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Whilst we're on the topic of God manipulating every outcome from the uniqueness of grains of sand to the formation of puddles, where is everyone getting this from. The way I understand Genesis, the God of Earth (Jesus) didn't do any manipulating on Earth until the Garden of Eden was created and Adam was placed into it. (I.e. when humans first came here)
LDS beliefs serve me well in understanding the Universe. Who else (LDS) sees the Godhead like I do?
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Sorry, but your ignoring the contradictory version of Genesis in... Well Genesis, which has life, like plants, being created "before" there was any way for them to photosynthesise. In point of fact, to not have the God of the Bible fiddling with life "before" pesky things like stars and our sun where formed, you have to ignore one of the two creation stories in it. Some Bibles try to fix this by ignoring the original texts, and instead tweaking the meaning of words, then placing footnotes at the bottom to try to explain away any lingering confusions. A sort of, "God always meant us to use definition 8 of the word blah, it just took us 2,000 years to go from Latin to English, so that definition would be available." lol
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Oh, and that assumes it wasn't something written 6-10 thousand years ago in Coptic, for which even the Latin translations are questionable and uncertain. Or even the Jewish language, which don't have the same verb tenses or concepts as Latin, never mind English.
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quote:Originally posted by Tom Curtis: Finally, you seem to have the mistaken belief that Davies' estimate is of p(R). It is not. It is explicitly an estimate of p(L|R); ie, the probability that the universe is life friendly given that it follows known physical laws and that the cosmological constants are chosen randomly.
Robert Sawyer states in his essay that “[c]osmologist Paul Davies has concluded that the odds of our universe, with its specific, ultimately life-generating properties, arising by chance are one in 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Those kinds of odds virtually demand the conclusion that someone did indeed tweak the parameters, carefully fine-tuning the universe's design.” Has Sawyer accurately characterized Davies’ position, or has he mischaracterized position? Do you have a specific cite to Davies’ work?
If Sawyer has fairly characterized Davies, then why hasn’t Davies estimated p(R) only, and the only other logical alternative is p(~R)? Or perhaps Davies is best characterized as having estimated p(R|L). If so, then why isn’t the only logical alternative p(~R|L)? Tom, I’m trying to understand your probability calculations and can’t understand why there are more relevant variables than just these two: the odds of the universe arising by chance and the odds of the universe not arising by chance.
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quote:Originally posted by cheiros do ender: There's no such thing as a near infinite number. Think about it.[/QB]
You're right. My use of the term was "near infinite number" was poor terminology. I will edit to "many." But this does not impact the argument.
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Then do away with the silly math games David. Just say that, yes, no matter who created the universe, if anyone, humanist principles tell us that the fact that we can beg the question leaves us with a simple conclusion: we know we exist because WE EXIST! Whether this is due to god is a yes or no question, but there is NO reason why God must in any way supplant scientific investigation into the origins of the universe. Arguing about WHY the universe allows us to exist is stupid, because the fact is, the universe could have existed 10^BILION times before, without life resulting, and it would have no effect on us. In fact, those events would have literally no consequence in our lives, since any trace of them would have been erased by the homogenizing effects of the gravity well of the early universe.
Yes. We know we exist because we exist. But why is it stupid to ask why? And have you actually read Robert Sawyer's essay or my posts in this thread? Sawyer freely admits that his argument is valid only if science proves that there is one universe (as opposed to multiple universes).
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: I agree with the earlier kagehi assertion about this whole "God answer," its something I've believed for a long time: Religions are VERY VERY VERY good at protecting themselves.
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Any person, even any religious person who understands history knows this simple fact to be true: If ID, creationism, or evolution, or all three, are the answers which well support the growth of a church, then they will BE the anwers before long. This is NOT a conscious process most of the time, it is like evolution, the strong shall live. If a church sprang up today that recommended the consumption of fecal matter, it would immediately die as a religion, the time would not be right for that.
Once again, I am sure many will react with a "PHEH! religious questions can't be judged in this way, what about GOD sir?" Well this is why religions survive, by NOT listening to people like me.
Robert Sawyer's argument is NOT an attempt to justify any particular religion. If it holds up, the most his argument establishes is the probability that the universe was created by an intelligent being. Also, I believe Sawyer claims that science is the only valid discipline for knowing and learning about anything. Whether you agree or disagree with the validity of his position or his reasoning, his argument rests entirely on science and not on religion.
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Then do away with the silly math games David. Just say that, yes, no matter who created the universe, if anyone, humanist principles tell us that the fact that we can beg the question leaves us with a simple conclusion: we know we exist because WE EXIST! Whether this is due to god is a yes or no question, but there is NO reason why God must in any way supplant scientific investigation into the origins of the universe. Arguing about WHY the universe allows us to exist is stupid, because the fact is, the universe could have existed 10^BILION times before, without life resulting, and it would have no effect on us. In fact, those events would have literally no consequence in our lives, since any trace of them would have been erased by the homogenizing effects of the gravity well of the early universe.
Yes. We know we exist because we exist. But why is it stupid to ask why? And have you actually read Robert Sawyer's essay or my posts in this thread? Sawyer freely admits that his argument is valid only if science proves that there is one universe (as opposed to multiple universes).
And our point is that its *not* any more valid if science proves there is only one. Its still a guess, based on not having enough information, and inserting some hypothetical cause into things that is if anything even more improbable than one universe popping into existence.
One of the more interesting recent ID arguments made at some site called Dead Darwin, or something like that, is that the universe can't have been around for an infinite amount of time, because no one can possibly count to infinity. Its Xeno's Paradox of archeles and the tortous, only on a universal scale. Someone pointed out on another blog that you can't count to 1,000,000,000,000 either, since if you said one number per second it would take you over 31,709 years to finish, so obviously since no one can count that high, trillions don't exist and the national debt is completely fictional. I suspect you can't be a billionare either, lets see... 31.7 years. I guess only double digit billionares are impossible, since that would take over 317 years. lol
Point is, "I can't imagine how X is possible, so something I can imagine must have done it", is not a valid premise, **especially** when all evidence points to no definition of that thing, which isn't 100% based on humans inventing the descriptions of it.
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quote:If Sawyer has fairly characterized Davies, then why hasn’t Davies estimated p(R) only, and the only other logical alternative is p(~R)? Or perhaps Davies is best characterized as having estimated p(R|L). If so, then why isn’t the only logical alternative p(~R|L)? Tom, I’m trying to understand your probability calculations and can’t understand why there are more relevant variables than just these two: the odds of the universe arising by chance and the odds of the universe not arising by chance.
I am puzzled as to why you are not following my points. They seem very basic to me. I will try to explain it again.
The first thing to fix in your mind is that Davies calculated p(L|R) - the probability that the universe would be life friendly given that it obeys known physical laws, and given that the cosmological constants are set randomly.
The second thing to fix in your mind is that we are interested in p(R|L) - the probability that the universe is random given that it obeys known physical laws, and given that it is life friendly.
These two values are related by the formula:
p(R|L) = (p(R)/p(L)) x p(L|R) (This is Bayes theorem, as I have indicated before. I have merely bracketed it differently for ease of exposition.)
Plainly we cannot determine p(R|L)from p(L|R) without determining the value of (p(R)/p(L)). As neither Sawyer nor Davies nor anyone, SFAIK, has attempted to determine p(R) OR p(L), any argument by them to the value of p(R|L) from the value of p(L|R) is very specious handwaving. In fact, any non-zero value of p(L|R) is consistent with values of p(R|L) lying anywhere between 0 (if p(R) = 0) and 1 (if p(R)/p(L) = 1/p(L|R), which will be true if and only if p(R) = 1).
Now, this is just the mathematics which I have been through before. To help you better understand the situation, I will set up a scenario. I will imagine a number of shapes. Every shape will be either Square or Triangular. Every shape will also be either Yellow or Red. I will also tell you that one quarter of square shapes are red, ie, p(R|S) = 0.25
Now, tell me, what proportion of red shapes are square?
This is an exact mathematical equivalent of what Sawyer and Davies purport to do. It is also something that cannot be done without extra information. If you think otherwise, answer the question.
:: Edited to improve grammar.
[ March 01, 2006, 05:09 PM: Message edited by: Tom Curtis ]
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