousins. Many times removed, of course, but we are family in more than the pet/master sense: we’re “blood” relatives. So when I walk them up north every night, we’re a genuine family walking together, three cousins, all of us made from the same star stuff. And I am consciously aware of that fact every night.

    When I die I’ll be cremated. My ashes will be scattered somewhere, maybe in a bit of virgin forest that still survives about 40 miles south of here. The atoms of which I’m composed will re-enter the earth’s biological and geological cycles, some being incorporated into plants or animals, some sinking into the earth or riding the wind. And then, billions of years hence when the sun bloats up into a red giant to engulf the earth, boiling off its atmosphere and crust, my atoms will be flung back into space, riding the waves of matter and energy that the sun throws out in its spasms.

    So I am connected to the universe on both ends, from the creation of my atoms to their final journey to the stars. And I’m connected to my animals and to all life on earth. How much more connected can I get? I am directly linked into the physical universe, made of atoms manufactured in stars, and I am an integral part of the family of all life, cousin to everything that lives. I’m not alone, not isolated, and not afraid of death.

    I won’t know that after I die, of course: I won’t know anything. But I know it now, and that’s what counts.

  25. Thanks for sharing that Lizzie. It captures my feeling of wonder toward our existence better than I could ever express it.

  26. Gregory:
    Lizzie & Blas,

    Lizzie, ‘evolutionists,’ as I mean it, are ideologues for the ideology of evolutionism. They are not simply proponents of evolutionary biology, cosmology, geology, etc. Will you confirm or deny this?

    Of course I won’t deny that that is what you mean by the term, Gregory. But as I have said repeatedly, it is not what I mean by the term (I deliberately avoided “darwinist” as you also have some ideological referent for that as well). If I talk about ideology I will make that clear. But mostly I don’t, because it’s not my field.

    As far as past experience with your categorisations, you will contend that ‘evolutionists’ are just ‘scientists,’ ideology-neutral or ideology-free, who study and promote evolutionary theories.

    Yup, that is what I mean by the term. I don’t “contend” that they are – I just mean that thing by the term. There is no universal law that defines what terms mean and what they don’t – not even a dictionary. A dictionary records usage, it doesn’t prescribe or proscribe it. And you know perfectly well what I mean by that term, because I have told you a gazillion times.

    Please define ‘evolutionist’ here in case you’ve already self-reflected on what this term means to you, Lizzie. Admittedly, there may be multiple definitions, so could you clear the air by saying what you mean by ‘evolutionist’ in your OP?

    People who find the theory of evolution to be coherent and well supported by evidence.

  27. thorton:
    Thanks for sharing that Lizzie.It captures my feeling of wonder toward our existence better than I could ever express it.

    I think it is one of the finest pieces of writing on life and death I have ever read, and I’ve told Dick that. I think I would like it read at my funeral 🙂 Not that I will care by that stage, heh.

  28. Blas:
    1. No
    2. Yes
    2a Metaphysical reasons. Since philosophy was born in ancient greek the alternatives were determinism or “chance”, “chaos”. And that are the alternatives today as KN said in his post. A fully determined universe do not like to darwinists because led to teleology and to a Ruler.

    If everything is predetermined, so are we. We’re made of the same stuff as everything else.

    So whatever we happen to do, even evil stuff, has been deliberately chosen to happen by your grand architect of determinism. How could we be responsible then, if god knowingly chose it this way?

  29. phoodoo: Why do you love a bunch of replicating accidentally constructed clumps of molecules?

    I’ll toss in my own answer here: because I see and experience “people” as more than the sum of their clumped parts.

    Indeed, it is just as easy to dismiss a fine bottle of wine as merely some suffides, sugar, amino acids, tannins, and fruit particulate, but the fact is in the right combinations and concentrations, it is a brilliantly drinkable liquid, no two bottles of which are ever identical.

    In the same sense, I can distinguish between various people and enjoy them simply for existing and missing them when they no longer occupy the world. It doesn’t take thinking there’s some grander purpose for anyone than simply existing, at least not for me.

  30. Except that they aren’t, entirely. In a well-adapted population, more mutations will be deleterious than beneficial, whereas the opposite may be true in an as-yet-poorly adapted population.

  31. Lizzie:
    Except that they aren’t, entirely.In a well-adapted population, more mutations will be deleterious than beneficial, whereas the opposite may be true in an as-yet-poorly adapted population.

    Yes they are all still random WRT fitness, The effect of each just doesn’t have a uniform probability distribution. 🙂

    When you’re already near the top of a peak there are more ways to fall down than climb up higher.

  32. Robin: Indeed, it is just as easy to dismiss a fine bottle of wine as merely some suffides [?], sugar, amino acids, tannins, and fruit particulate, but the fact is in the right combinations and concentrations, it is a brilliantly drinkable liquid, no two bottles of which are ever identical.

    Oh how true!

    I’m sipping a very fine (but cheap – they can only afford to make it with grapes) local merlot now! 😉

  33. thorton,

    Asymptote and the way “punk-eek” postulates that initial rapid burst of adaptation towards the best fit to a novel niche springs to mind.

  34. phoodoo: Why do you love a bunch of replicating accidentally constructed clumps of molecules?

    I have ageneric question for theists:

    Why do you have such contempt for creation? Do you really hate your God that much?

    I keep hearing that science grew out of Christianity. I don’t fully accept that, but I do accept that the early scientists viewed themselves as studying God’s creation.

    So when did it become desirable to downgrade creation to mere atoms?

    When the early twentieth century physicists discovered that “matter” was vastly more deep and subtle than previously suspected, theists might have celebrated. They could have seen an opportunity to unify the mystical and the material. Instead they ran away from science.

    Is the age of the earth really worth throwing away reason? Is the literal truth of the flood story really that important?

  35. BruceS: Another way to think about it:physics is the only scientific subdiscipline which is causally complete.

    So when we use chance in a biological explanation, it can be taken as a short form for saying the causes are to be found in a (lower-level) scientific discipline, ultimately in physics.

    And depending on your interpretation of quantum mechanics, you could believe that there are uncaused events in physics.

    Using chance in this way does not mean biological explanations are not useful and the best scientific explanations.

    As for determinism, I suggest the Sean Carroll article which I linked to in a post on a different thread which explains how a physicists can still believe in determinism in a quantum world.(Although I would not venture to call such a person adeterminist).

    Sorry, I do not understand are you for the determinism or not? if not what make the universe undetermined?

  36. Rumraket: If everything is predetermined, so are we. We’re made of the same stuff as everything else.

    So whatever we happen to do, even evil stuff, has been deliberately chosen to happen by your grand architect of determinism. How could we be responsible then, if god knowingly chose it this way?

    Good question, that is one of the reasons darwinists try to introduce chance as a cause. For example the good Lizzie here argue that the indeterminacy of my future is due my free will while in the other post from his chest she states that he doesn´t beleive in free will.

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