Hi, and sorry for burdening you with something that may be a bit beneath your attention.
I happened to look a bit deeply into Metalogica’s critique of your view on this subject. Even though overall I accept your position, it seems to me that he raises issues that are worth addressing.

I’ll present one point he raises, and in my opinion he is mistaken about it. What matters to me is not whether he is wrong (and you are right), but whether I managed, in your opinion, to diagnose his mistake accurately.

I’ll note that of course I have no intention of strengthening you, supporting you, or encouraging you personally 🙂
My interest is only in your position.

One of his claims is that you presume to “know” that there is a tiny probability of the formation of favorable conditions that would make evolution possible in the first place. As a result, he continues, you present the development of life as a “miracle,” and that in turn helps you push God into the picture.
His claim is that there is no way to “know” this, and therefore one also cannot decide in advance that the probability is indeed tiny. In other words: according to what he says, you should have left this theoretical possibility open. It could be that the state of affairs is such that the probability of optimal cosmic conditions is actually high to begin with, and then there is no need at all to recruit extra-scientific explanations in order to explain evolution.

Metalogica’s failure, in my opinion, is that he is actually caught in a dilemma whose two horns both damage his position: if he chooses to accept your position that the probability of favorable cosmic conditions is indeed low (and after all, he himself does not rule this out as a possibility, but only protests against you that it is not something one can “know”), then he has in effect accepted your position. On the other hand, if he chooses the possibility that seems to him just as reasonable, namely that those favorable conditions are actually the most probable reality, then he has played into your hands, because he has essentially smuggled in through the back door exactly the same idea—that the world was created in a “planned” way from the outset so that a natural (and perhaps also random) evolutionary process could emerge from it.

Your opinion?

Does my defense of your position on this issue help you, or does it actually do your position an injustice?

https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%d7%91%d7%99%d7%a7%d7%95%d7%a8%d7%aa-%d7%a2%d7%9c-%d7%94%d7%98%d7%99%d7%a2%d7%95%d7%9F-%d7%9e%d7%9f-%d7%94%d7%aa%d7%9b%d7%a0%d7%95%d7%9f/
You pretty much nailed point 2.

Thank you, One Who Does Not Know,

What do you mean by the sentence “You pretty much nailed point 2”? Where do you see “2”?

In any case, it seems to me that from the link you sent me, it comes out that Michi would indeed accept my analysis.

I mean number 2 that appears in the answer in the link.

You are completely right. And more simply, if you assume that the probability is optimal, then you are already assuming that reality has a built-in bias in favor of a complex world (and life), and that bias itself is unlikely to have arisen by chance. You have only pushed the argument one step back.

Thank you.
I’ll trouble you with one more specific question (I didn’t find a focused treatment of it in what you wrote, but if there is one I’d be happy if you pointed me to it).

According to Metalogica, you are, in my words, “detached” from the findings and from the empirical scientific discussion, and are actually captive to a priori logical patterns.
Specifically, he thinks that you mistakenly create a necessary logical connection between changing traits and their distribution within the phenomenon of life, on the one hand, and “fitness,” on the other. Therefore, in his view, your failed interpretation of Darwinism is blind to a “trivial” basic fact: Darwinism explicitly declares that fitness is one result (not a necessary one) of changes in traits.
In this way, according to him, you invent tautologies that do not exist at all in the original theory.

My critique:
Even if it is possible that he is right and that you have ignored this point until now (I truly don’t know or don’t remember), the important part is the overall direction of your remarks. There I don’t see a problem.

The reasoning: as I understand it, even if Darwinism (or neo-Darwinism) explicitly and openly claims that there is no necessary connection between change in traits and fitness, that claim itself is an arbitrary add-on by the scientists. In other words, the logical skeleton of Darwinism itself “forbids” the insertion of the principle of changes in traits and their spread.

Therefore, even if the Darwinist scientist does this in practice, in doing so he is not being faithful to his own method.
So it turns out that the defense Metalogica is trying to give to “authentic” Darwinism fails.
Therefore you are right: there really is a necessary connection between changes in traits and “fitness.”

Your opinion / link?

I don’t understand what is written here.

This time you are absolutely right. I wrote it in a very convoluted and unclear way. I’m going to do my homework.