How we determine facts.

[Heywood]

Its funny because at when I introduced this to the morons at TTA, I did so as a reasons why you should not believe in miracles(I wanted to frame it in a way that I thought would appeal to atheists). The idiots there rejected it.

I argued that each time you investigate a purported miracle and find it to be a sham miracle and not a genuine one, it increases the probability that all purported miracles are shame miracles.

And you concluded that...?

I concluded that most of the members who participated in that TTA thread were idiots.

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When I wrote out the example, I didn't spell out every assumption....like the overall distribution of colored marbles in the universe. So sure...if black marbles don't exist in the universe...the probability of drawing one from the bag is 0 and it is always going to be 0.

But you won't know that. With no explicit statement about the totality of marbles in the bag (the number, the possible colors) -you can't even assign a probability.

Sure I can. I assign the probability to be X. I then make conclusions about X as each marble is drawn from the bag. With each draw X moves closer to 1 or to 0.

I don't know what the probability is that every evolutionary system requires an intellect. So I assign it probability X. Each time I see something and say to myself, "Hey...that is an evolutionary system" X might move to 0 or closer to 1. It moves to 0 if I find that the evolutionary system came into existence without the need of an intellect. It moves closer to 1 if I find that the evolutionary system needs an intellect.

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Yeah...that's actually not how scientific conclusions are arrived at -at all.

yes it is

*cue up the monty python argument by contradiction skit*