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#298292
Phil
why can people not understand that while, yes it isn't very likely, nothing is impossible?
10/1/2007 5:08:20 AM
#298294
JD
actually if anything we play it LESS, knowing damn well how long those odds are
10/1/2007 5:17:08 AM
#298295
guvvuf
That's one painfully stretched metaphor.
10/1/2007 5:18:04 AM
#298300
Jason
And yet, here we are.
10/1/2007 5:34:26 AM
#298301
Grey Wolf
Since evolution only requires someone, somwewhere, to win the lotto, I would say that the fact that people do, in fact, win against almost impossible odds neatly demonstrates how idiotic a fundie can be when picking examples.
Hope that helps,
Grey Wolf
10/1/2007 5:35:17 AM
#298302
rubber chicken
Does Chi Guy have some secret information as to how many times it didn't happen ?
10/1/2007 5:36:21 AM
#298316
FrozenFox
The odds of a colossal invisible sky wizard with an infinite age deciding to make things exactly the way they are now out of all of the possible combinations, instead of them happening by themselves through selection, then, are better? Oh, and add in the odds that in addition to the lesser likelihood of such in comparison, your argument would need to consider that he would have then also allowed (or brought about, lol?) the creation of countless vastly differing accounts of the way he made everything just to see us fight it out. Then, just to top it off, gave us all the hints in the world that he in fact DIDN'T do it just to deliberately waste our time. Don't even get me started on the not-quite-intelligent design of our bodies, with all our mind-blowing flaws, blind spots in our eyes, vestigial parts, etc. Hmm, thinking of Occam's razor, I really need to shave..
10/1/2007 6:05:07 AM
#298339
demodocos
Have a look at this picture:
That is the so-called Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), a photography taken in 2003. What you see are about 10.000
galaxies in a very small region of space.
"The image covers 11.5 square arcminutes[1]. This is smaller than a 1 mm by 1 mm square of paper held 1 meter away, and equal to roughly one thirteen-millionth of the total area of the sky."
So if you interpolate, you'll end up with a number of galaxies that is multiple times the number of people that ever lived on Earth, each consisting of billions of solar systems.
But I guess Chi Guy thinks the universe is just a black tablecloth with pinpricks in it.
10/1/2007 7:04:34 AM
#298343
Since your father spelled 100 million spermatozoids and your mother hosted 400 eggs, you should be millionaire by now, following your analogy.
10/1/2007 7:07:43 AM
#298358
demodocos
Damn you, broken edit-function!
...here's the link to the wiki-entry in plaintext: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra_Deep_Field
I also forgot to add that even if Chi Guy's statistics were true (I kinda think he just pulled those numbers out of his ass), given the immense size of the universe and with billions of years available, the chance of life spontaneously popping up somewhere would exceed 1.
10/1/2007 7:18:36 AM
#298361
Nutz
Your analogy's valid if you change it to /someone/ winning the lottery regularly rather than the same person over and over. With your current analogy it would be as if our origin was a quite common event and every remotely habitable corner of the universe should be teaming with life. Of course, you'd have to understand something about science and that's probably just not gonna happen.
10/1/2007 7:22:16 AM
#298465
Because there was such a large number of events within the system.
Unlike, say, within Chi Guy's brain.
10/1/2007 9:16:28 AM
#298544
Caustic Gnostic
Change "million" to "billions of" years.
The lottery is a bad analogy.
How about lightning hitting the same place a hundred times, or a thousand? Give it time...it'll happen.
"Spontaneous", in the context of biological history, does not mean "immediate visible results".
10/1/2007 11:25:46 AM
#298557
[i]McCulloch[/i]
Everyone who has already won a lottery plays or has played the lottery. Your point?
10/1/2007 11:44:59 AM
#298577
Osiris
Yes winning the lottery is mathematically insignificant but it happens. And it happens all the time. What is your point?
10/1/2007 11:59:25 AM
#298624
Drakeal V2.0
In a long enough time period, it's possible for anything to happen.
Not to mention, the comparison here is absurd.
10/1/2007 12:41:30 PM
#298706
Old Viking
You can't establish odds after the fact. Further, whatever universe came into being would be equally improbable.
10/1/2007 3:04:15 PM
#298711
JasoNF
"Should not everyone who believes in the accidental creation of life also be avid lotto players?"
Only if you are awarded every possible lottery ticket in every draw for the entire history of the universe. What, did I fuck your strawman analogy?
10/1/2007 3:15:32 PM
#298861
Mister Spak
"Should not everyone who believes in the accidental creation of life also be avid lotto players?"
Should not everyone who believed in god beleive in the one true god allah?
10/1/2007 6:58:26 PM
#298893
Detrs
That metaphor is stretched so thin, it's transparent.
10/1/2007 7:24:42 PM
#298951
flipper
So you think blowing dust on my lotto card would actually work better, huh?
10/1/2007 8:32:12 PM
#298978
agentCDE
But we're here, so clearly it happened.
10/1/2007 9:04:35 PM
#299502
tbt
Since evolution only requires someone, somwewhere, to win the lotto, I would say that the fact that people do, in fact, win against almost impossible odds neatly demonstrates how idiotic a fundie can be when picking examples.
pwned.
10/2/2007 5:16:49 PM
#301453
King Duncan
Wow. Life suitable to the planet it is on occurred. And is not observable on planets it is not suitable on.
Imagine that.
So unlikely.
Also, "someone won the lottery once" is not a valid excuse to play the lottery. Unless you already failed at math. There's a reason they call it the "idiot tax".
10/5/2007 12:12:33 AM
#301512
SSJPunk
Haha, you think that's crazy? Imagine a god spontaneously generating from unknown origins, THEN spontaneously deciding to create a universe exactly as it was 6000 years ago, with evidence of an older age planted in it. I mean, velocities of stars moving away from us, fossils, concentrations of radioisotopes -- everything -- pointing to an age of billions of years.
Combine that with no knowldge about statistics, that the past doesn't determine the future in random events, they'd put everything on the lotto for sure!
10/5/2007 1:46:30 AM
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