On Thursday, June 12, 2003, at 12:49 am, Erik Reuter wrote:
On Thu, Jun 12, 2003 at 12:10:46AM +0100, Andrew Crystall wrote:
Okay, I was essentially refering to the "Blind Watchmaker" theory - a Universe capebale of supporting out type of life, and a planet like ours, and us coming along...is SO unlikely, that is it unlikely it was random chance.
Does Dawkins make this argument in the book? It doesn't sound like him.
Actually Dawkins' book is about debunking the 'argument from design'.
Anyway, this is the mistake of using the evidence that suggested a
theory to support the theory. To demonstrate this type of error, Richard
Feynmann once walked into the lecture hall and said something like:
The most amazing thing happened to me on the way to lecture. I passed
a car and the license plate was WZ3726!!! Can you imagine? Out of all
the millions of permutations, I saw that particular one! The odds are
incredible!
I haven't read 'The Blind Watchmaker' for many years, but that story might be in it...
-- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/
'The true sausage buff will sooner or later want his own meat grinder.' -- Jack Schmidling
_______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
