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Are you a truth seeker?

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  • Registered Users Posts: 9,331 ✭✭✭nozzferrahhtoo


    Hmm. If by intentionality you mean an inherent intentinality, as in a plant will intentionally grow, then I will agree with you.

    No not what I mean. I mean that when we take a table and use it to "hold things up" then that is a mind assigning intention and narrative to the concept of "Table". The acorn, the wood in the table, the bacteria and so forth have no such "intention" any more than the sun does when it burns or gravity does when it attracts objects together. They are just doing what they do.

    The conflation I do not accept is between mindless processes, and intentional narrative from minds. Your acorn is an example of the former. Your table is the latter. And you can not conflate them by merely going through the English language to find a word that can apply to both of them.
    As an aside, do you really think life has no end/reason?

    I see no objective "reason" for life no. Each of us can ascribe our life meaning, or find meaning in our life. But that is a different thing.
    So the first couple of entries I got on google were pretty interesting.

    Yes the one you cite is one of the ones I was referring to. Notice the last sentence in what you quoted. It does not say it is impossible. It does not say it is unanswerable. It does not say it is illogical. ALL it says is it is "undefined". And that was my point exactly, so thank you for making it for me :)
    Why not start doubting our own existence? After all, you do not have 100% certainty on this issue.

    Well I never claim 100% certainty on anything anyway. So you would be preaching to the choir on that one. The way my mind works is that I maintain a "continuum of credibility" along which I place any claim. With "Absolutely do not know" in the middle of that continuum. The extremes of the continuum are not defined by absolute 100% certainty. They are defined by the things I can be the most certain about.

    To that end I think the axiom of "I think, therefore I am" is the axiom I can be most certain about. Not 100%. But there is no axiom other than that one I have found that I can be most certain about. It therefore defines the extreme of my credibility continuum, and is the certainty against which every other claim I evaluate is measured.

    So sure, I can "doubt my existence" but doing so is functionally irrelevant to me. Each of us has to work with at least one axiom or coherent thought becomes impossible. So I work under the axiom that I, and my consciousness, exist. You, your consciousness, my laptop, your laptop, this conversation might indeed by figments of my imagination.... but if they are then that just proves my imagination exists too.
    On the other hand, clear empirical observation tells us that everything has a cause. Acorn -> Tree -> Wood -> Desk.

    Almost right. Experience and observation tells us that in our universe, in it's current state, with time as an attribute, we have causality. More than that we do not know. At the "Big Bang" for example many of our scientific laws and concepts break down. If time came into effect at that point what would causality be before that? Would "before" even have a meaning we can comprehend?

    So yes I am happy to look at something like an acorn and say that something "caused" that. But I am not so comfortable with the assumption that we can extrapolate that kind of observation to everything and anything else automatically.
    I showed that by pondering upon God we deduce that He exists.

    If you say so, but since you have not yet moved to adumbrate your deduction, and the steps within it... I can not comment on this claim one way or the other. All I can say is that SO FAR you have not presented a shred of argument, evidence, data or reasoning to the effect that such an entity exists. IF you care to do so, I am all ears.
    If you, my friend, can make something out of nothing well, then you're a wizard Harry.

    You have completely missed my point Hagrid (see, we can quote scripture too). Nothing about what I said claimed that I, or anyone or anything else, can or has made something from nothing.

    What I am saying is, that the theists who pedal the "Something from nothing" narrative are merely assuming "nothing" is the default and therefore something must have come from nothing. And they use a god to explain that assumption and how it came to be.

    What I am saying is that assumption is just that. Assumption. We do not know "nothing" to be the default. We merely assume that, because it sits well with the human mind. Perhaps however "something" is the default and there always has been, and always must be, something.

    So if a theist wants to use "something from nothing" as an argument for a god.... the onus of proof is on them to show there ever was, ever has been, or even ever COULD be "nothing" in the first place. Until such a theist shows something DID come from nothing.... then I do not have to explain how something came from nothing.

    Good luck with that.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭8kczg9v0swrydm


    No not what I mean. I mean that when we take a table and use it to "hold things up" then that is a mind assigning intention and narrative to the concept of "Table". The acorn, the wood in the table, the bacteria and so forth have no such "intention" any more than the sun does when it burns or gravity does when it attracts objects together. They are just doing what they do.

    The conflation I do not accept is between mindless processes, and intentional narrative from minds. Your acorn is an example of the former. Your table is the latter. And you can not conflate them by merely going through the English language to find a word that can apply to both of them.

    I see no objective "reason" for life no. Each of us can ascribe our life meaning, or find meaning in our life. But that is a different thing.

    Yes the one you cite is one of the ones I was referring to. Notice the last sentence in what you quoted. It does not say it is impossible. It does not say it is unanswerable. It does not say it is illogical. ALL it says is it is "undefined". And that was my point exactly, so thank you for making it for me :)

    Well I never claim 100% certainty on anything anyway. So you would be preaching to the choir on that one. The way my mind works is that I maintain a "continuum of credibility" along which I place any claim. With "Absolutely do not know" in the middle of that continuum. The extremes of the continuum are not defined by absolute 100% certainty. They are defined by the things I can be the most certain about.

    To that end I think the axiom of "I think, therefore I am" is the axiom I can be most certain about. Not 100%. But there is no axiom other than that one I have found that I can be most certain about. It therefore defines the extreme of my credibility continuum, and is the certainty against which every other claim I evaluate is measured.

    So sure, I can "doubt my existence" but doing so is functionally irrelevant to me. Each of us has to work with at least one axiom or coherent thought becomes impossible. So I work under the axiom that I, and my consciousness, exist. You, your consciousness, my laptop, your laptop, this conversation might indeed by figments of my imagination.... but if they are then that just proves my imagination exists too.

    Almost right. Experience and observation tells us that in our universe, in it's current state, with time as an attribute, we have causality. More than that we do not know. At the "Big Bang" for example many of our scientific laws and concepts break down. If time came into effect at that point what would causality be before that? Would "before" even have a meaning we can comprehend?

    So yes I am happy to look at something like an acorn and say that something "caused" that. But I am not so comfortable with the assumption that we can extrapolate that kind of observation to everything and anything else automatically.

    If you say so, but since you have not yet moved to adumbrate your deduction, and the steps within it... I can not comment on this claim one way or the other. All I can say is that SO FAR you have not presented a shred of argument, evidence, data or reasoning to the effect that such an entity exists. IF you care to do so, I am all ears.

    You have completely missed my point Hagrid (see, we can quote scripture too). Nothing about what I said claimed that I, or anyone or anything else, can or has made something from nothing.

    What I am saying is, that the theists who pedal the "Something from nothing" narrative are merely assuming "nothing" is the default and therefore something must have come from nothing. And they use a god to explain that assumption and how it came to be.

    What I am saying is that assumption is just that. Assumption. We do not know "nothing" to be the default. We merely assume that, because it sits well with the human mind. Perhaps however "something" is the default and there always has been, and always must be, something.

    So if a theist wants to use "something from nothing" as an argument for a god.... the onus of proof is on them to show there ever was, ever has been, or even ever COULD be "nothing" in the first place. Until such a theist shows something DID come from nothing.... then I do not have to explain how something came from nothing.

    Good luck with that.

    I think that at this point we will just have to agree to disagree. If you are not sure that you exist, or you admit that, in fact, something can come from nothing in a causal chain, then we are coming from two completely different standpoints.

    How about this argument for intelligent design:
    The chance of occurrence of such planet like the Earth is equal 1 in 140 trillion. Already impressive, but this is only one possibility with which we're lucky. A chance for the origin of life on a suitable planet is 1 in 795 billion. The correct process of evolution, which will lead to the emergence of a complex mind= 1 in 89 billion.

    Even if you got something similar to humanoids, who had gathered in social groups and somehow interact, the chance of occurrence of the alphabet is equal to 1 in 12 billion. I.e. even if we are not the only intelligent civilization in space, then the remaining 11.999.999.999 civilizations do not have a writing system.

    https://steemit.com/science/@natord/you-are-a-winner-in-the-incredible-lottery-of-probabilities


  • Registered Users Posts: 9,331 ✭✭✭nozzferrahhtoo


    If you are not sure that you exist, or that, in fact, something can come from nothing in a causal chain, then we are coming from two completely different standpoints.

    So you are bugging out of the conversation based on two things I never actually said?

    To correct both of your misrepresentative straw men above what I ACTUALLY said was:

    1) That I exist is the one thing I consider the ONLY axiom I can be "sure" of and
    2) I never said something can come from nothing, what I said is that theists who moan about something from nothing have never proven there ever was, or even could be "nothing" in the first place.

    So by all means bug out of the conversation if you like, but do not pretend your withdrawal is because of positions I never actually espoused. You are withdrawing because you have can / can not rebut anything I actually did say. So you are making up things I did not say to cover that.
    How about this argument for intelligent design

    Highly flawed link. For a number of reasons. But four main reasons float to the top for me.

    The first is that the figures in the link, including the ones you cited, appear to be plucked out of nowhere. The author did not show any of their workings. Where did the denominators come from?

    The second is the top half over the denominator. When someone says that the probability of something happening is "1 in a billion" it sounds highly unlikely. The important question is.... how many times have we tried? The play set is important. The probability of winning the Irish Lotto is 1 in 10.7 million. So it is incredibly unlikely any person will win it. However if 5 million people play 2 or three times every week then in fact it is quite likely SOMEONE will win it. Similarly in a universe with countless billions of galaxies each with countless billions of planets..... the play set over the denominator becomes relatively meaningless.

    The third is that it is backwards thinking. You are starting from a result and working backwards on the probability that that exact result might have occurred. Without seeing that any number of result sets could result in a sentient entity looking back marvelling at the probabilities of it's existence. You need to look up the phrases "Inverse Gambler Fallacy" and "carbon chauvinism" and "anthropic principle" to see how this nonsense has been rebutted multiple times before.

    The fourth is the idea floated (pun intended) by Douglas Adams with his sentient puddle argument. The idea here is you imagine a puddle that becomes sentient. It marvels the the hole it finds itself in is amazingly JUST the right shape to hold the shape of the puddle. How remarkable.... thinks the puddle.... that this hole is exactly the shape it needs to be for me to fit it. The hole must have been formed intentionally by a designer to be this perfect! What the puddle fails to see is that the hole was not formed to fit it's shape.... but the puddle itself formed to fit the hole. Similarly while we sit on earth marvelling that the planet is JUST right to support life, so it must have been designed for our life..... we miss the idea of life evolving to fit the planet, not the other way around.

    So no the "It is amazing you are here today reading this link" approach to trying to make Creationism (Intelligent design is just a re branding of creationism, so I call it what it is) credible cuts no mustard with me.


  • Registered Users Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    something can come from nothing in a causal chain,
    There are events with no cause already. Some random number generators in computers use this fact.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭8kczg9v0swrydm


    So you are bugging out of the conversation based on two things I never actually said?

    To correct both of your misrepresentative straw men above what I ACTUALLY said was:

    1) That I exist is the one thing I consider the ONLY axiom I can be "sure" of and

    Your earlier post:
    To that end I think the axiom of "I think, therefore I am" is the axiom I can be most certain about. Not 100%. But there is no axiom other than that one I have found that I can be most certain about. It therefore defines the extreme of my credibility continuum, and is the certainty against which every other claim I evaluate is measured.

    So sure, I can "doubt my existence" but doing so is functionally irrelevant to me.
    2) I never said something can come from nothing, what I said is that theists who moan about something from nothing have never proven there ever was, or even could be "nothing" in the first place.

    Your earlier post:
    What I am saying is, that the theists who pedal the "Something from nothing" narrative are merely assuming "nothing" is the default and therefore something must have come from nothing. And they use a god to explain that assumption and how it came to be.

    I assume the theist thing refers to me. I have spent the entire thread arguing against "something from nothing". It is the crux of the causation argument which I presented. Ergo, I feel that you are misrepresenting me. This was a pleasant discussion, let's keep it that way bud. :D
    The "something can not come from nothing" argument you mention is also irrelevant to me because it contains an unverifiable assumption that "nothing" is the default and that therefore the "something" has to be explained or justified. For all we know the opposite is true, that the default is always that there would be "something" and you would have to justify the concept of there ever being "nothing". But this is not within the grasp of any human I know of, past, future, and certainly present.

    To cut through the jargon, it appears to me that you are trying to whittle away causation. Forget "something", forget "nothing"; do you or do you not agree that every observable phenomenon must have a cause?
    The first is that the figures in the link, including the ones you cited, appear to be plucked out of nowhere. The author did not show any of their workings. Where did the denominators come from?

    Came from a book which is named in the article.
    The second is the top half over the denominator. When someone says that the probability of something happening is "1 in a billion" it sounds highly unlikely. The important question is.... how many times have we tried? The play set is important. The probability of winning the Irish Lotto is 1 in 10.7 million. So it is incredibly unlikely any person will win it. However if 5 million people play 2 or three times every week then in fact it is quite likely SOMEONE will win it. Similarly in a universe with countless billions of galaxies each with countless billions of planets..... the play set over the denominator becomes relatively meaningless.

    Hmm, I don't think so. 1 in 140 trillion still seems like an awful lot of hoops to jump through. Where are you getting your 'countless billions of planets' from by the way?
    The third is that it is backwards thinking. You are starting from a result and working backwards on the probability that that exact result might have occurred. Without seeing that any number of result sets could result in a sentient entity looking back marvelling at the probabilities of it's existence. You need to look up the phrases "Inverse Gambler Fallacy" and "carbon chauvinism" and "anthropic principle" to see how this nonsense has been rebutted multiple times before.

    This is just changing perspective from the objective to the subjective. Nothing has been rebutted.
    The fourth is the idea floated (pun intended) by Douglas Adams with his sentient puddle argument. The idea here is you imagine a puddle that becomes sentient. It marvels the the hole it finds itself in is amazingly JUST the right shape to hold the shape of the puddle. How remarkable.... thinks the puddle.... that this hole is exactly the shape it needs to be for me to fit it. The hole must have been formed intentionally by a designer to be this perfect! What the puddle fails to see is that the hole was not formed to fit it's shape.... but the puddle itself formed to fit the hole. Similarly while we sit on earth marvelling that the planet is JUST right to support life, so it must have been designed for our life..... we miss the idea of life evolving to fit the planet, not the other way around.

    I think making a parallel between human life and a puddle does not account for the entire truth. For example, the puddle would still exist if the hole had a different shape, whereas we would cease to exist if the laws of Nature were even slightly different from what they are now. I think William Lane Craig hit the nail on the head when he put this argument in a different way:

    "Imagine yourself in a situation abroad in which you’ve been arrested and falsely accused of drug smuggling. You find yourself dragged in front of firing squad of 100 professional marksmen who have their rifles aimed at your heart. Your punishment for smuggling drugs is death. You hear someone shout, “ready, aim, fire” and you hear the roar of their guns. To your surprise, not a single bullet makes its mark. 100 marksmen missed! What would you conclude? “Well, I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised. If they hadn’t all missed, I wouldn’t be here to be surprised." The rational conclusion is the marksmen purposely missed you. Someone guided them in that direction. Using this logic, it follows that the universe has an intentional source".


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭8kczg9v0swrydm


    Fourier wrote: »
    There are events with no cause already. Some random number generators in computers use this fact.


    Randomness does not mean that there is no cause. What/who put forward these numbers?


  • Registered Users Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    Randomness does not mean that there is no cause. What/who put forward these numbers?
    They provably do not have a proceeding cause, i.e. no prior event determines them.


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,308 ✭✭✭nigeldaniel


    The masses do not lust after the truth, they demand illusions.

    Dan.



  • Registered Users Posts: 9,331 ✭✭✭nozzferrahhtoo


    Your earlier post: Your earlier post:

    The problem here is not reminding me what I said. I clearly know what I said, having said it. The problem is you understanding what I meant, or at least pretending not to so you could try (though seemingly fail given your return) to bug out of the conversation.

    Again my position is that no one can really be 100% certain of anything, but what I also said was that of all the things I can feel most certain about the axiom "I think therefore I am" is the guiding principle as the most certain anyone can be about anything.

    You can misrepresent that any which way you want of course, but to maintain adult mature honest conversation I would merely suggest you attempt to understand the meaning of my words with my help, as opposed to presuming to tell me what I think and then presuming to correct me when you are the one wrong about it.
    I assume the theist thing refers to me.

    A safer assumption would be to assume that if I am talking about you, I will say "you" but if I talk about a group like "theists" then I am talking about a group of theists. Since I said "theists" in this situation and not "You" your assumption above is also a wrong one.
    I have spent the entire thread arguing against "something from nothing".

    And I am sure that has been really nice for you. All I can tell you however (again that is, having told you twice already now) is that I find the topic irrelevant. Until such time as a theist, any theist, can prove there ever actually was "nothing"..... then conversations about how "something came from nothing" is simply irrelevant to me. Just like I would not have any interest in investigating a murder if in fact I had no reason to think a murder had taken place at all.
    do you or do you not agree that every observable phenomenon must have a cause?

    Having not observed "every observable phenomenon" I would never claim to know what "every observable phenomenon" does or does not do. That would be dishonest and madness. All I can comment on are the phenomenon I have observed. The universe is a massive place. It is simply chock full of phenomenon I have not observed. So how the hell would I know about those ones?

    That said however, Fourier above who tends to show up when the conversation errs in this direction, has already addressed your assumption and told you how and why you are wrong. This is his career/wheelhouse so I would merely suggest you take it up with him. You might find it more educational than you expected.
    Came from a book which is named in the article.

    I know where the text came from silly :) That is not what I was asking. I mean where did the author actually pluck those figures from? How were they calculated? Saying something has a "1 in X Billion probability of occurring" is useless until the speaker can show how they actually arrived at those figures. The author in the link you provided simply did not do this. So the figures are possibly simply made up. How would I know?

    Come back to me with a link that actually shows the workings, and does not fall for the fallacies I adumbrated in the previous post, and then I will have something to work with.
    Hmm, I don't think so. 1 in 140 trillion still seems like an awful lot of hoops to jump through. Where are you getting your 'countless billions of planets' from by the way?

    "With at least 200 billion galaxies out there (and possibly even more), we're very likely talking about a Universe filled with around 1024 planets, or, for those of you who like it written out, around 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in our observable Universe"

    There are any number of billions of planets in the universe. However that is only the observable universe. So the reason I say "countless" is that there is quite likely to be (but who knows really, given it is not observable) even more outside our observable range.

    So what your issue with me saying "countless billions" is, is not clear.
    This is just changing perspective from the objective to the subjective. Nothing has been rebutted.

    Except yes it has, entirely so. Once again when you are working backwards from a chosen event to work out the probabilities of that event occurring.... then you are placing a selective bias on this event that is beyond it's due and not justifiable. If you deal out a deck of 52 cards for example then the result will not look amazing. Because it is not. However if you work out the probability of having got that exact sequence it will SEEM amazing in retrospect.

    Retrospective probability is simply not as interesting or amazing as you, and your cherry picked link, wish to pretend it is. Human hubris of course leaves us prone to THINKING it is. Which is why a link like that will impress the impressionable lay man who doesn't know better. But it simply will not work for someone like me.
    I think making a parallel between human life and a puddle does not account for the entire truth.

    It was not meant to. It was merely meant to highlight one important aspect of the truth. Which is that life that forms to fit a niche in our universe, and becomes sentient, could of course feel like the niche in which it finds itself is perfect for it's own existence. And it might marvel at that impression. But it is a mistaken impression. Life that evolves over millenia to fit a niche is going to form to fit that niche well over time. Life formed to fit it. There is no evidence that it was formed to fit life. Which is the creationist narrative.
    For example, the puddle would still exist if the hole had a different shape, whereas we would cease to exist if the laws of Nature were even slightly different from what they are now.

    You can not know that to be true. You just imagine it to be true. For all we know any number of combinations of laws of nature would produce sentient life. We simply do not know. The theist/creationist narrative is simply to PRETEND that it can happen in one way and one way only. But that is all it is. Pretence. You simple do not know what other universes are possible. Hell you simply do not even know what other forms of life, sentient or otherwise, are possible in THIS universe in planets with conditions much different to our own.

    Pretending to know more than you do, or can, is the central move in the narratives of most theists alas. Doubting it and saying with honesty "That is something I/we do not know at this time" is the core move in the atheist one.

    Lane's analogy is similarly flawed thinking for exactly the same reasons. It might seem remarkable if 100 shooters miss you. But if shooters often miss, and you have 100 shooters shoot at enough victims..... then statistically they are all going to miss eventually. There will eventually have to be, simply be sheer probability alone, a squad who all manage to miss at the same time.

    That survivor will of course feel from THEIR perspective like it is a crazy and amazing and magical event. Because that is the flawed thinking the human mind is prone to, but from the perspective of a probability set an event like that popping up occasionally is simply not amazing.

    We see the same flawed thinking in people who think they are psychic for example. I have heard stories like "I have not thought of my ex best friend for 35 years. Then one day I suddenly thought of him. And then 5 minutes later he actually phoned me!!!!!".

    The speaker THINK it is amazing. But there are millions of people thinking of their past every day. There are millions of people phoning each other every day. By sheer probability, the two will coincide and overlap sometimes. Another mundane event will seem like magic to the person to whom it happens.

    So Lane could not be more wrong. Which, from what I know of him, is nothing new.


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,112 ✭✭✭Quantum Erasure


    Fourier wrote: »
    They provably do not have a proceeding cause, i.e. no prior event determines them.

    I googled 'random number generator', to see what Fourier might have been referring to.

    Google came back with "10"


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  • Registered Users Posts: 10,558 ✭✭✭✭Fourier


    lol, I didn't know google did that.

    Yeah some companies make chips that exploit atomic scale events to achieve true random number generation. This is one example:
    https://www.idquantique.com/random-number-generation/overview/

    This chip involves an LED that emits a weak pulse of light on some metallic detection plate. Where on the plate the light will land is truly random. Knowing everything about the LED, the plate, or any other fact will not determine where the light will land. Each section of the plate is then assigned some value and when the light lands there it activates a circuit that feeds that value into the chip and on to the rest of your computer. True random number generation.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 91 ✭✭Lucky Lou


    I dont know if Im a truth seeker but I dont believe that man ever walked on the moon, that rocket launching thing and I dont know or care if the world is flat or round.
    Think its Universal movie scenes.


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,112 ✭✭✭Quantum Erasure


    due-to-less-pollution-the-universal-logo-is-now-visible-meme-300x250.jpg


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 119 ✭✭8kczg9v0swrydm


    The problem here is not reminding me what I said. I clearly know what I said, having said it. The problem is you understanding what I meant, or at least pretending not to so you could try (though seemingly fail given your return) to bug out of the conversation.

    Again my position is that no one can really be 100% certain of anything, but what I also said was that of all the things I can feel most certain about the axiom "I think therefore I am" is the guiding principle as the most certain anyone can be about anything.

    You can misrepresent that any which way you want of course, but to maintain adult mature honest conversation I would merely suggest you attempt to understand the meaning of my words with my help, as opposed to presuming to tell me what I think and then presuming to correct me when you are the one wrong about it.



    A safer assumption would be to assume that if I am talking about you, I will say "you" but if I talk about a group like "theists" then I am talking about a group of theists. Since I said "theists" in this situation and not "You" your assumption above is also a wrong one.



    And I am sure that has been really nice for you. All I can tell you however (again that is, having told you twice already now) is that I find the topic irrelevant. Until such time as a theist, any theist, can prove there ever actually was "nothing"..... then conversations about how "something came from nothing" is simply irrelevant to me. Just like I would not have any interest in investigating a murder if in fact I had no reason to think a murder had taken place at all.



    Having not observed "every observable phenomenon" I would never claim to know what "every observable phenomenon" does or does not do. That would be dishonest and madness. All I can comment on are the phenomenon I have observed. The universe is a massive place. It is simply chock full of phenomenon I have not observed. So how the hell would I know about those ones?

    That said however, Fourier above who tends to show up when the conversation errs in this direction, has already addressed your assumption and told you how and why you are wrong. This is his career/wheelhouse so I would merely suggest you take it up with him. You might find it more educational than you expected.



    I know where the text came from silly :) That is not what I was asking. I mean where did the author actually pluck those figures from? How were they calculated? Saying something has a "1 in X Billion probability of occurring" is useless until the speaker can show how they actually arrived at those figures. The author in the link you provided simply did not do this. So the figures are possibly simply made up. How would I know?

    Come back to me with a link that actually shows the workings, and does not fall for the fallacies I adumbrated in the previous post, and then I will have something to work with.



    "With at least 200 billion galaxies out there (and possibly even more), we're very likely talking about a Universe filled with around 1024 planets, or, for those of you who like it written out, around 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in our observable Universe"

    There are any number of billions of planets in the universe. However that is only the observable universe. So the reason I say "countless" is that there is quite likely to be (but who knows really, given it is not observable) even more outside our observable range.

    So what your issue with me saying "countless billions" is, is not clear.



    Except yes it has, entirely so. Once again when you are working backwards from a chosen event to work out the probabilities of that event occurring.... then you are placing a selective bias on this event that is beyond it's due and not justifiable. If you deal out a deck of 52 cards for example then the result will not look amazing. Because it is not. However if you work out the probability of having got that exact sequence it will SEEM amazing in retrospect.

    Retrospective probability is simply not as interesting or amazing as you, and your cherry picked link, wish to pretend it is. Human hubris of course leaves us prone to THINKING it is. Which is why a link like that will impress the impressionable lay man who doesn't know better. But it simply will not work for someone like me.



    It was not meant to. It was merely meant to highlight one important aspect of the truth. Which is that life that forms to fit a niche in our universe, and becomes sentient, could of course feel like the niche in which it finds itself is perfect for it's own existence. And it might marvel at that impression. But it is a mistaken impression. Life that evolves over millenia to fit a niche is going to form to fit that niche well over time. Life formed to fit it. There is no evidence that it was formed to fit life. Which is the creationist narrative.



    You can not know that to be true. You just imagine it to be true. For all we know any number of combinations of laws of nature would produce sentient life. We simply do not know. The theist/creationist narrative is simply to PRETEND that it can happen in one way and one way only. But that is all it is. Pretence. You simple do not know what other universes are possible. Hell you simply do not even know what other forms of life, sentient or otherwise, are possible in THIS universe in planets with conditions much different to our own.

    Pretending to know more than you do, or can, is the central move in the narratives of most theists alas. Doubting it and saying with honesty "That is something I/we do not know at this time" is the core move in the atheist one.

    Lane's analogy is similarly flawed thinking for exactly the same reasons. It might seem remarkable if 100 shooters miss you. But if shooters often miss, and you have 100 shooters shoot at enough victims..... then statistically they are all going to miss eventually. There will eventually have to be, simply be sheer probability alone, a squad who all manage to miss at the same time.

    That survivor will of course feel from THEIR perspective like it is a crazy and amazing and magical event. Because that is the flawed thinking the human mind is prone to, but from the perspective of a probability set an event like that popping up occasionally is simply not amazing.

    We see the same flawed thinking in people who think they are psychic for example. I have heard stories like "I have not thought of my ex best friend for 35 years. Then one day I suddenly thought of him. And then 5 minutes later he actually phoned me!!!!!".

    The speaker THINK it is amazing. But there are millions of people thinking of their past every day. There are millions of people phoning each other every day. By sheer probability, the two will coincide and overlap sometimes. Another mundane event will seem like magic to the person to whom it happens.

    So Lane could not be more wrong. Which, from what I know of him, is nothing new.


    Peace out bro.


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