Searching for GOD...

[Alan Burns]

So I tell you again – reason.

My reasoning is different to yours.
You admit that neither of us can have control over the chemical reactions involved in our "reasoning".
So why is your reasoning superior to mine?

How can you give any credibility to the outcome of uncontrollable chemical reactions?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

My reasoning is different to yours.

Your reasoning is wrong.

You admit that neither of us can have control over the chemical reactions involved in our "reasoning".

I don't "admit" it - I state it as a fact.

So why is your reasoning superior to mine?

Because mine is logically sound and your isn't.

How can you give any credibility to the outcome of uncontrollable chemical reactions?

Because I can map the results to real world experience and thereby derive confidence that logically sound deductions are more robust that logically false ones.

Anyway, do you ever intend to try at least to address the explanations you were given for why the apparent improbability of your existence cannot be “undeniable evidence for god” as you wrongly asserted or will you continue to run away from the problem instead?

[Stranger]

Wow. So Alan, you're still posting idiotic, illogical drivel, that achieves nothing but making you look stupid, rather than getting off your lazy arse and actually learning some logic so you might be able to post something worthy of the description of 'argument' on here.

Your logic-free assertions are all obviously flawed, to anybody who does understand logic, and can thus be instantly dismissed.

Why don't you want to learn to be more persuasive?

How can you possibly prove that I could not have made any other choice under the same circumstances?

Easily. Its logical impossibility (at least in the non-random case that you claim) has already been shown multiple times.

The burden of proof must lie with you because if what you claim is true, our entire legal system would break down because nobody could be held personally accountable for any crimes they commit.

Argumentum ad consequentiam fallacy.   

[Stranger]

My reasoning is different to yours.

I see no evidence in your posts that you can reason at all.

How can you give any credibility to the outcome of uncontrollable chemical reactions?

They are not uncontrolled (except in your dishonest attempt to redefine 'control'). Evolution has made brains that are reasonably good at thinking, just as hearts are reasonably good at pumping blood. We have also evolved the ability to exchange ideas and collectively learn. The principles of logic are accepted because we know, from long experience, that sound logic works. No great mystery and no god-magic required.

[Étienne d'Angleterre]

How can you possibly prove that I could not have made any other choice under the same circumstances?

I didn't say that you couldn't have done differently, there might be random elements involved. But that's not the point. The point is that in your version of freedom, if I understand it correctly, not only do you claim the you could have acted differently and it not be because of random factors, but that you can demonstrate this freedom. All I am asking for is a demonstration of this freedom. Remember though that, for example, claiming the fact that someone posted something is evidence that they could have done differently and it not be random is obviously nonsense.

All I'm trying to point out Alan is that maybe it's an idea to choose your words more carefully. using words like evidence and demonstrate and then providing neither doesn't help with any points you are trying to make. Faith & belief seem words more appropriate for your views.

The burden of proof must lie with you because if what you claim is true, our entire legal system would break down because nobody could be held personally accountable for any crimes they commit.

It's your claim that you can demonstrate your version of freedom so your burden of proof.

[Alan Burns]

Evolution has made brains that are reasonably good at thinking, just as hearts are reasonably good at pumping blood.

There is a sound physical understanding of how the heart pumps blood.
Until you can get a similar understanding of what "thinking" is or how it works you cannot claim it to be entirely derived from the physically driven process of natural selection.

We have also evolved the ability to exchange ideas and collectively learn. The principles of logic are accepted because we know, from long experience, that sound logic works. No great mystery and no god-magic required.

Can you define logic in physical terms?
Can you define ideas in physical terms?

[Stranger]

There is a sound physical understanding of how the heart pumps blood.
Until you can get a similar understanding of what "thinking" is or how it works you cannot claim it to be entirely derived from the physically driven process of natural selection.

Faulty 'logic' again.   

Understanding how hearts pump blood does not mean we can claim that they arose by evolution, we need other evidence for that - which we have in abundance. Conversely, not fully understanding how brains think, in no way negates any of the same abundance of evidence that they too arose by evolution.

In addition, we also have plentiful evidence that it is brains that are doing the thinking and not one singe scrap of evidence that anything else is involved.

Can you define logic in physical terms?
Can you define ideas in physical terms?

Don't even get what you're trying to ask at here. Ides are an integral part of thinking and logic is an abstract concept (shown to work) and abstract concepts are thoughts.

All you've presented here amounts to expressions of your own personal incredulity against the huge amounts of evidence and logic that stand against your fantasy alternatives.

[Alan Burns]

Because I can map the results to real world experience and thereby derive confidence that logically sound deductions are more robust that logically false ones.

Which must involve conscious manipulation of the data perceived in your conscious awareness.
Do you still claim this to be a logical impossibility?

[Sebastian Toe]

Which must involve conscious manipulation of the data perceived in your conscious awareness.
Do you still claim this to be a logical impossibility?

Anything, that's a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g. requiring magic (e g. your "soul") can he dismissed as an impossibility, logical or otherwise.

P s. Any actual proof that you are not hypnotised or brainwashed yet?

[Stranger]

Which must involve conscious manipulation of the data perceived in your conscious awareness.

You really do need to get the difference between mindless, meaningless babble, and properly defined logical concepts.

Also, whatever it means, the "must involve" is just a unargued assertion (another fallacy).

Do you still claim this to be a logical impossibility?

If the preceding bullshit was supposed to mean either "conscious control of our own thought processes" or your claimed notion of free will (being able to have done differently without the difference being random), then obviously it is logically impossible for reasons that have been endlessly explained to you have never once been able to refute. Unless, that is, you've done so while I've been away from the forum, which seems highly unlikely both because of the answers you're still getting and because you have been stubbornly refusing for years to even attempt a sound logical response instead of just childish foot-stamping.

I'd still love to know why you continue to refuse to learn any logic. If you've not been lying about your background, it really shouldn't take you long to learn enough to recognise how to make a sound argument and how to avoid the endless fallacies you keep using.

What is it? Too afraid you might find you're wrong? Too arrogant? Too complacent? Too lazy? Why?

Based on what you post here, you really do seem to be piss-poor at logic - embarrassingly so. Hence all your claims are easily refuted and can be instantly dismissed. Why would you not want to do better? Who knows, you might actually convince somebody if you did a better job or presenting your case (assuming there is anything at all behind your claims apart from blind faith).

[torridon]

How can you possibly prove that I could not have made any other choice under the same circumstances?
The burden of proof must lie with you because if what you claim is true, our entire legal system would break down because nobody could be held personally accountable for any crimes they commit.

Reversal of burden of proof, and argumentam as consequentiam.  Well done.

That we have free will is the claim,  the burden of proof lies with people making that claim.  Until you can come up with some evidence for it, the claim remains unsubstantiated.  Hopping on one leg isn't going to cut it, you'll have to try harder than that.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Which must involve conscious manipulation of the data perceived in your conscious awareness.

Not only is there no “must” as you assert with not even the attempt at a justifying argument, it cannot “involve conscious manipulation of the data perceived in your conscious awareness” because that’s logically impossible for the reasons you routinely just ignore.
 

Do you still claim this to be a logical impossibility?

Argue rather than just “claim” (the latter is your domain) but yes.

Anyway, and yet again…

…do you ever intend to try at least to address the explanations you were given for why the apparent improbability of your existence cannot be “undeniable evidence for god” as you wrongly asserted or will you continue to run away from the problem instead?

[Alan Burns]

Anyway, and yet again…

…do you ever intend to try at least to address the explanations you were given for why the apparent improbability of your existence cannot be “undeniable evidence for god” as you wrongly asserted or will you continue to run away from the problem instead?

Your apparent stance on this:

You have a premiss that God does not need to exist.
You are presented with the vast improbability for the specific chance events needed to bring life into existence.
Then based on your original premiss you claim that life has come into existence regardless of the degrees of improbability involved.

Can you not see the flaw in this?
Remember we are talking of unquantifiable degrees of improbability which are difficult to conceptualise - far greater than me winning the lottery every week or tossing a coin one million times and it coming up heads every time.

note - I am not claiming absolute proof - just undeniable evidence.

[Stranger]

Your apparent stance on this:

You have a premiss that God does not need to exist.
You are presented with the vast improbability for the specific chance events needed to bring life into existence.
Then based on your original premiss you claim that life has come into existence regardless of the degrees of improbability involved.

Can you not see the flaw in this?
Remember we are talking of unquantifiable degrees of improbability which are difficult to conceptualise - far greater than me winning the lottery every week or tossing a coin one million times and it coming up heads every time.

note - I am not claiming absolute proof - just undeniable evidence.

Logically and mathematically illiterate. Massively improbable things happen all the time. Randomly shuffle a deck of cards and the result will have a probability of 80,658,175,170,943,878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000,000,000,000 to 1.

Your mistake is thinking that you and the rest of humanity existing was an intended outcome, rather than just what happened. Don't flatter yourself or humanity.

You then compound your mistake by concluding that something that must be way more improbable (a god that intended to create this exact reality) is the answer!

And nobody rational starts with a premiss that something does not or need no exist. We only conclude that anything exists based on evidence and improbability is not evidence of something even more improbable.

Also note that mathematically it is impossible that 'the universe existing as it is' is less probable than 'the universe existing as it is' and 'it being so because a god created it that way'. Thinking so is called the conjunction fallacy. Some event or state A has to be more probable that its conjunction with some other event or state B. P(A) ≥ P(A ∧ B), where P(X) means the probability of X and ∧ is the conjunction (logical and).

[Sebastian Toe]

Your apparent stance on this:

You have a premiss that God does not need to exist.
You are presented with the vast improbability for the specific chance events needed to bring life into existence.
Then based on your original premiss you claim that life has come into existence regardless of the degrees of improbability involved.

Against the even vaster degrees of improbability that your God exists and the even vaster degrees of improbability that "souls" exist?
I'll stick with the more probable version of reality which requires neither of your imagined things

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

I explained to you your mistakes (several times), invited you to address the explanations I gave you and instead you’ve just repeated exactly the same mistakes!

First, you completely misunderstand probability. Second, you completely misunderstand rhetorical logic.

Your apparent stance on this:

You have a premiss that God does not need to exist.
You are presented with the vast improbability for the specific chance events needed to bring life into existence.
Then based on your original premiss you claim that life has come into existence regardless of the degrees of improbability involved.

Can you not see the flaw in this?

Yes – you’re talking bullshit.

First, you haven’t “presented…the vast improbability for the specific chance events needed to bring life into existence” at all. What you’ve actually done is to present the vast improbability of that only by reference to your perspective.

Once again: if, say, I predicted the sequence of a randomly dealt deck of cards and that sequence occurred, that would indeed be a vastly improbable outcome – a probability of 1:52! in fact.

But your mistake is to assume just one cosmic dealing of the cards. If instead the deck had been dealt, say, 52! times, then the probability of the predicted sequence appearing would be 1. It most likely would have happened.

You have no idea how many opportunities the universe itself has had to produce the sequence of events necessary for your existence, so you have no basis at all just to assert it to be “vastly improbable” in an objective sense.   

Second, you made a basic mistake in logic (called circular reasoning) when you claimed as evidence for god the (supposed) necessity for a god to intervene to make god’s ab initio plan work out as god intended it to. It’s just the lottery winner’s fallacy again – “the odds against me winning were huge, therefore the lottery company intervened so that I would win”. The lottery company though neither knew nor cared who would win, and any other winner with a poor grasp of logic could have said he same thing.   

Can you see now why using the premise “(designer) god” to justify the claim “(intervening) god” (or vice versa) is a hopeless basis to claim “undeniable evidence for god”?

Something?

Anything? 
   

Remember we are talking of unquantifiable degrees of improbability which are difficult to conceptualise - far greater than me winning the lottery every week or tossing a coin one million times and it coming up heads every time.

Irrelevant – see above.

note - I am not claiming absolute proof - just undeniable evidence.

Then you claim is still flat wrong for the reasons I’ve just explained to you again and that you seem to be entirely unable or unwilling to address.

Either try again or accept where you went wrong again.

[Alan Burns]

First, you haven’t “presented…the vast improbability for the specific chance events needed to bring life into existence” at all. What you’ve actually done is to present the vast improbability of that only by reference to your perspective.

Lets take just one of the improbability factors needed to get the universe started
Just looking at the initial conditions at the start of time we have the fine tuning of gravity vs expansion required for the formation of stars and galaxies

by Stephen C. Meyer: The return of the God hypothesis, page 185
The cosmological constant requires an even greater degree of fine-tuning. (Remember that the cosmological constant is a constant in Einstein’s field equations. It represents the energy density of space that contributes to the outward expansion of space in opposition to gravitational attraction.) The most conservative estimate for that fine-tuning is 1 part in 10^53 , but the number 1 part in 10^120 is more frequently cited. Physicists now commonly agree that the degree of fine-tuning for the cosmological constant is no less than 1 part in 10^90 .

To get a sense of what this number means, imagine searching the vastness of the visible universe for one specially marked subatomic particle. Then consider that the visible universe contains about 200 billion galaxies each with about 100 billion stars along with a panoply of asteroids, planets, moons, comets, and interstellar dust associated with each of those stars. Now assume that you have the special power to move instantaneously anywhere in the universe to select—blindfolded and at random—any subatomic particle you wish. The probability of your finding a specially marked subatomic particle—1 chance in 10^80—is still 10 billion times better than the probability—1 part in 10^90—that the universe would have happened upon a life-permitting strength for the cosmological constant.

[Sebastian Toe]

Lets take just one of the improbability factors needed to get the universe started
Just looking at the initial conditions at the start of time we have the fine tuning of gravity vs expansion required for the formation of stars and galaxies

by Stephen C. Meyer: The return of the God hypothesis, page 185
The cosmological constant requires an even greater degree of fine-tuning. (Remember that the cosmological constant is a constant in Einstein’s field equations. It represents the energy density of space that contributes to the outward expansion of space in opposition to gravitational attraction.) The most conservative estimate for that fine-tuning is 1 part in 10^53 , but the number 1 part in 10^120 is more frequently cited. Physicists now commonly agree that the degree of fine-tuning for the cosmological constant is no less than 1 part in 10^90 .

To get a sense of what this number means, imagine searching the vastness of the visible universe for one specially marked subatomic particle. Then consider that the visible universe contains about 200 billion galaxies each with about 100 billion stars along with a panoply of asteroids, planets, moons, comets, and interstellar dust associated with each of those stars. Now assume that you have the special power to move instantaneously anywhere in the universe to select—blindfolded and at random—any subatomic particle you wish. The probability of your finding a specially marked subatomic particle—1 chance in 10^80—is still 10 billion times better than the probability—1 part in 10^90—that the universe would have happened upon a life-permitting strength for the cosmological constant.

...and yet, here we are.
No god required.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Lets take just one of the improbability factors needed to get the universe started…

No, let’s not. Let’s look instead at your basic mistakes in reasoning and in logic.

First, you have no idea how many opportunities there were for the universe you happen to be part of to begin. You cannot therefore deem it to be objectively improbable, probable or anything else.

Second, you cannot claim as evidence for god an argument that also requires god for its premise.

52! is also an almost inconceivably large number too, yet 1:52! probability sequences of cards appear every time a child shuffles and deals the deck. So what?

Unless you can deal with these problems any discussion about how unlikely this universe happens to be is no more relevant than a discussion about how unlikely the lottery winner’s win was.

Try again, only address the arguments this time.

[Alan Burns]

Not only is there no “must” as you assert with not even the attempt at a justifying argument, it cannot “involve conscious manipulation of the data perceived in your conscious awareness” because that’s logically impossible for the reasons you routinely just ignore.
 

You keep claiming that conscious manipulation of the data in your conscious awareness is a logical impossibility, yet in your post you said:

Because I can map the results to real world experience and thereby derive confidence that logically sound deductions are more robust that logically false ones.

Can be really done without conscious manipulation of your own thoughts?

[Alan Burns]

...and yet, here we are.
No god required.

As God intended

[torridon]

Lets take just one of the improbability factors needed to get the universe started
Just looking at the initial conditions at the start of time we have the fine tuning of gravity vs expansion required for the formation of stars and galaxies
...

Apparent fine tuning hints that there must be a deeper understanding of physics to be had.  Which attitude furthers our knowledge, the scientist who says 'how curious, lets investigate', or creationists like Meyer who say 'there, told you so, Go Did It.  End of story'. ?

[Alan Burns]

Bluehillside,
You keep claiming that conscious manipulation of the data in your conscious awareness is a logical impossibility, yet in your post you said:

Because I can map the results to real world experience and thereby derive confidence that logically sound deductions are more robust that logically false ones.

Can this really be done without conscious manipulation of your own thoughts?

[Stranger]

Lets take just one of the improbability factors needed to get the universe started...

You appear to have missed the point (my post #48188) that it doesn't matter how improbable you think our universe is, adding your god as its creator must, mathematically, be more improbable.

What's more, we have no idea at all how improbable (or not) the universe is because we have no established context to assess it in.

[torridon]

You keep claiming that conscious manipulation of the data in your conscious awareness is a logical impossibility, yet in your post you said:

Because I can map the results to real world experience and thereby derive confidence that logically sound deductions are more robust that logically false ones.

Can be really done without conscious manipulation of your own thoughts?

'conscious manipulation of thoughts' is meaningless gibberish.  How come despite many invitations to do so on this thread you've never given an example of how to manipulate a thought.