haverbob

Thanks. you are the first person to give me an answer to that. I guess others thought it was too obvious to bother to answer. I believe I understand your response (although i have to admit it took reading it over three times). If I'm correct, then it means that numbers themselves are not random. The bin that I am grabbing them from was not created in a random fashion, therefore the random number selected is not truely random since it comes from a pool that is not random. Is this correct? If so, i can agree. But it gets weird at this point.

"but this further implies that there is no reason for the outcome of a particular random event like radioactive decay,"

Maybe I'm still not grasping something here, but because there appears to be no reason or cause for this outcome, does this mean that there is no reason for the random behavior itself? Granted we don't know the reason, but does that consitute no reason at all? Sure there is no discernable reason for the outcomes, but don't things have to exist for them to act or interact in a random fashion? Where did those "things" or even forces (I'll grant you that) come from? Even if one says that they "just appear" in a random fashion, I may say, yes, random to us, that's all. I'm still not sure why the regression chain of cause or origin stops there, just because something seems to have no reason or cause. It's gotta' be "something" (something can include "a force") for us to apply the "no reason or cause" attribute to it. If it's "something", can't that have an origin or cause (whether we know what that is or not)? That's kind of where I was going with my overly simplistic example. I'm probably missing one little fundamental point here and if you could find a way to clear that up for me, I would be appreciative.

bd-from-kg

Normal:

By definition two interpretations of the same theory “fit the facts” equally well, since they make the same predictions. If they’re also about equally parsimonious, what rational reason could there be for preferring one to the other?

Well, to call it an “interpretation” you’d need to have a theory that it’s an interpretation of. And this theory, to be scientifically meaningful, would have to make a good many predictions. For the theory to be taken seriously, these predictions would have to reasonably specific and generally correct. In fact, it would have to make more accurate predictions than competing scientific theories. Finally, the “God-interpretation” would have to be (at least arguably) the most parsimonious one.

If you actually have such a theory for which the god-interpretation is arguably the most parsimonious, we have something to talk about. Otherwise you’re just blowing smoke.

Not necessarily. It’s not hard to think of evidence for which an interpretation involving God is reasonably plausible and an interpretation that doesn’t involve God is also plausible. It’s even possible to come up with an actual theory (based on some hypothetical set of evidence) which has plausible theistic and nontheistic interpretations, although this is pretty rare.

You crossed the line when you objected to the fact that different interpretations of QM cannot be tested empirically to determine which one is “true”. QM makes the same predictions regardless of which interpretation you’re using. What this objection comes down to is that science cannot determine the nature of “reality in itself”; all that it can do is to come up with theories that make good predictions.

Because the most that we can know is what happens. It’s irrational to expect to be able to find out why it happens, except in the sense that it’s part of (usually an instance of) a pattern or regularity. In the same way, a theory that gives correct predictions might turn out to be part of (perhaps a special case of) a more comprehensive theory that gives correct predictions over a wider range of initial conditions, and this can be considered an explanation of why the more limited theory “works”. But in no case can you hope to discover which of two interpretations of a theory (which by definition make the exact same predictions) “corresponds to reality” more closely.

No, it doesn’t. You’re the one being dogmatic. If you intend to keep insisting on this point I must ask you to cite at least one reputable scientist or epistemologist who agrees with you.

Not so. The term “evidence” has never been taken to entail a strict cause/effect relationship.

First, that’s not what you’ve been claiming up to now. Thus, from the OP:

• Quote:

  The definition of evidence (A thing or things helpful in forming a conclusion or judgment) is in fact a side effect of the cause and effect system.

Your claim is that the definition of evidence involves cause and effect. Not that cause/effect relationships can be inferred from evidence, which is trivial and unarguable.

Again:

• Quote:

  Seeing the cloud there, and it raining 99% of the time, actually have nothing to do with each other without invoking the cause and effect system... You ultimately have no reason to believe that cloud will rain because it is fundamentally uncaused.

I don’t see any way to interpret this other than as saying that you can’t know that the cloud and rain are related (other than by pure chance) unless you already know that there’s a cause/effect relationship. If you meant something else, maybe you would be kind enough to take this opportunity to explain it?

Yet again:

• Quote:

  But just because O is likely to give truth to H, even 99.9% of the time, the relationship can still be just an illusion. If there is no definite cause for O to imply H then it is just a coincidental phenomena.

Here again you seem to be saying that the observed relationship doesn’t tell us anything (“it could be just an illusion”) unless there is a definite cause/effect relationship.

Finally, this interpretation is the only way to make sense of your comment:

But why don’t we have evidence of anything? Clearly, because QM (or at least the CI) implies that there are no true cause/effect relationships, and without such relationships there’s not such thing as evidence.

That’s what you’ve been saying from the start on this thread. Are you finally deciding to be reasonable and back away from this position?

Second, the fact that a pattern has occurred regularly in the past is evidence that it will occur next time regardless of whether there’s a cause/effect relationship. For example, I observe that on Sundays in July a lot of people in the neighborhood mow their lawns. So I conclude, based on this evidence, that this Sunday (it being July) a lot of the neighbors will probably mow their lawns. But does its being a Sunday in July cause the lawn mowing? Or again: I observe that when I see a red light above an intersection, most of the time it’s followed before long by a green light. So I conclude, based on this evidence, that the next time I see such a red light it will probably be followed soon by a green light. But does the red light cause the green light? Or yet again: I observe that during October, whenever a great many college football games are played, usually a number of NFL football games are played on the following day. So I conclude, based on this evidence, that the next time I see that a great number of college football games are played on an October day, there will be a number of NFL football games the following day. But do the college games cause the NFL games?

It doesn’t even matter whether you have any idea what’s going on. For example, when the ancients say a new moon, they justifiably believed that there would be another new moon just over four weeks later, for no better reason than that they had observed this pattern for millennia. The fact that a pattern or regularity has been observed in the past is evidence that it will be observed in the future. It’s really that simple.

It’s not an analogy. It’s directly applicable. In fact, it’s a complete explanation of why the macro-world is much more predictable than the micro-world. If you don’t see the relevance, no wonder you’re confused.

[Note: I'll be leaving soon for a few days and won't have an opportunity to post again until at least Monday.]

Waning Moon Conrad

Karma.

haverbob

Maybe you're right. Maybe that's cool. But what is someone in this forum supposed to gain from the singular statement "karma" ?? Who is your audience ??

BrotherDog

Waning Moon Conrad
User

Registered: April 2001
Location: Melbourne. Victoria. Australia
Posts: 300
Re: The one question atheists tend to ignore

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Normal

So here is the question atheists tend to ignore: What is the true, parsimonious reason for apparent order from underlying chaos?
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An infinite number of tries. Got it right once! Or maybe more than once??? Anyway at least once or we wouldn't be here. Chance, chance, chance, or maybe a mistake? Non-existence might be better then us. :banghead:

Normal

Different interpretations of Occam's Razor is one major reason.

An interpretation based on the brief window of cognition we are all given?

The only competing scientific "theory" to theism is atheism.

About predictions, let's list a few

Interpretation #1: A God exists

Predictions:

- Life would exist
- Everyone would be involved in a certain moral crisis
- There will always be at least one aspect of the universe that in unexplainable in terms of existants within that universe

Interpretation #2: God doesn't exist

- The existence of life is a cosmic fluke
- Everything in the universe can be explained as a function of the existants within that universe

And as pointed out before, different interpretations of Occam's Razor lead to different conclusions.

Objection to god-interpretation 1: If I never heard about God I wouldn't of made him up.

Baseless to the actual truth of the interpretation. If you never heard the details of your heart that wouldn't mean it doesn't exist.

Objection to god-interpretation 2: Why stop science at the point of "god-did-it"?

The interpretation doesn't necessarily stop science anywhere, it just predicts there will always be at least one thing unexplainable given only the existents in the universe.

Objection to god-interpretation 3: There's no evidence of god.

This objection is currently under fire, but even then when you are talking about interpretations, the "evidence" is necessarily the same for both interpretations (atheism/theism), only the conclusions drawn from that evidence differ.

If we take into account the conceptual framework as being important depending on the interpretation, what are the implications of the cosmic fluke model as opposed to purposeful creation?

Cosmic fluke model:
- The things we do have no importance, lives have no importance, everyone exists as a infintesimally small coincidence

God model:
- Our existence is purposeful, lives are important, and our moral inclinations go beyond the effects of natural selection

Are you saying that the god-interpretation and no-god-interpretation can be equally rational?

I think you are still misconstruing my question to make it appear unanswerable. Would you not say that the warping of space-time via GR is more "true" then Newton's invisible force interpretation?

Simply substitute "how" in for "why" in my question then, the meaning of the question won't change.

Explain how evidence could logically evolve otherwise.

Evidence is dependant on a strict cause and effect relationship to be coherent.

I've never changed my claim that evidence presupposes a consistant cause and effect relationship.

Throughout this whole paragraph you are equivocating evidance to mean solely correlation, which is clearly not the context I've been using evidence in throughout this thread.

So it shouldn't be a problem to explain the analogy then, should it? What is the trials being summed approaching u(mu)? Temporal or spacial? Where do causes fit in? Electrons approach u(mu), where u(mu) is the cause? The analogy is incoherent.

Normal

Prove it.

Normal

Well we are here and the chance is over, yet my money's on us being here tomorrow.

contracycle

Entropy. Highly energetic states tend to decay into less energetic states, accompanied by less energetic activity.

Job done.

Normal

Doesn't answer the question of apparent determinism.