The observed universe, in its thermodynamically credible lifespan will go through 10^80 atoms x 10^-43s/state x 10^25 s ~ 10^150 states. That is, less than 1 in 10^150 of the configs for 1,000 bits.

A blind random walk based search of 1 in 10^150 of a space is not credibly different from zero fraction. It simply has not got enough coverage to be plausible in terms of landing us on shorelines of function so we can climb up to peak functions by the various hill-climbing mechanisms so beloved of evolutionary biologists and computer simulation writers.

If life consisted of a single organism blindly searching for a single specific configuration, your argument might actually make some sense.

However, a single parent cell can produce 10^150 daughter cells in less than 500 generations, so finding any of the peak functions in your search space is almost a certainty.

I think you mean “that life can occur without a living cause”, or something. Or are you talking about the Big Bang, and including the notion that it was a causeless event in the realm of “Darwinism”?

Apples and oranges. Dembski is saying that predictability is not a function of design. The dynamic with which Mozart composes music is not the same dynamice that causes a musical sound when a hammer hits a string. The second is a function of mechanical laws, the first is not.

Either way, that point has nothing at all to do with the Darwinist fantasy that events can occur without a cause.

In keeping with that point, if one thing can “just happen,” then why cannot anything just happen? Why not everything? Under these circumstances, how could the scientist know which things were caused and which ones were not? Science would become an intellectual madhouse where the impossible is affirmed with confidence and the obvious is dismissed with disdain, which, come to think of it, is not a bad description of Darwinst epistemology.

Dembski once wrote the following:

To require prediction fundamentally misconstrues design. To require prediction of design is to put design in the same boat as natural laws, locating their explanatory power in an extrapolation from past experience. This is to commit a category mistake. To be sure, designers, like natural laws, can behave predictably (designers often institute policies that end up being rigidly obeyed). Yet unlike natural laws, which are universal and uniform, designers are also innovators. Innovation, the emergence to true novelty, eschews predictability. Designers are inventors. We cannot predict what an inventor would do short of becoming that inventor.

Personally, I sense a disconnect. In Dembski’s words, I see that madhouse.

Also, I think the assertion that any biologists assert that something “just happened” is overtly ludicrous.

As I see it, something-alive coming from something-not-alive is simply not the same thing as an “uncaused” something-from-nothing, flagrantly violating logic by “poofing” into air.

ID insists not only that abiogenesis of a sort occurred (unless the designer is defined as an organism, which the ID designer usually isn’t), but that it occurred by means material scientists have absolultey no hope of figuring out, so they may as well give up now and… start researching the problem with an ID mindset? How, exactly? Aren’t designers unpredictable? Or was I simply quote-mining, and in fact, a system has been figured out for describing/predicting the designer’s means?

If it’s the year 4 billion BC, and the designer wants life to occur, what are the odds that it successfully occurs? 100%? How could they be any less?

It is defensible to ascribe to persons and perhaps a few other higher organisms “intent” to engage in some behaviors. To do so is to ascribe to them the ability to represent behavioral options prior to behaving and hence “intend” a given behavior. As a component of this ascription, we say that for them it is possible to exhibit “accidental” behaviors or results, when their behavior results in an unanticipated outcome. A person may “accidently” knock the cup from the table. Or may do so intentionally.

An earthquake, however, neither behaves intentionally nor causes results “by accident.” It may cause many cups to fall from many tables, but these are neither accidents nor not accidents. They are not “acts” at all. Such an ascription is simply inappropriate for a natural event such as an earthquake, and represents a category error.

It is similarly inappropriate to ascribe either intention or lack of intention (“accidents”) to other natural phenomena, outside of the actions of organisms (particularly human beings) that may employ representations to guide their behavior. Hence the course of evolution is neither accidental nor non-accidental. Such an ascription is a category error. It is also a category error to describe the origins of the universe either as “accidental” or as “intentional.” However universes originate, it is unlikely to be by means of “actions” analogous to human actions.

That’s right. Darwinists, for the most part, are not doing science. They are doing ideology in the name of science. They interpret all evidence in the light of their unwarranted assumption that life had to occur spontaneously and without a directive cause, meaning that they insist on the conclusion even before the investigation begins. So, to make their dubious scheme work, at least in their own minds, they accept causality when it serves their purpose and deny it when it doesn’t. That may be convenient, but it isn’t rational.

Thanks for the clarification. However,

The issue I am addressing is this: Can physical events occur without any cause at all? As I already indicated, Darwinists think they can.

In the context of the original post, the aim of scientific investigations into the origin of life is an investigation into causes, physical and chemical. It is an experimental endeavor based on testable hypotheses. Whoever those “Darwinists” to whom you refer may be, they would not be practicing science if they eschewed causality

Yes, I agree.

GEM of TKI

Hi KF: Yes, indeed. Most evolutionary biologists think anything at all is possible—-except design.

—-“I would also distinguish the issue of directed/purposeful and undirected/stochastic contingency: design vs chance, and the third factor, mechanical necessity, in so doing. 9Seems the materialists want to put in a blank cause of the gaps to be taken on unacknowledged faith.)

See my comment to Adel.