91 wrote:
Jono wrote:
If there is an infinite number of universes in the multiverse, the probability is one.
Roger Penrose of Oxford University has calculated that the odds of our universe’s low entropy condition obtaining by chance alone are on the order of 1:1010(123), an inconceivable number. If our universe were but one member of a multiverse of randomly ordered worlds, then it is vastly more probable that we should be observing a much smaller universe. For example, the odds of our solar system’s being formed instantly by the random collision of particles is about 1:1010(60), a vast number, but inconceivably smaller than 1010(123). (Penrose calls it “utter chicken feed” by comparison).
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/New ... le&id=574191 wrote:
Tadzio wrote:
The "Reasonable" Faith organization's writer made the "Monty Hall Paradox" mistake in using probabilities. Many academics "dumb down" their writings to have more average readers, but when the "dumb down" resullts in faulty reasoning opportunities, such problems arise.
"Conditional Probabilities" have the greatest abuse in popular science, because it is most often ignored that once something is known, the probabilities of everything related with the known are vastly different than if the known remained "unknown".
To illustrate how ridiculous such flawed reasoning can go, I will argue about the chances that I exist using established crude statistics, while ignoring the fact that I already exist. Therefore, since it took an hour for me to be born, and each year has about 8,766 hours,
with my life about 540,000 hours long, and the world now has 7,000,000,000 people, the chances that I was born being "me" is less than one out of 3,800,000,000,000,000. This is being so slight of a chance, I know that I probably don't exist, and that I'm not here to make this claim. SUCH AN ARGUMENT IS NONSENSE!! !
The calculation of the universe's low entropy condition is based simply on the variability of potential range of values; it is a simple 1 in x chance. Its its not a backwards calculated probability like attempting to deduce the likelihood of your present existence from the beginning of time. The person who calculated that specific probability was Roger Penrose an Professor of Mathematics at Oxford and winner of the Wolf Prize for Physics. He then did a backwards probability calculation as a comparison of how ridiculously unlikely the first (basic probability calculation) was. You have fundamentally misunderstood or misrepresented my position.
Tadzio wrote:
Why are you posting so many links to pro-religious websites that grasp at astronomically small frequency ratios to propose a close-minded and feeble base for shady versions of Pascal's Wager, again and again, and again????
The affiliation of a website has no bearing on its truth value. I linked to an article by Dr. William Lane Craig who is an expert in the Teleological Argument; which is what this thread is essentially about. If you have a problem with my discussing it then please by all means feel free to not look in such threads. Further, the reasonablefaith website was the only pro-religious website that I linked to in this thread. Closer to truth is a PBS television show website that features interviews with just about everyone from Alvin Plantinga to Daniel Dennett; from Ray Kurzweil to Michio Kaku. So branding my position as being based on pro-religious websites is not only a genetic fallacy but also absolutely wrong. If I had wanted to just post stuff in favor of the teleological argument I would not have linked to Paul Davies and Feeman Dyson I would have linked to Peter Van Inwagen and John Polkinghorn. The first two represent something of a middle-ground in the discussion of teleology; with people like Lawrence Krauss on the other end (I recommend you watch his debate with Craig it is available on youtube).
FYI if I wanted to do a Gish Gallop I would have mentioned every one of the finely tuned constants, there are around 30 of them. I just listed one.
Hi 91,
Your posting has "canned content". A search on Google for the sentence part "Roger Penrose of Oxford University has calculated that the odds of our universe’s low entropy condition obtaining by chance alone are on the order of" gives around 1,660 results verbatim. Your entire posting is identical to a half of a paragraph in the article "by" William Lane Craig at "Reasonable Faith". Most, if not all of the search results are from pseudo-science websites based on religion trying to masquerade as legitimate science.
In your response to me, you have contorted the notion of probably in another way about the "odds" of wholes based on subdivisions, things that don't remain correct under any simple commutative property. I've still have my copy of Penrose's book "The Road to Reality" (2005), and I read it a few years ago (and if I find it I'll check for verification beyond the snippets on the internet), and the citation of Penrose is taken so far out of context, dear Mr. Craig seems to have it stating almost the exact opposite of what I remember, and of that that is available often in snippet citations. For instance, the "utter 'chicken feed' by comparison" quote used by Craig is nearly the opposite of Penrose's contextual usage:
"The Road To Reality: a complete guide to the laws of the universe" by Roger Penrose (2005), page 764: "living inhabitants, could be created from random collision of particles and radiation with a probability of one part in 10-to-the-(10 to the 60th power) power... ....which is utter 'chicken feed' by comparison" with the tremendously larger number of instances conducive to the results of "living inhabitants" from the Big Bang of the observable universe.
A very much simpler example would be flipping a coin for "heads", and then flipping the coin 10 billion times, with the expected frequency of "heads" occurring 5 billion times. Flipping the coin once, with a 50-50 chance of heads is "miniscule" compared to 5 billion "heads", and so "over-whelming" as to be unbelievable on the "flip-flop" Mutt & Jeff Teleological Argument. Somehow, Mr. Craig has the wording where it is very easy to read the "miniscule" in exactly the opposite manner, as if 5 billion is a much smaller number than 0.5, while he subsequently argues that 5 billion "heads" out of 10 billion "flips" is easily verified as impossible, since "heads" aren't everywhere all the time.
The "fine-tuning" is more about "renormalization" and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, with 3 citations on the current books-dot-google for "fine tuning" in the book on pages 777, 874, 875. Mr. Craig then flip-flops in his argument behind this cloud from the "very rare" to the "very frequent", as if he never has encountered a "fair" coin in his life.
I don't remember reading Vilenkin's "Many Worlds In One", but many previews are available. One items of Mr. Craig's citation involved Boltzmann, a famous person from the time when the Andromeda Nebulae was regarded as a "nebulae", not a "galaxy", and Mr. Craig doesn't seem able to verify things a little more than a hundred years old, yet alone anything "ancient". "Ludwig Boltzmann’s appeal to a multiverse" gives 6 direct results, so I'm interested in the words "multiverse" and "Boltzmann" now, before his death in 1906:
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?co ... moothing=3
Between 1800 and 1896, I get 7 books, all religious or philosophical, and looking for Boltzmann in them, I find no mention.
Between 1897 and 1907, I get 77 books, again, mainly religious/philosophical, and I again notice that the word "multiverse" has rather often an entirely different definition than used presently, and in one book, the two are mentioned, but many pages apart involving different subject matter (even the word "galaxy" had a different physical meaning back then, as did the word "multiverse").
Your posting containing entirely of Mr. Craig's writings, is not "middle of the road". It is of "Mr. Craig". You claimed you wanted information about "why" involving:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... lane-craig
and this website is listed in the very same link you placed in your request. "Canned responses" from 1,660 websites is hardly one lone reference, and 1,660 parroting the same nonsense doesn't make the nonsense true, factual, or constructively useful.
Your postings are about as pro-religious/pro-science as are the "Watchtower" and "Awake!" magazines, since these publications are so scientific as too even mention Darwin, Davies, Hoyle, and many other famous scientists also.
I find this humourous book very relevant here "The Hibbert Journal, Volume 4" edited by Jacks, et al. (1906), page 460: "The proposal to run the universe (turned into a multiverse) as a joint-stock enterprise under God & Company, Limited (without insurance against accident?), may be an accommodation to popular religious belief, but it is essentially irreligious, the very antithesis of the spirit of Paul and Augustine, 'An poyuis non essem nisi essem in te ex quo omnia per quem omnia in quo omnia?'"
Tadzio
Your earlier link:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timst ... ane-craig/
06 Nov 2011, 12:39 am
it's when it gets organised that it becomes ugly.
