Fine tuning argument assessed

[Whateverist]

Anyone make it to here?

With you so far. Continue.

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Sadly probability mathematics is very poorly understood by the majority of people, yet it is crucial to making deductions about reality. Common sense just doesn't cut it on these occasions.

So perhaps there is a need to "fine tune" common sense. There is a notion (common sense) that is poorly defined. Does it arise complete or is it added to and refined over a lifetime? (I'm guessing the latter.)

[Jacob(smooth)]

[quote='max-greece' pid='600643' dateline='1391938035']

I think that's a fallacious understanding of probability, because in the case of the event that has already taken place (e.g. you won the lottery), you are not taking into account all the other possibilities of what could have happened (which probability requires you to do) but instead you have assigned a probability value simply based on your knowledge of the past event and not the probability itself.

Same thing that I said above.

Again, your knowledge that your last hand was a straight flush is just a fact (or something you just know) and it's not probability per se. Facts =/= Probability.

That's sort of the point Max and I are making. Probability refers to the probability OF something and that refers to the future. Thus it can't be applied to something which HAS happened (like a fine tuned universe) because as you say that is now a fact.

[FreeTony]

So perhaps there is a need to "fine tune" common sense. There is a notion (common sense) that is poorly defined. Does it arise complete or is it added to and refined over a lifetime? (I'm guessing the latter.)

I always like this example:

I have a drugs test that is 99% accurate. 0.5% of the population take this drug. I take the test and it comes out positive. What is the probability I actually take the drug?

Lots of people will say 99%, perhaps through"common sense". This is incorrect. Again Bayes Theorem is needed. As a side note people have ended up in prison because people haven't understood this concept.

[Cato]

Reality's a bitch....

[Jacob(smooth)]

So perhaps there is a need to "fine tune" common sense. There is a notion (common sense) that is poorly defined. Does it arise complete or is it added to and refined over a lifetime? (I'm guessing the latter.)

I always like this example:

I have a drugs test that is 99% accurate. 0.5% of the population take this drug. I take the test and it comes out positive. What is the probability I actually take the drug?

Lots of people will say 99%, perhaps through"common sense". This is incorrect. Again Bayes Theorem is needed. As a side note people have ended up in prison because people haven't understood this concept.

Lucia de berk for one. I have a whole talk on that.
1 in 2
Bayeristic probability. Great fun.

[FreeTony]

Lucia de berk for one. I have a whole talk on that.
1 in 2
Bayeristic probability. Great fun.

Yeah, here's another one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Clark...l_evidence

Close, but the answer is actually 1/3 (you may have misread that the background rate was 0.5%, not 1%)

Best way to think about it without doing the maths is that if you tested 200 people, 1 of which is actually a drug taker, the most likely outcome would be:
2 false positives.
1 true positive.

Therefore 1/3 positives are true ones.

[Jacob(smooth)]

Lucia de berk for one. I have a whole talk on that.
1 in 2
Bayeristic probability. Great fun.

Yeah, here's another one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Clark...l_evidence

Close, but the answer is actually 1/3 (you may have misread that the background rate was 0.5%, not 1%)

Best way to think about it without doing the maths is that if you tested 200 people, 1 of which is actually a drug taker, the most likely outcome would be:
2 false positives.
1 true positive.

Therefore 1/3 positives are true ones.

Ha! True enough I guess. I was thinking in terms of one True positive to two false, hence one in two. But on reflection I like your answer.

[max-greece]

God is the underlying context for existence, else nothing would exist at all. So you think things can exist for no reason at all but that's a point of view you can have, I'd disagree.

As I expected you haven't understood what I meant by causality having to be different for your god explanation to be correct.

Causality down here on earth for physical things requires a material cause.

This would rule out the "something from nothing" theory common in science at the moment, but:

It also eliminates the God argument if you believe that God created the universe from nothing.

So either causality works the same outside the universe as it does within it (highly unlikely) and both the religious and scientific arguments are wrong or causality does apply as it does within the universe. You can't have it both ways.

[WesOlsen]

It's a potential explanation for evidence of something, not that the whole premise multiple layers of reality and existence is particularly something religion has been set against anyway. If anything that would somewhat be the idea, there's much more going on than only the stuff we can immediately see and far more than than our science understands or possibly could ever understand.

A bold assumption, given how much science has unlocked in the last century alone. One day it may indeed be possible for science to reveal absolutely all answers. As the edicts of (incorrect) religious doctrine have progressively been shown to be false over the centuries, so religion plugs ever smaller gaps in knowledge, pleading that there is a 'why' in everything, whereas more often than not the 'why' is simply interchangeable with 'how.

You can't prove the existence of God with science so you have to use other kinds of evidence. You have revelation, you have the Holy Spirit.

God is described as a sentient lifeforce, if he isn't empty space then he will occupy physical coordinates, either within a universe or in a hyperspace bubble somewhere. The christian bible describes him as having motivations/desires so that's how I assume him to be 'alive' rather than 'not alive'. He apparently allows miracles which temporarily suspend the normal laws of physics, and is theoretically so powerful that, if need be, he could summon up the strength to move or destroy all matter in our universe, this means he must have at least an equal storage of reserve matter to counteract all our universe's matter. This storage, along with god himself and his various mechanisms of effect, elbow in to the scientific realm. They concern tangible concepts that should be observable and measurable, if not with current technology then theoretical technology. To say you can't prove god with science is a cop out, as science can demonstrate everything (given time), and everything demonstrates science. Revelation is the testimony of self-appointed prophets living centuries ago in primitive, archaic desert cultures. Why on earth would anyone take anything it says seriously, especially when any number of claims it (scripture/revelation) makes are consistantly shown to be nonsense. As mentioned, the more garbage that scripture is shown to contain, the more desperate theists become in trying to substitute direct claims for 'metaphorical' or 'poetic' inferences. Revelation/scripture is a series of claims, not evidence for the claims. Social sciences use testimony all the time, court cases for example when convicting criminals, but we can interrogate and search for holes in stories, then make descisions after we've asked all the questions, rather than being told what the testifier wants us to hear.

You have rational arguments for Gods existence as well of course, some good convincing arguments on offer.

Every single one of which can be shown to be countered. They all pose more questions than answers. They beg the question.

You have one thing that lacks a cause, this thing is God, and everything else is caused by this by this initial aspect of existence. There's nothing wrong this premise as far as I can tell. Otherwise you're saying things can simply happen for no reason or explanation at all.

Two fundamental points here. The first is that this is just regurgitated Cosmological/Kalam causal regress stuff. It's dead old and has far too many gaps in it. Again, your only criteria for selecting what can and cannot be an uncaused cause (or an unmoved mover, or something that does not begin to exist) is that which some daft book from the desert tells you. This requires pure faith, the bible is self-confessed religious propaganda and can be shown to be written by ignorant fools who still adhered to flat earth theories and everything else that was prevailant at the time. Nothing in it stands out, absolutely nothing. Do you know what the Vedas and the Qur'an say? Why suspend your critical thinking skills at the christian bible, or is it because you were indoctrinated as a child in to the christian faith?
Secondly, you say that everything is caused by something else, except god. But to demonstrate all things you need to isolate an individual object, limit it, define it and then make the case (whether it's a table or a planet or whatever). The universe is the sum-total of all things, it is not an individual unit in itself that can be limited and defined. Even if we accept the most generous view of the multiverse theory, and accept that everything is floating in a giant hyperspace membraneous mass, this is still a concept that describes 'every thing', the universe itself isn't simply another one of those things, rather, it is all the things together. The jump then from all things to god is even more mind-boggilingly nonsensical, as you've made the case that everything must taper to one cause, but that this cause, rather than being simple, is in fact bizzarely complicated. God either begins to exist (in which case something caused him) or he didn't begin to exist (in which case he doesn't exist). It's possible that everything really did just begin without a reason. Dawkins ultimate 747 argument puts it nicely, as does Dan Barker's 'godless'. Cosmological simply introduces more irrational complexicity, the only 'evidence' of which derives from some silly books, penned by the scribes of tribal leaders who were more concerned with consolidating tribal power than philosophy. The bible was written by humans, contains contradictions and contains bombastic claims which, since its creation, have been shown to be false (even with poetic reinterpretation factored in to the equation).

God doesn't have a life cycle he's just the reason why we have life cycles and cosmological cycles and everything else that happens and goes on. He created all of that and that's the reason why all of this exists. The Good Book will fill you in on some of the details of the relationship between Creator and his creatures, your eternal salvation from sin and your inner knowledge of good and evil and all that business. All the stuff science doesn't cover right here.

I used to be a christian, the 'dumb book' doesn't contain any answers, all its claims are either untrue or unvarifiable, which is about as useful for understanding the world as a deat cat wrapped in tin foil and seasoned with turmeric. You confuse how from why, whereas really they must be conflated. We do not ask "Why is this tree?" because the correct wording is "How did this tree arise?". By automatically assigning meaning to everything we're bound to have an innacurate and distorted outlook. Some things don't have to have a meaning, they just are. Your only reason for assigning meaning to everything is because a silly book from the desert says there is meaning, but why would any of us give that more credit than contemporary informed text books? A lot of us on here, myself included, used to be religious...................one guess as to why we're no longer religious.

Religion is compatible with multiverse theory so there isn't a problem. Science gives you the how and religion the why.

They're the same thing

[Whateverist]

Yeah, here's another one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Clark...l_evidence

Close, but the answer is actually 1/3 (you may have misread that the background rate was 0.5%, not 1%)

Best way to think about it without doing the maths is that if you tested 200 people, 1 of which is actually a drug taker, the most likely outcome would be:
2 false positives.
1 true positive.

Therefore 1/3 positives are true ones.

Ha! True enough I guess. I was thinking in terms of one True positive to two false, hence one in two. But on reflection I like your answer.

The probability is on Tony's side but the odds favor Jacob.