chance

[roter-kaiser]

It is easier for the immaterial to arise from nothing (after all it's made of nothing) then it is for ORDERED material to arise from nothing.

What's your evidence that your god is unordered or immaterial? What's the proof for your claim? It's just an assumption that fits your believe.

No evidence, then?

I might have to stick with the non-believers for now.

[Geoff]

Imagine...

Why start a thread called "chance" when you don't even understand chance?

[spinoza99]

If you think the evidence for the Big Bang is 'fine-tuning', however ludicrous this is, and therefore there has to be a creator because this cannot exist from chance (or unintentionally), how come you believe the creator was created by chance? Surely, something so intelligent to design the universe and everything in it, fine-tuned to the power of 120 (or whatever the fine-tuning argument is), needs to be designed and cannot be the result of chance?!

No one has a good answer for how something came out of nothing. However, we do know that order cannot arise often in a universe where chance is all there is. You need mind in order for order to arise as often as it does.

We know the traits of chance. It chooses all choices equally. It doesn't discriminate. Order will only arise out of chaos on rare occasions because as Richard Dawkins said: there are many more ways of being dead than being alive. Since there are so many more ways of chaos existing than order existing, we can therefore conclude that if chance was all there was, then chaos would vastly outweigh order. Now, here let me demonstrate how easy it is for intelligence to produce order:

We hold these truths to be self-evidence that all men are created equal.

That's 72 characters, each character has 28 possibilities. That's 28^72 possibilities, which is 10^104. There are only 10^80 atoms in our universe. So just in one try I was able to find the equivalent of the right atom in the universe. That's how capable intelligence is of producing order, chance would never be able to do that.

Exactly how much order would be possible out of pure chance, please?

[/quote]
Just do the math. For three letter words there are 10^13 different possibilities and in the English language there are about 100 different 3 letter words, so just divide 100 by 10^13. That's how often chance would produce order.

[spinoza99]

What's your evidence that your god is unordered or immaterial? What's the proof for your claim? It's just an assumption that fits your believe.

Order applies to material objects, not immaterial. You can't order immaterial because there is nothing to order.

That immaterial beings exist is logically necessary because it is logically impossible for material to order itself. Material obeys physical laws, it has no choice. For order to arise, you need choice. Since material cannot choose, the source of choice must lie in the immaterial.

[Feck]

What's your evidence that your god is unordered or immaterial? What's the proof for your claim? It's just an assumption that fits your believe.

Order applies to material objects, not immaterial. You can't order immaterial because there is nothing to order.

That immaterial beings exist is logically necessary because it is logically impossible for material to order itself. Material obeys physical laws, it has no choice. For order to arise, you need choice. Since material cannot choose, the source of choice must lie in the immaterial.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat


Yeeeeeeeeeeees exactly that's it, there we have all the proof we need (about you )

[Xamonas Chegwé]

You're asking the wrong question. There is no such evidence that would convince anyone, no matter how large or small the numbers. All you are saying is that the universe is exactly the kind of a universe in which we can live - well no shit, Sherlock - we already know that because it happens to be exactly the kind of universe in which we DO live!

We KNOW that our tiny, tiny portion of the universe is ideal for human life to evolve and thrive because human life DID evolve and thrive. You might as well throw up an argument for the Earth's atmosphere being designed with birds wings in mind because it is exactly the right consistency for birds with exactly the kind of wings that birds have to fly in.

Once again, you are mixing up cause and effect. We live here because we can live here, not because we were meant to.

Imagine you build a key that can think but only if it fits into a keyhole. If it thinks then the odds of it fitting that key hole are 100%. But you have to ask yourself, what are the odds of that keyhole arising at random? Easily higher than 1 in 10^5000.

So here's what you're doing:

1. If the key fits into a key hole it will think
2. If it thinks then the odds of it being in the keyhole are 100%
3. Therefore the odds of a thinking key being fit to the keyhole are 100%

What you're doing wrong is the forgetting factor zero

0. the odds of a keyhole arising at random at 1 in 10^5000
1. If the key fits into a key hole it will think
2. If it thinks then the odds of it being in the keyhole are 100%
3. Therefore the odds of a thinking key being fit to the keyhole are 1 in 5^1000


It's the same with life in the universe
0. the odds of a universe arising at random wherein life can exist are easily over 1 in 10^5000
1. if life arises then the odds of that universe being fit for life is 100%
2. life exists
3. therefore the odds of life existing are 100%
(that's wrong, the odds of life existing are well over 1 in 10^5000)

That's gobbledegook. There is no doubt that we exist (assuming solipsism is to be discounted) and therefore no doubt that this is an universe in which we can exist. Your argument about keys is just bollocks. The universe is how it is and NEITHER of us can say why that should be - only that it is. And, as I said previously, ONLY ONE OF US IS PRETENDING TO FUCKING KNOW!

[spinoza99]

It's true that natural processes did the great majority of the word, but your father's intelligence was needed. Also your mother needed the intelligence in order to take off her clothes, among other things. It take intelligence to take off clothes.

And, you consider that proof that the universe had to be created by an intelligence?

No, I don't consider that proof that the universe is the result of intelligence. You made the point that you came into being by chance because your parents met by chance. Then I attempted to refute that. I was refuting your claim that you came into existence by chance because your parents met by chance.

The odds of me existing are so small it's impossible to calculate. And, I came about through entirely natural processes - sperms develop - eggs develop - they meet and physics and chemistry take over. No magic, or gods are needed.

You're confusing odds with hindsight, with odds with foresight. Richard Dawkins makes this distinction in the Blind Watchmaker:

I know. That's the point I was making. It's the mistake almost all ID folks make. It's their hurricane causing a 747 argument.

There is no reason the universe needs a designer, and the fallaciousness of the 747 argument is one of the reasons why it's fairly obvious.[/quote]

The point you were making is that improbable events happen all the time. Just look at how improbable I am and look I'm here. I pointed out that that was a mistake for the same reason that people believe Mt Blanc is improbable. You made no reference to Dawkin's claim that a complex being cannot be used as an explanation for why a complex thing arises, which is a refutation of Hoyle's 747 argument.

God is not a complex being. Complexity describes material, God is immaterial.

[spinoza99]

The universe is how it is and NEITHER of us can say why that should be - only that it is.

There is no reason why the Lambda constant can not be different. It is as large as a 1 followed by 120 zeroes. If it's off by one then we're dead. That constant was fine-tuned with us in mind. And the odds of it being tuned at random just for us is at least as high a 1 in 10^120, if not more.

And, as I said previously, ONLY ONE OF US IS PRETENDING TO FUCKING KNOW!

You're an atheist, not an agnostic. Therefore you KNOW that we are here by chance. And you know that the lambda constant just luckily landed on the right number.

[Svartalf]

What's your evidence that your god is unordered or immaterial? What's the proof for your claim? It's just an assumption that fits your believe.

Order applies to material objects, not immaterial. You can't order immaterial because there is nothing to order.

That immaterial beings exist is logically necessary because it is logically impossible for material to order itself. Material obeys physical laws, it has no choice. For order to arise, you need choice. Since material cannot choose, the source of choice must lie in the immaterial.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat


Yeeeeeeeeeeees exactly that's it, there we have all the proof we need (about you )

What? that he knows as much about the nature of immaterial intelligent entities and logic as he does about chance?

Because, let's face it, he's still spouting that there would be no natural laws unless that mysterious immperial one had ordained them... of course, he's yet to demonstrate how an immaterial intelligence can even exist, and more importantly how one would just create a universe completely different from itself in nature (i.e. material), and ordain its laws...

Oh, yeah, and how beings whose consciousness is anchored in their material form would be "created in its image"

[Xamonas Chegwé]

The universe is how it is and NEITHER of us can say why that should be - only that it is.

There is no reason why the Lambda constant can not be different. It is as large as a 1 followed by 120 zeroes. If it's off by one then we're dead. That constant was fine-tuned with us in mind. And the odds of it being tuned at random just for us is at least as high a 1 in 10^120, if not more.

And, as I said previously, ONLY ONE OF US IS PRETENDING TO FUCKING KNOW!

You're an atheist, not an agnostic. Therefore you KNOW that we are here by chance. And you know that the lambda constant just luckily landed on the right number.

Bullshit! That is not what being an atheist means at all! Go read a fucking dictionary! I don't claim to know anything 100%. What is more, I have repeatedly stated that fact and you have repeatedly ignored it. Allow me to spell it out for you: -

I do not believe ANYTHING.
I do not claim to know ANYTHING with certainty.
I freely admit that all of my opinions, about ANYTHING, are nothing but opinions.
However, my opinions are founded upon the best evidence I can garner and subject to Occam's Razor.
I am willing and ready to change my opinion on ANYTHING should better evidence present itself.

None of this is because I am an atheist. If anything, I am an atheist because of this attitude. I have seen NO evidence of any deity that is compelling enough to make the existence of such a being anything more than remotely credible to me. I therefore reject any such notions as a part of my working hypothesis of the world.

[Hermit]

the odds of life existing are well over 1 in 10^5000

Fine. Whatever the actual number, I accept that the odds against life existing are huge, but how do you get from there to "therefore god exists"? Is an equal improbability of a suitably large sequence of coin tosses always landing heads up proof of god's existence? I'd say it's just chance, no matter whether the sequence consists of two or trillions.

To argue otherwise, you'll need to come up with a really good criterion with which you can determine the number beyond which the sequence is no longer mere chance, and requires divine intervention instead.

Once you've done that, I am curious to know what sort of god you have in mind, of all the godly possibilities, and which - if any - holy texts, sects and legends represent him best, but I guess we better leave that for your next thread.

[MrFungus420]

we're not here by chance, we're here by the work of natural laws and the fact that with time, even unlikely but wondrous effects can result from just that

You're just moving chance to a different location. Where did those natural laws come from? If you say they came from God then you're not an atheists. Therefore, you believe that chance produced the natural laws.

Also, I'm not talking about abiogenesis. What I mean is what evidence is there that the Big Bang was the result of chance.

Who says the Big Bang was the result of chance? We don't know what it was the result of.

If you don't know what the Big Bang was the result of, then you're an agnostic. As an atheist. You have to believe it was an accident.

Wow...

After all of this time, you are still trotting out that bullshit.

How many times do you have to be told that atheism is nothing more than not having belief in a god? How many times do you have to be told that agnostic is not some sort of middle ground between theism and atheism, that agnosticism relates to knowledge and not belief?

In other words, how long are you going to continue with this dishonesty?

[Svartalf]

Actually, it does. Agnosticism is about admitting we don't have knowlege and concluding that believe based on non knowledge is useless.
We just keep avenues more open than some atheists is all.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Actually, it does. Agnosticism is about admitting we don't have knowlege and concluding that believe based on non knowledge is useless.
We just keep avenues more open than some atheists is all.

Really?

The only difference between that and my position is that I don't even accept the possibility of outright knowledge - only a working hypothesis based upon the balance of probability. As such, and by your definition, I regard ALL belief (defined as acceptance of a fact without evidence) to be useless. In fact, that's not much of a difference.

I really don't see where your 'avenues' lie. Your self-identification as an agnostic rather than an atheist is simply semantics.

[Svartalf]

well, the problem with the possibility of outright knowledge is that denying it outright is a leap of faith equal to that of the hardcore atheist declaring "there are no gods"... while it's reasonable to assume that if such knowledge was at all possible, we have spent so much time looking for it that we'd have it by now, predicating that state as an absolute truth is pushing the envelope beyond tolerances.

Now, living like there are no gods or like the truth about the diving is effectively unknowable, that's perfectly sensible.

And I like semantics.