[Jaywalker]

Originally Posted by Ishcaramoochie

ooohhhh! can i have one of those?

What? A ‘brainwash’? Sure just contact Mordecai and I'm sure he'll be more than willing to give you a good serving of ‘mental zonrox’

Originally Posted by trypho

I agree that both of them are ordered. But as Ischarmoochie said, the no. of steps to describe pattern (a) is very small compared to that of pattern (b). Regarding the sunset illustration, it is still debatable if it indeed has no objective meaning.

If we are going to define the level of information as the compressibility of information then a random string of characters should contain more information than an ordered set since there is no pattern to base a simplification upon but I think everyone would agree that randomness is not indicative of design. That’s problematic since Mordecai equates the level of information with design
I don’t know if you brought up information entropy just to say what you think information is or whether you’re going to use it as argument for design
-if it is the latter then I’d like to know whether you define ‘design’ as inversely proportional to the information entropy or directly proportional to it. If it is inversely proportional (correct me if I’m wrong) then pattern (a) should look more ‘designed’ than pattern (b) but obviously it does not. If it is directly proportional then pattern (b) should look more designed than pattern (a) –consistent with how we view the two patterns. But using the same argument would lead us back to the same problem above. A random string of characters should look more designed than the two patterns.
-If not, then I’d like to know if you think design is reducible to a mathematical formula. And if you do what would the formula be? How would you mathematically differentiate between mere order and design?

Are you trying to argue that just because the chance for each successive step is high then the overall chance must be high too? I say that such inference is based on faith and not science. Suppose we are to consider the chances of an untrained rat successfully getting out of a maze. Let's say that the rat would have to correctly pass 100 gates/doors successively to be able to go to the exit. Of course, when the rat is on the 50th gate, the chance of getting through the 51st gate is relatively high, and when the rat is on the 51st gate, the chance of getting through the 52nd is also comparatively high. But does that mean that the chance of getting from the 1st to the 100th gate is high too? "Gradual" or not, the probability is still the same.

The difference between my computer program analogy and your mouse in a maze analogy is that my model reaches its goal through gradual successive steps while your model is just a one step solution. If we were to make your model equivalent to mine, everytime your mouse goes through the maze again it would have to skip the gates that it got “right”. If the mouse wouldn’t have to retry everything from the bottom up the chances that it would complete the maze (even if the mouse has no faculties for retaining memory) would go progressively higher after every try

There was an experiment before by Richard Dawkins(author of the blind watchmaker) wherein he tried to make a program generate a line from hamlet “Methinks it is a weasel” by generating random sequences of characters. The estimate on how long it would take for the computer to produce the string was a million million million million million years. (27^28 possible combinations) Needless to say generating the string in a single step is impossible. However the experiment is not comparable to the evolutionary model…
The aforementioned experiment was meant as a caricature for how creationists view evolution. Dawkins presented a second experiment in which instead of regenerating a whole string every time, combinations of characters which closely matched the line from hamlet were kept as they were and were reused after every successive regeneration. After just 43 generations and about half an hour the exact line has been generated

Our DNA is not a complete rewrite compared to the DNA of a chimp or even a mouse. Just relatively minor misspellings which just hammers the point that Human DNA was not made from the ground up as it is. It evolved from DNAs of other organisms

There’s a difference between a couple of coins tossed in the air organizing themselves into a pattern resembling your initials after falling down and molecules organizing themselves through chemical reactions. The latter doesn’t depend on probability to form a complex pattern. It is part of the way nature works. There are such relatively feasible chemical explanations for how the first cell may have been produced
Mordecai may argue that the pattern resembling your initials contains ‘specific information’. Of course we have to define if specificity can exist if the object the ‘information’ is specifically intended for doesn’t exist yet. If no one on earth can read and write in english then the text in this entire thread is no different from a random generation of roman characters. I say the probability of generating any group of characters is always 100 percent.

Originally Posted by crazy legs

God created everything is scientific? God created everything is scientific proof that God created everything which proves therefore that God created everything?

lol