Coffee break: FAQ 2: Note to "real scientists" - stay OUT of police work

Over at Uncommon Descent, Barry Arrington notes that FAQ2 addresses the claim that No Real Scientists Take Intelligent Design Seriously

Well, there is a big scandal going on right now in my home province of Ontario, involving accusatins of cheating in lotteries. As explained by the inimitable Toronto Star,

Previous estimates suggested that lottery vendors and their employees and families have taken home $106 million in prizes over the past 13 years. The new audit says the actual figure is $198 million, a figure that Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin characterized yesterday as "astronomical." In fact, it is almost certainly an underestimate of what insiders have been pocketing.

Winners' names are only recorded for larger prizes – about one-third of the $14 billion in total winnings distributed since 1995. The rest of Ontario's lottery jackpot is distributed directly by stores in the form of small cash prizes.

It is very likely, then, that these prizes are even more vulnerable to cheating.

"Astronomical is news speak for "These numbers are way too high to be the result of chance (as in "game of chance, or lots = lottery") and therefore must be due to design."

The widespread accusation - based on a previous case in which police laid charges- is as follows:

CBC discovered many retailers defrauding their customers by claiming their lottery tickets were worthless, when in fact were worth in some cases millions of dollars, which retailers promptly cashed.

A Statistican calculated that the odds of this many retailers winning a big lottery were like a trillion to one, far worse than their clients chances of winning at 14 million to one.

A class action lawsuit has been launched, and there is also a proposal to forbid ticket vendors, their employees, and families to participate in the lottery.

Of course that proposal won't work. These days it would produce nothing but a huge raft of lawsuits and human rights commission hearings over what constitutes "family."

My advice would be ... start a savings account instead. Yes, the bank might go under, but the odds of that happening are much lower than of you losing the lottery, and probably lower than you being cheated out of a win as well.

And if you are a scientist who really, honestly believes that randomness produces intelligence ... put your financial affairs in the hands of a reliable trustee. And don't ever think of police work.

Intelligent design: Chance cannot do all that atheists (and theistic evolutionists) hope

A friend writes to tell me how intelligent design is applied in crime detection.

"Back Door" Cheating Scandal Rocks Online Poker

In roughly four years, an online poker cheat ring netted approximately $10M. A Australian player outed the ring via statistical analyses that demonstrated that showed that cheating must have occurred.

Detective work by an Australian online poker player has uncovered a $US10 million cheating scandal at two major poker websites and triggered a $US75 million legal claim.

In two separate cases, Michael Josem, from Chatswood, analysed detailed hand history data from Absolute Poker and UltimateBet and uncovered that certain player accounts won money at a rate too fast to be legitimate.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, an internal investigation discovered that employees had defrauded players for three years because a security hole had allowed cheats to see other players' hidden cards.

Actually, the same thing happened here in Ontario (a province of Canada)

So are all these people wrong? Is chance king?

Or is there design in the universe? And can design be detected by rational methods? One must hope so.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Thinkquote of the day: Darwinian evolution and chance?

A student recently wrote The Post-Darwinist, asking whether Darwinian evolution really depends on chance. I think so, but in any event a friend advises me that he recently bought Ohio State University prof Jeffrey K. McKee’s book A Riddled Chain: Chance, Coincidence, and Chaos in Human Evolution, and finds there the following:

“We now know that the origins of variation, in the form of genetic mutations, are due to chance. We also know that those few mutations which add survival value must coincide with a suitable environment. Part of the success of evolution is thus mere coincidence. The evolutionary process that then ensues is unpredictable, and in modern parlance could be considered to be chaotic. Nature thus “selects” more than just a survivor. It blindly determines contingencies for the future path of evolution-it sets the initial conditions. Even under the relentless guidance of natural selection, the more whimsical and undirected forces of evolution can then dictate the course of things to come. The unlikely becomes what is likely to happen, and the seemingly probable becomes less so. The infallible drive toward greater fitness takes a strange turn, and natural selection seems to falter. A butterfly flaps its wings, a startled impala escapes a stalking leopard, and the course of evolution changes forever. Surprising things happen due to the niggling, mischievous, capricious nature of three very important components of evolution: chance, coincidence, and chaos. You and I are among their products.”
(Jeffrey K. McKee [Professor of Anthropology, Ohio State University], “The Riddled Chain: Chance, Coincidence, and Chaos in Human Evolution,” (Rutgers University Press, 2000), p. 32)

From what I can tell, McKee is part of a group that has spent considerable effort to prevent a non-Darwinian from graduating, so we must assume that he is a good Darwinist. Go here also.

Of course, in a Darwinian world, we would not need academic freedom because everything we believe is the outcome of the competition between selfish genes, so the views of the stronger parties are very much better than right.

If you want to understand why the intelligent design controversy cannot go away, read By Design or by Chance?.

My other blog is the Mindful Hack, which keeps tabs on neuroscience and the mind.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

My recent series on the spate of anti-God books, teen blasphemy challenge, et cetera, and the mounting anxiety of materialist atheists that lies behind it.

My review of Francis Collins’ book The Language of God , my backgrounder about peer review issues, or the evolutionary biologist’s opinion that all students friendly to intelligent design should be flunked.

Lists of theoretical and applied scientists who doubt Darwin and of academic ID publications.

My U of Toronto talk on why there is an intelligent design controversy, or my talk on media coverage of the controversy at the University of Minnesota.

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

Blog policy note:Comments are permitted on this blog, but they are moderated. Fully anonymous posts and URLs posted without comment are rarely accepted. To Mr. Anonymous: I'm not psychic, so if you won't tell me who you are, I can't guess and don't care. To Mr. Nude World (URL): If you can't be bothered telling site visitors why they should go on to your fave site next, why should I post your comment? They're all busy people, like you. To Mr. Rudesby International and Mr. Pottymouth: I also have a tendency to delete comments that are merely offensive. Go be offensive to someone who can smack you a good one upside the head. That may provide you with a needed incentive to stop and think about what you are trying to accomplish. To Mr. Righteous but Wrong: I don't publish comments that contain known or probable factual errors. There's already enough widely repeated misinformation out there, and if you don't have the time to do your homework, I don't either. To those who write to announce that at death I will either 1) disintegrate into nothingness or 2) go to Hell by a fast post, please pester someone else. I am a Catholic in communion with the Church and haven't the time for either village atheism or aimless Jesus-hollering.

Thinkquote of the day: Darwinian evolution and chance?

A student recently wrote this blog, asking whether Darwinian evolution really depends on chance. That is the general view, but in any event a friend advises me that he recently bought Ohio State University prof Jeffrey K. McKee’s book A Riddled Chain: Chance, Coincidence, and Chaos in Human Evolution, and finds there the following:

“We now know that the origins of variation, in the form of genetic mutations, are due to chance. We also know that those few mutations which add survival value must coincide with a suitable environment. Part of the success of evolution is thus mere coincidence. The evolutionary process that then ensues is unpredictable, and in modern parlance could be considered to be chaotic. Nature thus “selects” more than just a survivor. It blindly determines contingencies for the future path of evolution-it sets the initial conditions. Even under the relentless guidance of natural selection, the more whimsical and undirected forces of evolution can then dictate the course of things to come. The unlikely becomes what is likely to happen, and the seemingly probable becomes less so. The infallible drive toward greater fitness takes a strange turn, and natural selection seems to falter. A butterfly flaps its wings, a startled impala escapes a stalking leopard, and the course of evolution changes forever. Surprising things happen due to the niggling, mischievous, capricious nature of three very important components of evolution: chance, coincidence, and chaos. You and I are among their products.”
(Jeffrey K. McKee [Professor of Anthropology, Ohio State University], “The Riddled Chain: Chance, Coincidence, and Chaos in Human Evolution,” (Rutgers University Press, 2000), p. 32)

From what I can tell, McKee is part of a group that has spent considerable effort to prevent a non-Darwinian from graduating, so we must assume that he is a good Darwinist. Go here and here for that and here and , here for more on Dr. McKee's views.

Of course, in a Darwinian world, we would not need academic freedom, right? Everything we believe is the outcome of the competition between selfish genes, so the views of the stronger parties are much better than right.

If you want to understand why the intelligent design controversy cannot go away, read By Design or by Chance?.

My other blog is the Mindful Hack, which keeps tabs on neuroscience and the mind.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

My recent series on the spate of anti-God books, teen blasphemy challenge, et cetera, and the mounting anxiety of materialist atheists that lies behind it.

My review of Francis Collins’ book The Language of God , my backgrounder about peer review issues, or the evolutionary biologist’s opinion that all students friendly to intelligent design should be flunked.

Lists of theoretical and applied scientists who doubt Darwin and of academic ID publications.

My U of Toronto talk on why there is an intelligent design controversy, or my talk on media coverage of the controversy at the University of Minnesota.

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

Blog policy note:Comments are permitted on this blog, but they are moderated. Fully anonymous posts and URLs posted without comment are rarely accepted. To Mr. Anonymous: I'm not psychic, so if you won't tell me who you are, I can't guess and don't care. To Mr. Nude World (URL): If you can't be bothered telling site visitors why they should go on to your fave site next, why should I post your comment? They're all busy people, like you. To Mr. Rudesby International and Mr. Pottymouth: I also have a tendency to delete comments that are merely offensive. Go be offensive to someone who can smack you a good one upside the head. That may provide you with a needed incentive to stop and think about what you are trying to accomplish. To Mr. Righteous but Wrong: I don't publish comments that contain known or probable factual errors. There's already enough widely repeated misinformation out there, and if you don't have the time to do your homework, I don't either. To those who write to announce that at death I will either 1) disintegrate into nothingness or 2) go to Hell by a fast post, please pester someone else. I am a Catholic in communion with the Church and haven't the time for either village atheism or aimless Jesus-hollering.