Dr Rick

Are you claiming that random events and their outcomes are planned?!

Rick

Godot

I think he's taking the extended circuitous route to some permutation of the ontological argument.

yguy

The very idea of anything being "fundamentally random" suggests some level of ignorance is endemic to the concept. You might just as well say "fundamentally unfathomable" - but of course that would have odious connotations to empiricists.

yguy

I wouldn't put it quite that way, as it implies some super-duper algorithm at the root of everything. Perhaps "directed" is a better word.

BioBeing

Science uses ERROR BARS to display the probability. Where are the error bars in religion?

If you do so-and-so you have a 74 +/- 6 % chance of going to hell... Hmmm doesn't work somehow!

Principia

Very good. Now you know why God-did-it is never an acceptable answer in science, because that is the ultimate admission of ignorance.

Philosoft

You might be right, but I'm not sure anyone who advocates intuition and magical thinking as alternatives to probabilistic science has any business trying to discern what level of "ignorance" scientists are working with.
I'll be the first to admit I'm not a physicist. So, naturally, the mathematical models of all these concepts are unfathomable to me. But, unless you are a physicist, the relative unfathomability of the models, with respect to the people who work with them, is presumably unknown to you.

Principia

Well, here is the real interesting question. yguy comes to Infidels extremely concerned about scientists not acknowledging the amount of ignorance they currently possess. So, what I want to know is what yguy plans to do about it, except whining about it to everybody.

He's already told us in the linked thread above, that he is not demanding a disclaimer everytime a scientists opens his mouth (hell, even yguy himself couldn't remind us of his ignorance in every post.) So, let's ask him about his own questions. Suppose, yguy, you wanted to know whether or not there is a directed phenomenon behind something that is empirically and mathematically random. How would you go about demonstrating such a claim?

No whining please.

yguy

Don't see why not. Nobody is obligated to listen to me.

What's your answer? Do those electrons all have eensy-weensy little jet engines on them with rudders and ailerons, and some lunatic demigod remotely controlling them?

Then let one of them tell me what makes a particle behave in an unpredictable manner.

yguy

"When the impossible has been eliminated, what remains must be the truth, no matter how improbable", said Sherlock Holmes.

Again, we have the possibility that SOMETHING causes this "random" motion, or that NOTHING does. Since the second alternative seems logically absurd, we are left with the first. Now, if something is causing this apparent randomness, what is the alternative to its being directed?