Re: Randomness and complex organization via evolution

From: Tedd Hadley (hadley@reliant.yxi.com)
Date: Sat Jul 15 2000 - 15:47:59 EDT

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    Bertvan@aol.com writes
      in message <2f.805edef.26a1f079@aol.com>:
    > Hi Chris,
    >
    > I might claim that since free will and design in nature are
    > obvious, the "burden of proof" is upon anyone who disagrees to
    > prove otherwise. However, I doubt anyone would pay much
    > attention to me.

       Exactly, that's why you have the burden of proof. It would
       be the same if you or I were in a room full of flatearthers.
       We could insist that the burden of proof was on them, but they
       just wouldn't pay attention to us, would they.

       Burden of proof isn't assigned by anyone, it just falls on the
       person who wants to change the minds of others. (Generally the
       majority is not as interested in changing the minds of the
       minority)

       Burden of proof in this instance might mean defining free will
       to mean something at all -- if we don't make decision based on
       things inside the universe, we make them based on things
       outside the universe? And we all know design looks obvious,
       but when we look deeper we discover human perception can't really
       be trusted to distinguish design from non-design. So we move
       on to other principles and methods.



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