Stephen Laws' Going nuclear

[Walt Zingmatilder]

And the probability of God doing stuff is?

Godfree isi the default by the way. Have you ever heard of a null hypothesis?

Not sure it is the null hypothesis though since God is proposed as creating the universe.

[Sebastian Toe]

But like the unconscious universe manages to act as observer you unconsciously claim Godfree.......What is YOUR p value and how do you determine it.

he asked first. Are you unable to answer?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

he asked first.

So what................. his question and my question exist equally as platonic forms. Order has nothing to do with it.

[Sebastian Toe]

So what................. his question and my question exist equally as platonic forms. Order has nothing to do with it.

  your debating skills are shit.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Yes and what is/are that/those probability/probabilities.....show your working out.

It would help if you read what's been said to you rather than keep asking the same meaningless question. You're in "not even wrong" territory - the "working out" is the simple logic that you offer nothing about which a probability - the p value - can be calculated.

Nor do I offer such a value for pixies or for unicorns by the way, so those conjectures are not even wrong too. Do you propose that we treat all of them as more probably true than not, or none of them?

Why? 

I wouldn't like to take odds that the universe is pixie free...it's a big place.

No-one has said that it necessarily is. Try reading my posts again for the difference between probable and absolute.

Unicorns and tap dancing on alpha centuari? The probability of equines and tap dancing within a few light years of earth is low due to the proximity of alpha centauri.

Gibberish. The proximity makes no difference.

What though is the probability of God. Show your working out.

Again with the meaningless question? Why?

The probability is precisely that of any other "not even wrong" conjecture. And it's "not even wrongness" is a function of your inability to offer a meaningful hypothesis, not of the inability of others to calculate the odds against it. 

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

What a peculiar post. I don't recognise that experience and it contradicts your previous complaints that I am trying to say that God is true for you too Blue.

That you don't recognise it doesn't mean that your thinking that a god has visited you doesn't make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and of course it doesn't contradict it: in your head, "God" is a truth for me only I haven't been selected to be one of his special helpers like little old you have.

A basic atheist mistake accusing religious people of exclusivity AND trying to share God with you.

The mistake is all yours. See above.

My sense is that you have made a faux up.

Then as so often here, your "sense" has let you down. Badly.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

I am sure there are perfectly genuine Christians who might be as secure in that probability as Bluehillside is in the one he believes in.

Bluehillside is extremely vague though in his beliefs and his probabilities whereas Christians often have been more convinced that their conversion is as opposed to atheist wooliness, a crowning experience.

Please stop lying about me - it's tiresome. My "belief" is clear enough: it's that the tools of reason and logic are more reliable guides to working truths than is just guessing about stuff, even (or especially) when that just guessing is gussied up with the term "faith".

Clear now?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

I have no problem with the probability of material things within limits.......But there is a difference between the probability of stuff doing stuff and the probability of,say, Godfree.

Wearily - it's "God probably free", (for the same reason that it's "pixies probably free") and if you want to invoke the supposedly non-material then you have all your work ahead of you to demonstrate it before we concern ourselves with which methods we should use to investigate it. 

No-one else has ever managed it, but good luck with it nonetheless.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Not sure it is the null hypothesis though since God is proposed as creating the universe.

You need to look up the meaning of "null hypothesis" if you intend not to make yourself look foolish again when trying to discuss it.

[Étienne d'Angleterre]

Not sure it is the null hypothesis though since God is proposed as creating the universe.

Ehhh?

WTF?

Proposed yes! It remains only a proposal though until you demonstrate it to be the case.

This is very very basic stuff.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Ehhh?

WTF?

Proposed yes! It remains only a proposal though until you demonstrate it to be the case.

This is very very basic stuff.

Yes but the universe creating itself also remains a proposal so neither is the null hypothesis.......they are alternative hypotheses.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Yes but the universe creating itself also remains a proposal so neither is the null hypothesis.......they are alternative hypotheses.

Still you don't understand "null hypothesis", and it's only an "alternative hypothesis" if you think that turtles all the way down is an alternative hypothesis too and for that matter that "y778537t4a7" is an alternative hypothesis.

You've given yourself bigger problems too: that the universe must have been "created" at all is a conjecture, as is the notion that time itself existed "before" the universe given that since Einstein we're known that time is a property of the universe. Speculating about what did the supposed creating is a second-order issue.

You've also incidentally relegated "God" to a hypothesis - or more correctly, a conjecture - and moreover at best you've given yourself a deistic god (one who started it all and then clocked off) rather than a theistic god (one who cares about and intervenes in human affairs). If that's the position you want to take now rather than your previous one of asserting "God" as fact, so be it.

And again, Stephen Law continues to undo you: all claims of fact do not have equivalent truth values, however much you may wish it otherwise. If you don't believe me, try taking the window route from the 20th floor and have your next of kin let me know how you got on.   

[Étienne d'Angleterre]

Yes but the universe creating itself also remains a proposal so neither is the null hypothesis.......they are alternative hypotheses.

One of these is a proposal of Theists. I am asking how you know it to be more than a proposal. That is all.

The other one is a proposal that might be made by some people. So what? It has no bearing on the proposal made by the theists. Their arguments stand and fall on their own merits.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

One of these is a proposal of Theists. I am asking how you know it to be more than a proposal. That is all.

The other one is a proposal that might be made by some people. So what? It has no bearing on the proposal made by the theists. Their arguments stand and fall on their own merits.

Yes but you are reflecting the dishonesty that naturalists aren't in the same boat as theists.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Yes but you are reflecting the dishonesty that naturalists aren't in the same boat as theists.

There is no dishonesty about that. They're not even in the same ocean.

[Étienne d'Angleterre]

Yes but you are reflecting the dishonesty that naturalists aren't in the same boat as theists.

What is dishonest about it? I think natural laws do manifest in the universe I am sure we both agree. I don't say that supernatural ones don't. That no one who proposes supernatural laws/effects has ever been able to demonstrate they do is not my problem.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

There is no dishonesty about that. They're not even in the same ocean.

How so?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

How so?

For the reason I've set out for you many times and you've just ignored, and that Stephen Law sets out in his essay.

Try dropping the irrelevant and misplaced dust you've thrown at it and just read the damned argument willya?

Are the "the lift is safer-ists" and the "the 20th floor window is safer-ists" in the same boat too?

When you can grasp why they're not, then perhaps you'll grasp why theists and naturalists aren't in the same boat either.

Or even in the same ocean.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

For the reason I've set out for you many times and you've just ignored, and that Stephen Law sets out in his essay.

Try dropping the irrelevant and misplaced dust you've thrown at it and just read the damned argument willya?

Are the "the lift is safer-ists" and the "the 20th floor window is safer-ists" in the same boat too?

When you can grasp why they're not, then perhaps you'll grasp why theists and naturalists aren't in the same boat either.

Or even in the same ocean.

Sheer Bulverism. Forgive me for not playing for a bit unfortunately according to my diary I'm watching TV tonight.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

Evasion noted.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

Still you don't understand "null hypothesis", and it's only an "alternative hypothesis" if you think that turtles all the way down is an alternative hypothesis too and for that matter that "y778537t4a7" is an alternative hypothesis.

You've given yourself bigger problems too: that the universe must have been "created" at all is a conjecture,

But the idea that the universe ''just is without creation'' is also conjecture.

If you are arguing ''but we know the universe is'' then I have to ask who are you arguing with because there is no dispute.

It does of course underline one of the basic problems with Laws ''Going Nuclear''. Nobody is arguing against him that, say, a dogmatic flat earther resorts to ''anything is possible and anyway, all our basic premises on what it's all about look like mere punting'.......' but to throw that shit at others who do not share your philosophy in the hope that some of it will stick is not worthy of a Heythrop professor of philosophy.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

What is dishonest about it? I think natural laws do manifest in the universe I am sure we both agree. I don't say that supernatural ones don't. That no one who proposes supernatural laws/effects has ever been able to demonstrate they do is not my problem.

Stephen
I am a methodological naturalist but I am not a philosophical naturalist.
If you are like me then we are not really arguing with each other.
If you are a philosophical naturalist then methodological naturalism provides no evidence for that philosophy.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,


Are the "the lift is safer-ists" and the "the 20th floor window is safer-ists" in the same boat too?

What do you think this has to do with methodological naturalist evidence for philosophical naturalism being commensurate for any other philosophy which seeks to explain the nature and providence of the universe?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

But the idea that the universe ''just is without creation'' is also conjecture.

Yes it is, but the point was that that conjecture needs to be demonstrated before we engage with conjectures about how that "creation" happened. "God", "the man in the moon", "leprechauns" or an as yet not understood natural process etc are all for this purpose second order issues. If you want to confine your ambition to a deistic (rather than theistic) god only as a conjecture for which there's no evidence whatever then not many would argue with that. As Einstein said, "what you call "God" is what I call "the Universe".

If you are arguing ''but we know the universe is'' then I have to ask who are you arguing with because there is no dispute.

I'm not.

It does of course underline one of the basic problems with Laws ''Going Nuclear''. Nobody is arguing against him that, say, a dogmatic flat earther resorts to ''anything is possible and anyway, all our basic premises on what it's all about look like mere punting'.......' but to throw that shit at others who do not share your philosophy in the hope that some of it will stick is not worthy of a Heythrop professor of philosophy.

Your problem here is that "that shit" is exactly what you've attempted. You seem to think that "God" and "theology" should be given some special respect and privileged status by right over, say, "pixies" and "just guessing". You remind me of an Intelligence Squared debate when an exasperated Bishop said, "we're not talking about the Melanesian Tree Frog god here you know" only to be met with shouts of "why not"?

Epistemologically, your "God" is the flat earth, and your "theology" is flat earth-ism. Until you finally grasp that and figure out a way to engage with it then your going nuclear attempt will continue to fail for the same reason that it fails for the flat earther. 

[bluehillside Retd.]

Stephen,

Stephen
I am a methodological naturalist but I am not a philosophical naturalist.
If you are like me then we are not really arguing with each other.
If you are a philosophical naturalist then methodological naturalism provides no evidence for that philosophy.

Just to give you a heads up, Vlad either doesn't understand the term "philosophical naturalist" or he deliberately lies about it to suit his purpose. He needs it to mean "the material is all there is or can be" to suit his purpose, rather than its actual meaning of "the material is all we know of that's reliably accessible and investigable."