On Feb 14, 2009, at 11:48 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> Stephen Jay Gould suggests... that "Higher" life forms, far
> from being the logical or necessary emergence from life as it
> existed in the first billion years or so, were in fact highly
> unlikely. That we find ourselves here is the result of innumerable
> contingencies, none of which had a high probability.
The dogmatism of Darwinists like Gould is amazing. Knowing nothing except received opinion about conditions in the prehistoric past he claimed to know the "probability" of "innumerable" events, none of which he, or anyone else, knows the slightest bit about. It seems he didn't even realize that all past macroscopic (non-quantum) events, known and unknown, are known (because they took place) to have been 100% certain. Probability is an *ex ante*, not an *ex post* category. Except *perhaps* at the quantum level probability expresses our uncertainty, not anything about nature. Le Bon Dieu does not play dice with the universe.
Shane Mage
> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
> kindling in measures and going out in measures."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos