The theist evolution argument

[max-greece]

And now to fuck everyone up, just because I can:

This is going to be a bit long, sorry about that, but I'm yet to come up with an efficient way of communicating this:

Craig argues that there is a 1 in 10^500 chance of this universe forming. He gets that number from String theory but he never explains where. I might return to that in a later post but suffice to say once you see it you'll agree it is not a solid foundation on which to build a proof of God.

Further, it should be noted that String theory itself, whilst promising, is not universally accepted and there are several aspects of the universe that classical theory explains better.

For now however:

Remember my pack of cards. The probability of the order was 1 in 10^67. If I were to ask the same question for 2 packs of cards the probability of the order of the 2 of them would be 1 in 10^134.

Now I am not very good at my 67 times table so I'll jump to 10 packs of cards. The probability of the order of 10 packs of cards is 1 in 10^670.

That is less likely than the universe itself (Craig's 10^500 number).

There are more than 10 packs of cards in the universe.

Something's wrong.

So far we've argued that calculating the probability for something that has already happened, that we weren't predicting, is meaningless. I'm using packs of cards but you can, in reality use any number of events. Watch a feather being blown in the wind - what is the probability of it following that path? I use cards because people can understand the basis for the calculations - there is a large, but limited number of possible outcomes.

The question is - is there another way of looking at it that gets around the problem that a random order of a pack of cards has a 1 in 10^67 chance whilst the probability of pre-announcing the order of a randomly shuffled pack of cards is exactly the same, 1 in 10^67?

I'd say there is - but I agree with Schroedinger and you all, apparently, don't.



Schroedinger's cat thought experiment is as follows:

Cat and a loaded gun in a sealed box.

You do not know the cat is alive or dead until you open the box to find out.

Therefore the cat is both alive and dead in the box until you open it.

Schroedinger was trying to show that the idea of the observer determining the outcome was ridiculous. I agree with him. None of you do.

Lets return to a shuffled pack of cards.

Choose the first card. It turns out to be the 2 of diamonds. What is the probability that that card is the 2 of diamonds? I said 1 in 52 and you all agreed with me.

But from the above that can only be true if the card you are holding in your hand is actually every card in the pack until such time as you look at it at which point it becomes the 2 of diamonds.

The real question I am asking is - what is the probability that this card is whatever this card is? The answer to that is actually 1 (in 1 if you like).

Unless I ask the question what is the probability that this card is the 2 of diamonds BEFORE I look at it the question is meaningless.

That card was, and always will be, the 2 of diamonds. We are confusing our discovery of the order of the pack of cards with the actual order of the pack of cards.

Of course - this only applies if you are all right, and Schroedinger was wrong.

So - did that fuck anyone up?

Please note - this is part 1 a of my argument against the fine tuning argument. There are many more parts.