Thread: God

for one to be rational, he has to constantly re-evaluate old beliefs based on knew knowledge. An idea that made sense logically ~1000 years ago might not necessarily make sense today. Obviously, the idea that murder is "wrong" makes sense today whereas the idea of an all-powerful god existing makes little sense today

This is circular. The statement was concerning process of how events make "sense" (right or wrong).

Heavens, ok, lets go back to school shall we?

You have 100 balls all different colours, you stick them in a barrel and you pull one out.

The probabilty that it IS a red ball is 1/100, the probability that its NOT a red ball is 99/100

Do you understand now?

The event space and the sample space are the same in this
case. In the god debate... the sample space is infinite or a large
number and the event space is finite since there's only two possible events: either there is a god or there is not one.

You have an infinite number of possible characteristics to the universe the probability that any one choesn at random will be true is 1/infinity, the probability that any one chosen at random is false will be 1 - 1/infinity.

Let one of your
characteristics be "there is not a god". Now that probability
of that being false is 1 - 1/infinity. Let another one of these characteristics be "I don't have a million dollars" and the probability of that being false is 1 - 1/infinity.

"The event space and the sample space are the same in this
case. In the god debate... the sample space is infinite or a large
number and the event space is finite since there's only two possible events: either there is a god or there is not one."

You are not selecting between a God and not a God, you a selecting 1 specific possibility out of an infinite number of variants.

There is 1 variant with God: infinity - 1 variants without a God.

There is 1 variant with a red ball: no.balls - 1 that aren't red.

"Let one of your
characteristics be "there is not a god". "

Thats not ONE possibility its the ABSENCE of one possibility, which will be 1 - 1/no. possibilities.

Whats the probability that the ball WONT be red? 99/100.

Did you not grasp the coloured ball example? ok jees lets take it down to pieces of fruit shall we?

I have an apple, a bannana, a pear, an orange, and a melon in a bag, one is chosen randomly.

The probability that it WILL be one in particular say the apple is 1/5 the probability that it WILL NOT be the apple is 4/5.

Get it yet?

Thats not ONE possibility its the ABSENCE of one possibility, which will be 1 - 1/no. possibilities.

No, it is a statement and just as any other statement it
is either true or false. The negation of this statement is a statement just as strong as the first statement. It follows
that the statement and the negation of a statement are both
chararistics of the universe.

I'm not an expert at this type of
stuft but read at least the first several chapters of this
book http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/tea...book/book.html

I have an apple, a bannana, a pear, an orange, and a melon in a bag, one is chosen randomly.

Take your sample space S = {apple, bannana, pear, orange, melon } let the event space be
{{apple, bannana, pear}, {orange, melon}}
Each event in the event space is disjoint. You can assign
probabilities if you know that every element in the sample space
has equal probability.

"I know there is a debate about whether genes try to only reproduce themselves, or whether a more generic selection strategy would be more successful for those same genes - hence 'species genes'"

Interesting.

"I wouldn't know, I'm not British. Michigan is in the USA. I do live about 90 miles from the Canadian border, which is still (I think) part of the British Commonwealth. Canada is a nice place, I really like it, relatives live there, etc. But it's not the US. Just ask 'em. "

[Random interlude]
I'd like to visit Canada at some point, i like snow, and it looks like they have a fair amount .
[/Raindom interlude]

They are both properties BUT the the "God characteristic" will be present in ONE possibility whereas the "Not God characteristic" will be present in all the others!, just as RED is a characteristic of a ball, but the "not RED characteristic" is present in every other ball bar the red one!

Chararestics are independant of any other chararestic.

What do you mean by event space? - I skim read that first chapter and i see no mention of it only of events. And why have you grouped apple banna and pear together?

You are right. It defines that an event is a subset of the
state space. I was using the event space loosely
as a set of events that are mutually exclusive. I think
you could consider the sample space {There is a god, There
is not a god} The probability of each element in the sample
space adds to 1 but you cannot assume that the probability
of each is 1/2 then. Sample spaces are kind of
arbitrary as long as they follow the rules of probability.

You do know that every element has equal probability because you are choosing AT RANDOM.

You can't really speak of choosing. Either there is a god
or there isn't. Probability of the statement "there is a god" will
have to be based on physical evidence.

"Chararestics are independant of any other chararestic."

Not if you are looking for ONE specific characteristic they are not!

Then they are exactly the same as my red ball analogy.

"You are right. It defines that an event is a subset of the
state space. I was using the event space loosely
as a set of events that are mutually exclusive"

All the events are mutually exclusive, we are looking at one particular scenario compared to an infinite number of other possible scenarios.

Hence the probability of any one chosen at random being true is 1/infinity, and the probability of any one chosen at random NOT being true is 1 - 1/infinity.

This really is not that hard to grasp.

"You can't really speak of choosing. Either there is a god
or there isn't. Probability of the statement "there is a god" will
have to be based on physical evidence"

We have no evidence, this all started from your flawed anaology to number theory remember?

You were trying to claim that because there were unproveable mathematical statements in number theory there could be unproveable truths to the universe, that translates into things that have no evidence supporting them.

There are an infinite number of possibilities that could exist. So the probability that one CHOSEN (you CHOOSE to believe in God) at random being correct is 1/infinity.

You were trying to claim that because there were unproveable mathematical statements in number theory there could be unproveable truths to the universe, that translates into things that have no evidence supporting them.

Not really, just that our model of mathematics allows for
existance without any proof of existance. This really doesn't
have to do with number theory but I doubt anyone here(including
my self) understands the proof of godel's theorem. But because reals are built on top of the natural numbers and since physics models using the real numbers among other things
this would translate to the possibility of objects that exist without
any proof in our physical model. This is not to say that we should
believe in those objects. All it says is that physical proof of
abstance cannot show that a physical entity does not exist.
I also didn't mean that there was no evidence of god.

Not if you are looking for ONE specific characteristic they are not!

If a chararistic is not independent then it should be possible to
break it up into smaller chararistics. If your sample space
consist of non-independant elements then you cannot make
the claim that the probability of each is 1/n.

The set S = {There is a God, There is not a God}.
This is a sample space because P{There is a god} + P(There is
not a God} = 1.
One of these elements is reality. To anylize this further
it's necessary to say that S = A u B where A is the set of
indepent elements that together mean the existance of God
and B is the set of independent elements that together
mean the non-existance of God. The problem is I don't
see how you could find A and B. Thus we cannot really speak of the probability of god existance.

"Not really, just that our model of mathematics allows for
existance without any proof of existance"

No it, doesn't mathematics doesn't talk about "existance" at all.

"This really doesn't
have to do with number theory"

Yes, it does.

"But because reals are built on top of the natural numbers and since physics models using the real numbers among other things
this would translate to the possibility of objects that exist without
any proof in our physical model"

Wrong, it would mean that its theoretical possible that we cannot find ANALYTICAL solutions to problems. NOT that we won't be able to find EVIDENCE for objects. They are totally unrelated.

"All it says is that physical proof of
abstance cannot show that a physical entity does not exist."

No, it doesn't.

"The set S = {There is a God, There is not a God}.
This is a sample space because P{There is a god} + P(There is
not a God} = 1."

Yea, well 1/ infinity + (1- 1/infinity) = 1.

"One of these elements is reality"

Yes..........

"To anylize this further
it's necessary to say that S = A u B where A is the set of
indepent elements that together mean the existance of God
and B is the set of independent elements that together
mean the non-existance of God. The problem is I don't
see how you could find A and B"

A = 1, B = infinity.

"Thus we cannot really speak of the probability of god existance."

Ya we can.

But i'm tiring of going round and round and round, i've already repeated myself about 8 times in the last 4 posts.

"It just so happens we havent had a single damn centimeter on our local mountain so far"

Heh, sorry man, that sucks. May it snow soon