Showing posts with label Douglas Axe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Douglas Axe. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Is evolution a big deal?

I recently watched this informal debate or dialogue between Josh Swamidass and Doug Axe:

I thought it was pretty good on Axe's side. I'd recommend it for Axe's contributions.

Swamidass, however, was a challenge to listen to. For example, Swamidass frequently interrupted Axe (and Swamidass often interrupts others in several other videos I've seen). At times Swamidass didn't seem to try to make a good faith effort to try to understand Axe but perhaps even the opposite. Swamidass seemed condescending toward Axe around the 50 minute mark when he suggested to Axe that Axe's description of cancer is "not what we find" because Axe hadn't been through medical training (MD) or worked in a cancer lab. Axe's description of cancer was fine for his purposes.

At 56:20, Swamidass claimed "Dembski himself backed off from his book The Design Inference". However that's false. Dembski himself responded to Swamidass here.

Swamidass further questioned Dembski over on Peaceful Science. (By the way, the Peaceful Science forums seem anything but "peaceful" in my opinion.) Others replied including Paul Nelson. Nelson mentioned he'll do a 4-part series on Evolution News. This is the first one.

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

DNA is code

The Science Uprising series has been great. I wish I could have made these videos. There are six videos in the series so far. I recommend all of them, though that's not to suggest I agree with everything in them. Here's #3, DNA is code:

Friday, March 24, 2017

Functional coherence

I appreciate Jonathan McLatchie's ministry Apologetics Academy including his interviews with various guests on various topics. Starting around the 35 minute mark, Doug Axe explains what he thinks is a limitation with Michael Behe's irreducible complexity and instead argues for what Axe terms functional coherence:

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Fantastic improbability

From Doug Axe:

There's this general confusion over what probabilities mean, and that if...something has a probability and it's not zero, then that means it's not impossible.

Some people want to say, if the probability is not zero, then that means it can happen. What it really means is that if there are enough opportunities for a very small probability to become a large probability, then it can happen.

So, if something is one in a million, but you have a million shots at it, then it becomes probable. If something is one in a trillion, you're going to need a trillion shots at it for it to become probable. A million won't be enough; it's still vastly improbable.

If you push that number far enough, you reach an improbability that is so extreme that there is no way for this physical universe to give you the number of opportunities that would raise that extraordinary small probability to something that can happen, that's like, 50-50 or better.

It turns out that in these sorts of problems where you have to arrange lots of thing and get lots of things right, the improbability of each step multiples and you can get just extraordinary improbability.

So, I use the term "fantastic improbability" to refer to this sort of boundary where it's now beyond the point where this physical universe could possible overcome the improbability. That, I call "physical impossibility," distinguishing it from mathematical impossibility...One in a google [sic] is the dividing line where I say, once it's that improbable, there is no way for any real process in this physical universe to overcome that kind of improbability. That's why I call it "physically impossible."