Re: The status of ID and a personal reflection

On 2/26/25 3:24 AM, MarkE wrote:

[...]
It's important to distinguish between:
 1. Personal incredulity, i.e. "I can't imagine how this could have happened by natural processes alone"
 2. A probability so small that an explanation that relies on it is deemed to be virtually an appeal to miracle or magic (e.g. < 10^-50 or 10^-150, noting that there are an estimated 10^80 fundamental particles in the known universe)
 3. An impossibility, e.g. claimed paradoxes such as Eigen’s Paradox, IC, etc. If demonstrated, these would reveal a logical impossibility, i.e. a probability of zero.
 Legitimate ID seeks to identify and demonstrate instances of 2 and 3.

One important point that you are implicitly agreeing with is that "legitimate" ID's purpose is to support a preconceived conclusion.  A conclusion, it must be noted, that was originally formulated with no evidence to support it, and which still has none.
The more immediate problem is that nobody (ID included) has any way to calculate the probabilities or impossibilities relevant to what ID wants.  Efforts to date have either been hand-waving (e.g., everything you have posted on abiogenesis) or based on laughable fallacies (e.g. the ID work of Behe and Dembski).
--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell