Reply to Re: Evolution
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What all of you are forgetting is that these chances are only valid if you start out with a certain starting situation and then see what the chance is you'll end up with a certain ending situation. This is not really a valid way of reasoning as from this starting situation you could get multiple ending situations which would all be plausible. So, imagine starting out with a whale and waiting long enough for 2700 important DNA sequence changes to occur then you might end up with a lot of different species, all of whom are valid species. Maybe the chance of it becoming a hyena is only 1/364*10^1625 but it could end up as a lot of different species too. It might end up as something hyena-like, or maybe it grows to be cow-like; maybe it evolves to something seahorse like, or something so alien we wouldn't even be able to describe it. In short: Don't apply chances retroactively, it means you are ignoring other plausible outcomes that could have been.
Let me draw a comparison: What is the chance that someone's parents marrying each other and not someone else? It obviously depends on a lot of factors, but 10% definitely doesn't sound to high for me. Now if my parents wouldn't have met I wouldn't have existed. And I have two sets of grandparents too and the same thing applies to them. So going two generations back (to my grandparents) my chances of existence have shrunk to just 0.1% Now if I were to go back a 100 generations using the same assumptions my chances of existence would be nearly non-existent.
Still, as per Descartes, I exist. But there probably are almost an endless amount of other ways in which a person could exist in my place. If you want to calculate the chance of there being a person at the place where I am you'll also have to include those possible births.
The conclusion: When calculating chances for evolution also include all possible outcomes that do not exist. Your chances of winning the lottery may be only one in a billion, but if a billion people join in on the lottery the chance of someone hitting the jackpot are in fact quite reasonable.
Let me draw a comparison: What is the chance that someone's parents marrying each other and not someone else? It obviously depends on a lot of factors, but 10% definitely doesn't sound to high for me. Now if my parents wouldn't have met I wouldn't have existed. And I have two sets of grandparents too and the same thing applies to them. So going two generations back (to my grandparents) my chances of existence have shrunk to just 0.1% Now if I were to go back a 100 generations using the same assumptions my chances of existence would be nearly non-existent.
Still, as per Descartes, I exist. But there probably are almost an endless amount of other ways in which a person could exist in my place. If you want to calculate the chance of there being a person at the place where I am you'll also have to include those possible births.
The conclusion: When calculating chances for evolution also include all possible outcomes that do not exist. Your chances of winning the lottery may be only one in a billion, but if a billion people join in on the lottery the chance of someone hitting the jackpot are in fact quite reasonable.
