That's not a Missing Link! - the vocabulary of "Intermediate Forms"

[RichardG (Richard Gillett)]

@St.Roymond

You’re making a very common mistake of confusing confidence with certainty.

That is called splitting hairs.

Richard

[Marshall (Janzen)]

No, it’s called Dunning-Kruger.

[Paraleptopecten (Timothy Campbell)]

@St.Roymond

@RichardG

sequence

Please stop using your own idiosyncratic definitions and use the ones that are relevant.
I just aced a college statistics course, and confidently say that your definition does not match even the use of the term “random” in basic statistics – and that in the real world, “randomness” does in fact result in “obvious structure”.

As I have noted before:

"What a scientist means when they say that something is “random” or “stochastic” is one of the following:

The outcome is best-described by a probability distribution (e.g., dice rolls or QM).The outcome is deterministic from impossible perfect measurements of starting conditions (e.g., weather or long-term behavior of gravitationally interacting systems with more than two bodies). This type may alternatively be termed “chaotic”.The outcome is not humanly predictable for other reasons (e.g., long-term human or life history).

None of those deny discernable patterns."

[RichardG (Richard Gillett)]

Any claim that random still has a pattern is self defeating for science because it implies design or intelligence.
Theists who think that there is a pattern but still call it random are just hiding behind the scientific vagueness and not declaring it to be from God.

At least I am being honest and clear when I criticise the notion of pattern as opposed to chance as being an indication of Godly influence.

Richard

[Roy (Roy (Listener twice correct))]

@RichardG

Any claim that random still has a pattern is self defeating for science because it implies design or intelligence.

False.

1. Randomly generated numbers (e.g. from dice rolls) will produce a predictable pattern of distribution
2. Random perturbation of a container containing objects of random sizes will eventually lead to the pattern of the larger objects being at the top of the container.

No design or intelligence is implied in either case.

[rsewell (RON SEWELL)]

@RichardG

It is people like you that make casinos rich.

Casinos are rich precisely because they understand that randomness can have predictable patterns.

[RichardG (Richard Gillett)]

@rsewell

Casinos are rich precisely because they understand that randomness can have predictable patterns

Always one point must be correct, and it is yours!

The whole point of chance is that there is no pattern. If you are going to rewrite chance then you may as well claim to be God.

I know that providential Christians deny chance at all, as Judaism does, but that is a theological standpoint not the definition or occurrence of chance.

If science is going t claim that random still has a pattern, just one that cannot be identified, then we are left with a system that is somehow embedded into the fabric of the Universe.

This leave two viewpoints

• It must be for the Universe /life to exist
• It was placed there by an intelligence AKA God

Richard

[Marshall (Janzen)]

@RichardG

If science is going t claim that random still has a pattern, just one that cannot be identified

Nobody is saying they can’t be identified. You’ve been given several examples of patterns in random processes.

[RichardG (Richard Gillett)]

@Marshall

Nobody is saying they can’t be identified. You’ve been given several examples of patterns in random processes.

I am getting fed up with this!

Random means chance

If you describe events as random, you mean that they do not seem to follow a definite plan or pattern.
Collins Dictionary

That is the English Language!

Richard