Wiploc

I just don't know, Lee.

On Behe's Black Box

Suppose someone rolls a die and it comes up "six," and he paints the six yellow, and then says, "This die has a zillion sides, so the odds are a zillion to one against the only yellow side being rolled. A zillion to one. This proves that god likes yellow, and it proves that god controlled the die roll, so it proves that god exists."

I suppose I could start counting the sides, if I wanted to. But that's not where I start. Even if he was right he'd be wrong. That's where I start. Even if he was right about the number of sides, he has proven nothing.

That's where I start. He can like that if he thinks he's got a case. He can want to practice the articulation of his reasons for thinking that it is significant if the die has a zillion sides. I'm not saying I can't start counting sides (or, in your case, reading about flagella) but I don't see the point unless there is an established relevancy to the issue we are discussing.

If the die really had a zillion sides, would that prove that god exists? No. Unless you persuade me that I'm wrong on that count, I'm not undertaking to work the harder points.

On Bible Prophecy

If you say that Babylon hasn't been rebuilt, and I say that god can't be both able-to-be-seen and not-able-to-be-seen, that gives us two data points that allow us to---very crudely, I admit---estimate the bible's accuracy at fifty percent.

Seems to me that that destroys your case. I don't see how you can come back from that.

Conclusion

So I wonder whether you want to debate me. Maybe putting the two of us together into a debate would be like yoking an ox and a mule together. If we each think the other's argument is irrelevent to his thesis, we might frustrate each other without accomplishing anything.

My suspicion at this point is that the thing you want me to promise not to say would be the very thing I would want to say. I'm guessing that Nightshade smelled a trainwreck coming when he started offering his cautions.

I think we'd be well advised to walk away from this one. If you want to debate, I'm willing, but I'm not willing to suppress my arguments, and I definitely believe we should do this in another forum if we do it at all.

crc

lee_merrill

My question in reply would be, how do we estimate the probability of drawing a full house? First take the total number of possibilities that satisfy the condition, then divide by the total number of possibilities, and that is the probability, which is what I think I am doing. The critical aspect is where the frame of reference is in time, with respect to the event. We can take it after the event, in which case the probability is 100%, or before the event, which is really the interesting case, which again, I think I am doing.

Naturalists say it is plausible that abiogenesis occured! So I ask to see their reasons, and then estimate from there, a probability.

I agree. Now if only ten possibilities result in life, and we say nature rolled the die and got one of those possibilities, then that makes the naturalist's case implausible. Just having lots of sides is not an argument. Having only a few, and getting one of those few, however, is.

So then I could be a purple elephant, or not be a purple elephant, and thus I am indeed said purple elephant with a probability of roughly 50%? No, we really need to estimate a probability here, and not just say two choices means a roughly equal chance of them occuring.

Well, I do require that when I try and disprove the naturalist view, you do not make your reply to be "You have not proved your view"! That is what I am asking, proving my view would be the second part. Why, may I ask, would you object to this request?

But that would be fine if you'd rather not do this debate...

Regards,
Lee

Wiploc

The probability was always 100% that something very unlikely would happen.

If we played poker, and I kept getting full houses, you'd think I was cheating. But suppose I kept getting empty houses, hands that are equally unlikely but not worth anything, would you think I was cheating then? (Example: Instead of ace of spades, ace of hearts, seven of diamonds, seven of spades, seven of clubs, I could get ace of spades, king of hearts, seven of diamonds, six of spades, five of clubs.) The fact is, every hand is exactly as unlikely as every other hand.



If you wanted to figure the odds that I got seventeen full houses in a row, you could try an analysis something like this:

1. Could it happen naturally, without cheating? Yes.

2. What are the odds against this happening if there was no cheating?

3. Could it have been cheating? Yes, cheating happens---not as much, not-cheating, but it happens a lot.

4. What are the odds of it happening if cheating was involved?

Then we'd have to work the numbers somehow, and maybe a competent person (maybe you) will step in here to show what an idiot I am by showing how it would really be done, but I'm going to make up both numbers and technique by way of illustrating my point.

Let's say cheating happens 10% of the time, and not-cheating happens 90% of the time. (I say again, those are made-up numbers for the purpose of illustration.)

Let's say that, in the absense of cheating, seventeen full houses in a row would happen one time in a hundred million (100,000,000,000).

And let's say that if cheating happens, seventeen full houses in a row happen every time (100%).

We see, then, that out of one hundred million sequences of seventeen deals, we would expect ten million positive results (seventeen full houses in a row) by cheating, and nine tenths (.9) of a positive result without cheating. That allows us to conclude that there was about a ten million to one odds that I was cheating.

Did we leave out anything? How about magic? Couldn't that throw off our results? Yes, we left it out, but that's okay because we can't get any results if we try to take it into account. Every single scientific experiment is predicated on the assumption that god isn't messing with our results. We don't even bother to say it. We don't say, "Water is composed of two hydrogen atoms to one oxigen atom unless some magician is messing with us." We never bother to say that. And we didn't bother to say that the odds that I got my seventeen full houses in a row without cheating are ten million to one against unless magic came into play." "Your change from your ten dollar bill is two dollars and seventeen cents unless I am deluded by magic." What a burden it would be to add that to every sentence we say. We prefer to leave it implicit: "I love you," (unless magic has screwed up my memory and perceptions).

But now you want to start making it explicit. You want to calculate the odds that magic happened. But we don't have any odds. To do my last calculation, we assumed that cheating really happens, and that it happens ten percent of the time. Once we made those assumptions, we could calculate the likelihood of cheating vs. noncheating in a specific instance. But we know that cheating happens. And we know that my estimate of how often it happens wasn't off by more than a few orders of magnitude. So we have some confidence that my estimate wasn't misleading.

We don't know that magic happens at all. If it does happen, we have no idea how often. The result is that you have nothing to compare against the numbers for a naturalistic happening. You wind up with, at best, half an equation. You can't prove anything with half an equation.



But the hands that I've been dealt, in the sequence that they were dealt to me, in the various poker games I've played in my life, have an unliklyhood that rivals the odds you can come up with. The odds against the molecules of soda leaving a two-liter bottle in just the order that they do are astronomical, but you don't think that's suspicious. Why do you treat the odds against abiogenesis (always assuming that you are right about them) differently? The odds of your exact chromosomal sequence resulting from random combination of your great grandparents' genes are negligible. Or, to use your terminology, your existence (viewed from before the fact) is "implausible." Do you infer then that your creation required an act of god? And everybody else's too, since everyone else is equally unlikely?



The die always comes up on just one side. And every side is one of just a few sides, if you happen to group them that way. "Whoa, what are the odds that a zillion sided die would roll a number that two less than a prime factor of seventeen thousand minus my birthday?!?!"

We have no reason to assume the universe likes or is interested in life. Therefore, we have no reason to assume that the result of life is significant---to anyone but ourselves. In order to make it seem significant, you have to posit that god exists, that he wanted life, and that he could act to control the die roll so as to produce life.

And then, using those assumptions, you are trying to prove---well, actually, you are using the same thing for your premise and your conclusion. If you were to succeed, which you can't, all you would achieve is a circular argument.



If you say you are a purple elephant when in fact you aren't, then you're not reliable. If the bible makes a lot of wrong statements, then you are never going to prove it's inerrant. You can't cherry-pick accurate statements from the bible in order to conclude that the bible is accurate. That doesn't prove anything.

A smattering of raisin's in a bowl of oatmeal can't prove that oatmeal is a raisin any more than a smattering of accuracies amidst the innacuracies of the bible can prove that the bible is accurate. (I said that backwards, but you get the point.)



But you aren't going to prove you view. If I leave a dollar on the table and it goes away when you are the only one around, I think it's fair that I conclude you took it. You can try to argue that the curtin magically turned into a baboon who converted the dollar into a muscrat who escaped thru the drainage system, but there is no way you can begin to put numbers on the odds of magic having happened. That silly argument is exactly as logical as trying to put odds on the likelyhood of magical tinkering with abiogenesis. You are trying to use mathematical terms and concepts to create a plausible-sounding argument---but there is nothing to the argument. It is based on confusion only. It cannot prove anything.

But if you think you can prove something, I'd be pleased to see you try. I'll be here to help you understand the implications of what you've said.



If I argue that "seven times six equals fourty-two" proves there is no god, wouldn't you say that I haven't proven my point? If I go into greater detail, you could refute in greater detail, but it always comes down to the same thing: I undertook to prove something that I haven't proven.

If your concern is that you will put hours of work into this and then I'll reply with a one-line dismissal, I have a couple of responses. One is that I think I've shown that I'm engaged here. The other is that you shouldn't open with a five thousand word post. Let's ease in, the way we're doing, and I expect I'll be able to give you rich and satisfying feedback that will warrant continuation. Short posts will be easier on both of us.

crc

lee_merrill

Hi Wiploc,

Well no, not if the alternatives were "very unlikely" and "very likely."

Yes, and that is my argument! Continued improbable events of the same type require an explanation.

What I would do, however, is just find the probability of 17 full houses, and one full house is probability 1 in 694, so 16 full houses would be this number to the 16th power, or 1 chance in about 3 x 10^45.

This I think would lead to a deduction that there was some intervention! That these weren't regularly dealt hands.

I agree, unless you see quite improbable results! Then we must inquire as to whether nature did it, if our understanding of nature, and thus our probability estimate, is basically correct.

Right, so then we calculate the probability that nature did it, if we can do that. Then the probability that nature didn't do it is "1 - probability_of_nature". It's a standard trick to compute a difficult probability.

Because to be analogous, some form of life would have to be generated, regardless, just as some soda atoms will bubble out. Only I don't see that this is the case, in abiogenesis.

I can too! Just watch me.

Actually, any unlikely accurate predictions will need explaining, even if there are errors! And so then calling any accurate predictions a smattering will cause me to ask how you know the relative number of accurate to inaccurate predictions, and who computed this.

Yes, and my argument about abiogenesis is purely negative, to attempt to show that whoever or whatever did it, it wasn't nature. Then we check on other candidates, and estimate which of them might be most probable.

Such as someone who could predict this:

Jeremiah 31:36 "Only if these decrees vanish from my sight," declares the Lord [meaning the sun and the moon and stars], "will the descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before me."

Regards,
Lee