The Problem With Odds

[Atheos]

Of the hundreds of millions of people who saw 2001 a Space Odyssey, not one inferred that the black granite obelisk first seen on the moon made itself.
Everyone took for granted that it had an intelligent designer, and rightly so. How much more elegant and difficult to create are the cycles of nature, the beauty surrounding us, and the elegance of self-perpetuating life? The answer to these questions is not *nothing*.

Hope springs eternal that something useful will come from this conversation. I find it humorous that folks shift gears without even realizing it with these "watchmaker" arguments. They know the watch is an artifact in the field of weeds precisely because it stands out from the field of weeds as something someone designed. <gear shift> They then somehow argue that the entire universe including the very weeds in which the watch was found were also designed, which means the watch never was an artifact. It was just another object in a universe composed entirely of designed objects because ... well, everything is designed. Except the original designer. This is what we call a circular argument which begs the conclusion with a side-order of special pleading and it doesn't hold water. Multiplying fallacies doesn't strengthen an argument.

In the more immediate argument about whether "nothing" created anything you are misrepresenting the position of those whom you think you understand and arguing against a position few (if any) of us here hold. Until you're ready ... really ready ... to listen to your opponents present their arguments instead of letting some preacher or apologetic website tell you what your opponents think, you'll be ill prepared to discuss these points.

Or you can just keep believing that your perverted version of what others think is actually right. It's a quick way to feel superior to everyone around you, but it doesn't do anything to further conversation or discover new things. Your choice.

 

[Malintent]

Really? You mean we can't make intelligent estimates as to the a priori probability of any historical event which took place?

Not the defeat of the most powerful military force at the time, the British army and navy, versus the ill-trained, almost unequipped Revolutionary Army, which shivered and starved at Valley Forge, as men with bare feet ate fried flour and salt?

You can't prove something did NOT happen now matter how you calculate the odds of it happening.

One cannot "calculate the odds of it happening" if it "did NOT happen."
Beyond that, I can prove I am not Christopher Columbus, and that I did not discover the West Indies.

I just drew five cards from my deck. Before i drew it, the odds were 30,939 to 1 that i would draw THIS hand. Right now, the odds are 1 in 1 that i did draw it.

Sleight of hand, and nothing more. The odds were slightly less than 1 that you would draw any hand. Why less than 1? Death is one distinct possibility.
Context is everything, and so is meaningfulness. There are only four best poker hands possible. Wikipedia lists the odds of drawing one of the four royal flushes as
4 chances in 2,598,960, or 1 chance in 649,740 for each of the exact five cards in each of four suits. Thus 1 in 649,740, NOT 30,939, corresponds to the odds of a certain random hand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poker_probability

Five random cards are utterly meaningless, trivial.
A royal flush, however, is very meaningful and not remotely trivial. Ask any professional poker player. He knows the odds better than the average pretender of probabilities who wishes to explain away arguments simply because he finds them contrary to his dogma.

The precise sequence of hemoglobin is likewise meaningful and not trivial. The other 10 to the 680 or so possibilities for a polypeptide of that size are trivial, however, and that huge number does not even count folding possibilities, only one of which describes hemoglobin (human).

So you are saying chemistry works on pure random chance? How atoms interact is precisely how playing cards interact?

 

[Malintent]

I lack the scientific knowledge to address that. But not knowing the answer to every question that exists is no reason to invent imaginary friends as answers. Are you proposing that someone created polypeptides and human hemoglobin? ...

The whole of scientific inquiry is based on cause and effect. If you release an object more dense than air in the atmosphere, it will fall to earth.
When we find something that is elegant and functional, not like a snowflake, which is merely a useless crystalline form, but like a computer code, or braille code, or Morse code, we understand that there was a designer, a maker of this elegant and functional object. How is it that atheists make the fatuous pretense that the entire universe simply .... happened? Multiplying infinite time times nothing, gives you nothing. To the extent you believe otherwise, please give convincing evidence of your contention. Don't just keep demanding that others "prove" their claims.

As to who "made God," if someone made God, then He wouldn't be God, would He?

Of the hundreds of millions of people who saw 2001 a Space Odyssey, not one inferred that the black granite obelisk first seen on the moon made itself.
Everyone took for granted that it had an intelligent designer, and rightly so. How much more elegant and difficult to create are the cycles of nature, the beauty surrounding us, and the elegance of self-perpetuating life? The answer to these questions is not *nothing*.

One of all the questions that the answer to cannot be *nothing* is "where did your god come from" (your god, not the thousands of others that came before and after him, or her, or it). If your answer is *nothing* anyway, then you are making dishonest claims to protect your dogma