Is it dangerous to teach evolutionary theory to children?

[Chris_Falter]

Hi Greg,

I am sharing a link to a post I made a couple of weeks ago describing a certain class of evidence for common descent. The bottom line result is that the probability that common descent does not explain the evidence is about 1 in 10e168. In other words, the odds in favor of common descent are 10e168 to 1.

Signal and Noise

I have changed the alternative interpretations of consistency index data to be evolution (E) and not-evolution (E’) so as not to imply that Hunter advocates randomness rather than design. E’ could be either design or randomness or anything other than evolution, really. Also, since (without quantitative modeling) Hunter thinks evolution should predict a consistency index of 0.8, I have edited one diagram accordingly. Finally, I have added an explanation of why the consistency index is a good way…

How big is 10e168? There are about 10e11 stars in the Milky Way galaxy, our cosmic home. Suppose there were a million million million million million universes and each one had a million million million million Milky Ways. The result is 10e65 stars. Let’s call that truly mind-staggering number the “Greg number,” because my friend Greg is such a big-hearted fellow.

So how many Greg numbers would it take to reach 10e168? 10e168 is equal to ten million million million million million million million million million million million million million million million million million Greg numbers.

10e168 to 1 is the odds that common descent is the best scientific explanation for the consistency index data in that post.

Best,
Chris Falter