Oh, yeah? Well, that was not the impression I had at the time. But anyway, there's no point arguing when it's so easy to resolve -- if you have an argument for why induction can be justified and is not just blind faith, go ahead and present it! (I'm off for now, so I"ll have to respond later).

(Certainly your characterization of my "refutation" is absurd -- I gave great detail in analyzing your probabilistic arguments, with many counterexamples. But I guess this is why one should always save PMs. As I say, go ahead and present your argument if in fact you have it).

My characterization of your refutation was meant facetiously. I realize that may have seemed mean.

Anyway, in response to your argument semck, here is the response I proposed which I felt you did not adequately address:

Your argument is based on the idea that statistically speaking, all else being equal we have to live in a universe of infinite randomness. Anything else is so astronomically unlikely as to basically be impossible, unless some outside force (in your case the Christian God) takes it upon itself to hold the universe together. I tried several ways of dismantling the probabilistic argument that led you to conclude that the universe had to be random, and eventually argued that we do live in a universe of infinite randomness, at a fundamental level, but that due to the unusual properties of randomness when there are infinite numbers of random actors, taken as a whole actually creates regularity and uniformity, or what appears to us all the way up here, as order. You said that wasn't possible yes, but I don't feel you adequately explained why that wasn't possible.

I'd have to say that one the surface that doesn't seem likely Mafia. I'm a bit intrigued by the statement, though. How exactly do an infinite number of random actors create the semblance of order. Are we talking monkeys, typewriters, and Shakespeare here?

It's a similar principle. Infinity is really really weird. Let me give an analogy, and I'll be perfectly clear, this is an analogy. If you put a drop of water on something that is flat, ie. not tilted in any one direction, the water droplet will remain in place, it won't spontaneously run left or right or jump up in the air or something. Why? Is it because no part of the water droplet is moving? Not exactly. Every molecule in the water droplet is moving in random directions at all times, but if you take the average movement of all the molecules in the droplet, you end up with a total net movement of zero. For every molecule that happens to move left, another molecule is moving right to offset it.

Now these hypothetical completely random fundamental particles I'm talking about, can do more than just move left or right, up or down. They can do literally anything. They can "spin", change size, move any direction, suddenly disappear in one place an reappear elsewhere, turn into an elephant, ANYTHING. They can even spontaneously change the effect they have at less fundamental levels of matter. Let's say one of these particles jumps 3 feet to the left (I mean that's a bad way of thinking about what these particles are capable of, left wouldn't exist without them, they kind of exist beyond left and right, but just to give an idea). Whatever effect this jump left would have on higher levels of things made up by these particles, there are an infinite number of particles doing exactly what would be needed to offset the actions of the first particle. And the same is true for every one of these infinite numbers of particles. So as a result, when you have infinite numbers of randomly acting particles, the net result of their aggregate actions always, always HAS to be no change.

Oh and the key point about the water droplet analogy that I forgot to actually explain is that it's not like some sort of law that there has to be another particle moving to offset it. Technically speaking all the molecules in the water droplet could move in the same direction. It's just extremely unlikely. That's the point, it's always a probabilistic argument. With the number of molecules in a water droplet, the odds of any coordinated movement are basically 0.

And by extension, with infinite things all being completely random? Well under those circumstances everything always happens, an infinite number of times.

i dont beleif in god but i do belief in jesus he is my neighbur and he treat me nice so am i atheest or am i christain?

SO it's not the one I referred to at all. I can see what you mean, I think, about it being probabilistic. Doesn't that assume a relatively homogenous universe though? I can sort of see the argument in the case of the water droplet (ignoring gravity and all of the other factors that would have their effect), since that is literally full of molecules. I'm not sure I see it in a universe that is, ostensibly empty in places and completely full in others. Wouldn't the probability effect be localized?

I'm not really attempting to refute the argument, so much as see where you are going with it.

I think Mafia's Santa Claus example is a good one. I am going to repeat it. I don't know for certain that Santa Claus doesn't exist and thus one might say that I am agnostic about Santa Claus. The trouble with this it is useful to draw a distinction between people don't think Santa Claus exists even though they are not certain, and people who don't know if Santa Claus exists because it is still a theory they are entertaining. Words are tools, thus we call the former category atheists and the latter agnostic.

Here is another possibility. Agnosticism is atheism. The "a" means "without". Since agnostics do not have a belief in God (even though they are open to the possibility), they are "without God", thus they are atheists. The trouble with lumping true agnostics in with weak atheists like this is that we lose a useful distinction. And as I said before words are tools and we choose divide the two groups using the words atheist and agnostic.

... just to be clear the reason I am not *certain* about Santa Claus is that I am uncertain of everything, as the only certain truths are tautologies.

@spyman

Certainly, as long as you assume an equal proability of Santa, unicorns, faries, etc. existing. Upon what do you base that assumption? There was a guy who claimed to be his Son, whom eye-witnesses went to rather grisly deaths backing up the idea that he died, was resurrected, and acended into Heaven. There is nothing really like that for Santa or unicorns. Sure somebody could make a spurious claim that they have seen Santa or unicorns, but I doubt they'd be willing to undergo torture and execution to make thier point.

God's Son, not Santa's lol.

+ 1 Anglican again

THe orginal article said some things about finding common ground between atheists and Christians. The subject of atrocities seems to be one that is hotly contested.

In the article he said that people were killed in the name of atheism and Christianity. **regretable choice of words that seemed to set some people off**

I would counter that with this:

Neither atheists nor Christians are immune to being brought into a mob mentality that allows atrocities to take place.

I think that the point is important because admitting the atrocities of the past is a step toward commitment to keeping them from happening again.

I'm not so much interested in who committed the worst crimes as preventing worse crimes from happening. For that reason I acknowledge that Christians have committed atrocities, and it disturbs me to see atheists going through dodges that amount to "Well yes atheists have commited atrocities, but the important thing is that they didn't do it in the NAME of atheism", or "Those guys may not believe in God, but they're religious none the same, so it is religion that causes all of this mess." That appears to me just to be a dodge of responsibility, when it would be simpler just to say "Yeah, we're all human guys, and it's our duty to realize that we can commit atrocities so we can be on guard against the possibility".

Hi Mafia,

Thanks for the response. Before I address your infinity argument, there's a basic burden-of-proof point that I should address, because I think it's pretty crucial here.

You are the person who is claiming that your belief in induction is something more than blind faith -- that there is an argument or analysis that supports it. That is a positive claim. So the burden is on you to present such an argument that that IS the case.

So for example, you close with,

"You said that wasn't possible yes, but I don't feel you adequately explained why that wasn't possible. "

I don't have my PMs so I can't confirm, but I doubt I said this wasn't POSSIBLE. What I should have said, in any case, is just that you have given not a whit of evidence that it was TRUE. I could go further and say that I can adduce reasons why it's very unlikely. I will do so below.

Having said that, let us turn to your argument. You say,

"[I] eventually argued that we do live in a universe of infinite randomness, at a fundamental level, but that due to the unusual properties of randomness when there are infinite numbers of random actors, taken as a whole actually creates regularity and uniformity, or what appears to us all the way up here, as order."

So there are several problems with this. I'll outline them here, and then flesh out my claims below. The first problem is that randomness does not typically create order on some higher level. Sometimes it does, but you can't just assume that it will -- in those cases where it does, there is some kind of an argument to show that, in that case, it will. You're not actually giving any kind of an argument why a random universe at a low level should lead to order at a high scale. You're just saying, in essence, it COULD happen. You've given no argument. So, that's all I really have to say to refute you: give me a proof, or even an argument. Lacking one, .... well, I might as well say, "Sometimes archaeological evidence shows that something in the Bible really was true. That's how it will happen in the case of the resurrection. We can assume that we'll find a full account of it in Pilate's private letters eventually, and I base my faith on that."

Obviously silly, but what you're doing is no better. You have no argument for why order should emerge here. You're just assuming it.

Second, in the example you talk about, the motion of the droplets is not actually random. Certain parameters are -- the velocity, for example -- but there are physical laws that are rigidly followed by every particle of water, and it is from these REGULARITIES, not from randomness, that the order in question emerges from.

Third, you talk of "infinite numbers" of actors. I confess I have no idea where the infinite numbers of actors you're talking of are coming from. In a water droplet, for example, there are finitely many molecules. Where did infinity get involved? Of course, there are infinitely many possible universes. Is that what you're referring to?

Let's flesh these out.

First, let's consider coin tosses. I can look at coin toss sequences of a given length -- say 3 tosses -- as a binary string (1 for heads, 0 for tails). So 010 would be tails, heads, tails. I can now consider INFINITE such sequences. Your claim would be, I guess, that order somehow emerges when I do so.

But it doesn't. If I take a random infinitely long sequence of 0's and 1's, I can't predict the next digit any better than I could with a finite one (50%); nor, if I zoom out to any scale, can I predict its large-scale properties any better. It's true there should be as many zeros as ones, in the very long term. But that doesn't help me predict anything from partial knowledge, at any scale. It's more of a statement of disorder than of order.

So we see that randomness doesn't somehow add up to order in this case.

Does it in the case of the water drop? Actually no. To the extent that a water drop sits somewhere, neither evaporating nor moving, it is an effect of the lawfulness of its particles at the microscopic level.

First, there is surface tension, which is caused by forces on the boundary particles -- electromagnetic forces, to be specific, which are given by deterministic and highly orderly laws (Maxwell's equations, basically). This controls the droplet's shape. If any particle attempted to leave the droplet, the electromagnetic forces on it from one side would become greater as it left, so it would slow down and turn around again. That is why particles don't in fact go flying out of the droplet.

Moreover, each particle individually obeys conservation of momentum. This by itself is enough to guarantee that the droplet won't take off in one direction or another: if a given atom changes direction in its motion, it must be from a collision (or deflection) with another atom, which caused that one to change direction equally in the opposite direction. This is a law, not randomness, and that is what keeps the droplet from up and taking off. Right down to the level of quantum field theory, where we look at individual electrons, photons, and nucleons, conservation of momentum is built into the fundamental interactions -- a regularity of nature which emerges in the droplet not moving.

(So in fact, where you said this,

"Oh and the key point about the water droplet analogy that I forgot to actually explain is that it's not like some sort of law that there has to be another particle moving to offset it. "

That was actually false! The conservation of momentum is exactly such a law, right down to the most fundamental, quantum level).

What happens when you heat a droplet of water? Eventually, the kinetic energy of the individual molecules is enough to overcome the inter-molecular attractive force, and randomness wins: the droplet evaporates. Far from moving in one direction or another, it simply ceases to exist. But the ordinary "regularity" you speak of is not at all an effect of the randomness. It is an expression of the fact that the random motion has insufficient energy to overcome the regularities given by the attraction.

On analysis, therefore, we see that you haven't actually even given an example of order emerging from chaos. You have given an example of order emerging from order. It is possible, of course, to give examples of order emerging from chaos, but in very specific scenarios, and to show that it does, you have to do a lot of work and argument. You haven't done any of that. You've just said, "Hey, randomness + infinity = order." Which is simply false.

There's actually a big clue that something has to be wrong with your analysis / suggestion, by the way.

You talk of infinite randomness "at the fundamental level," but of order appearing to us "up here" -- at our scale, I suppose. But actual randomness wouldn't distinguish scales. Different behavior at different scales emerges from order and regularity, not from randomness. To go back to the coin example, it's just as random no matter how many "clumps" of tosses you look at at a given time. In other words, if I express each sequence in hexadecimal instead of binary, I get random and unpredictable sequences of hexadecimal digits instead of of binary digits. No matter how high I go up, or how clumpy I look, it's random random random at every point.

Quantum mechanics, of course, does lead to ordered behavior at a higher scale -- but that's because QM is not completely random. Order and scale are introduced by the Schroedinger equation and Planck's constant. It's not "everything is equally likely." It's, "some things are much more likely than others, and only at Planck-like scales can you distinguish this from determinism." In short, it's order.

So in brief:

* Generically, order does not arise from randomness. In certain, constrained circumstances it may. Specific arguments are necessary to justify the claim that it does in those cases.

* Randomness would not give you the various "levels" or "scales" you need in order to claim that one scale is not random.

* The examples you gave of randomness leading to order were flawed in several fundamental ways, discussed above.

* I'm not sure where exactly "infinity" entered into your analysis.

* So in particular, you have given absolutely no reason or argument for the proposition that the regularities we observe, which mix specific amounts of randomness at some scales with high amounts of order at others, could arise from true, complete, fundamental randomness.

* Thus, your belief in induction remains unjustified.

On the other hand, the following remains true: if you consider all possible 4-dimensional universes that follow the laws of physics up to our particular moment of time, ALMOST ALL of them stop following the laws of physics immediately. (The 4-dimensional is just to limit the number of disordered universes. Removing that adjective only makes it worse, not better, for your argument.) So in some sense, this calculation has already been done, and induction lost.

I don't usually bump, but I am curious as to anyone's response to these two statements. They seem perfectly reasonable to me.

"Neither atheists nor Christians are immune to being brought into a mob mentality that allows atrocities to take place."


"We're all human; it's our duty to realize that we can commit atrocities, so we can be on guard against them in the future. "

I agree with you CA. I made a similar comment in the other thread.

It's curious that you guys don't seem to be willing to touch this one. What gives?

You weren't actually trying to make the case that atheism was proof against mob mentality and genocide were you? The statements above should be pretty easy to agree with.

Ah thanks SPyman. That's one. I kinda figured you'd be the first one to agree.

More fun poking fun at Islam that finding common ground with those Chrsitians, I suppose. Thanks again for the response Spyman :-)

"The first problem is that randomness does not typically create order on some higher level." That's exactly the claim I take issue with. Yes it does. It has to as a consequence of the laws of probability. Otherwise it's not randomness. Statistically speaking the more randomly acting objects you have, the greater the degree of uniformity you get. If you have an infinitely large universe (which we do) made up of fundamental particles on some level (which we know it is) then there have to be an infinite number of these fundamental particles. (Incidentally that's where the infinite number of random actors come from.)

The point about probability at infinity is this. If you take a coin and flip in any finite number of times it's impossible to predict with any reliability the distribution of heads and tails. If you flip it 10 times, the numbers could be anything. 6 and 4, 1 and 9, 3 and 7. Anything that adds up to 10.
If you flip it 100 times, it could still be anything, but odds are it would be somewhat closer to 50/50. The higher you go the more this holds. 1000 times you're even closer to 500/500. It could be anything, but probabalistically speaking the odds of a distribution of exactly half and half approaches 1 as the number of coin tosses increases. At an infinite number of coin tosses we know what the distribution will be. It will ALWAYS be exactly 50/50. Always, without fail. No exceptions. Ever. Each individual coin toss will be impossible to predict, but the overall distribution (which is what matters for our purposes here) will always be exactly half heads and half tails. Always. I can't stress that enough. Probability actually always becomes completely uniform and quite predictable at infinite numbers. That's kind of a crucial point, the entire idea of probability wouldn't work without that property. And when you're talking about the behaviour of the universe you're always talking about infinite numbers.

Obviously that assumes a perfectly balanced coin where the odds of heads or tails is exactly 50/50. No such coin actually exists, but for the sake of argument lets pretend it does.

OK, upon request...back into this thread I go...

"I thought that #1 was celebrating someone's death makes you a dick...."

Well, the title of #1 is "1. You Can Do Terrible Things in the Name of Either One"

So...?

If you're referring to Bin Laden (and I don't know if you are, and I hesitate to bring up Bin Laden, as it seems you're all already in quite the page-turner of a war)...

Even if someone celebrated Bin Laden's death...
And even if a Christian and Atheist both celebrated that death...
And EVEN if we granted--though for Bin Laden, I'm not sure I would, for obvious reasons, you shouldn't generally celebrate death, but if some Jews celebrated, as I'm sure they did, when they heard Hitler had died, I'm sure no one would have begrudged them--that celebrating a death makes you a dick...

That wouldn't be celebrating a death in the name of Atheism...that'd be celebrating a death because it's Bin Laden/Hitler/whoever.

It's NOT in the name of Atheism, so, I'm afraid I don't see how that meshes with #1, unless I'm really misunderstanding the question?

"Lol, here we go. But Obi, you have to at least admit that there is some validity to the statement that the other side gets pushed into a more hardline position when you make statements like this:
“Harass?
No.
Drive the other side out?
...Well, at the rate the Atheist population is exploding, and with every new generation more kids accept evolution, and the cosmos being so telling as to the age of the universe NOT being 6,000 years, and so on and so forth...

Maybe not "drive out," but there's a possibility (indeed, I hope it comes true) that in a couple hundred years, perhaps Atheism could rival Christianity in states like the US, Canada and UK by a 50/50 margin...

The more Atheism gains, the more Theism loses.”

I mean really. Lots of Christians (or theists in general) couldn’t give a rip about YEC and have no problem with evolution, etc. That was the point of the article. Not pointing out the worst in the opposition merely because they are the easiest target? Any of this ring a bell?"

Well, I'll respond to that bit by bit, as there are a few points I'd like to address...

1. As far as the popularity/widespread base of Young Earth Creationists, or Intelligent Design advocates, or the lot, the entire group...ad the risk of raising some ire at this name drop...

I'd equate YEC and Intelligent Design Advocates, in terms of how VOCAL they are--and not I'm equating these two just in that sense, that in both cases, for small bases, they are both extremely vocal and extremely effective in making their cause "heard" and impactful in some way or another--with Ron Paul supporters.

Does Ron Paul have the largest base?
No.
But is it growing?
Well, not anywhere nearly as quick as it'd have to for a 70-something Congressman to unseat an incumbent President, but yes, we can definitely say it's growing.
Is that base vocal?
Yes.
Is that base KNOWN ESPECIALLY for just how vocal and proud its supporters are?
I'd say yes--there are Obama boosters and Romney ralliers, sure, but there's something undeniably passionate (I'd say borderline fanatical, at least in my dealings face to face with said supporters, but a single swallow does not a summer make, so I'll leave it there and not indict the whole bunch) about Ron Paul supporters...and a telling factor--

They have FAR louder a voice than their numbers or base "should" permit them to have, their voice is heard far louder than any other 3rd party candidate...to that end, Ron Paul is really, perhaps, the only well-known 3rd-party candidate that's been around for more than a one-time shot.

NOW.

My analogy?

Yes, I agree--YEC are not the whole of the Christian body, and probably not even the majority.

That being said, it's the YEC who are the especially loud ones and the ones being HEARD and thus IMPACTFUL...

It's not necessarily the OTHER Christian sects that are for teaching YEC alongside evolution (and really only conceding that much because they'd be hard-pressed to get evolution out of the class now, this isn't 1925 and the Scopes Trial-era anymore) but they don't help the matter...and I'd propose two reasons why:

1. In some cases, it's just an old-fashioned case of being laid back and letting things run their course and not obsessing over something they might find trivial, which I imagine some Christians must see these court battles as, trivial in some sense or another, either they don't feel it pertains to them or will affect them or that it's not their fight or don't care to fight it and take sides...whatever the reason is, some folks just don't care about the YEC/Evolution battles, either seeing it as relatively unimportant or just a lot of hot air or else just not having the time and energy to engage themselves in such matters with lives and jobs and kids and whatnot.

2. In other cases, certain families might know that having religion and public school mixed together is against the law in many cases, but they take pride in their faith, and feel it's an important set of virtues and part of the values they'd like to see passed on, and evolution, while not blatantly incompatible with faith (at least in theory) certainly does raise some issues...so being a silent majority might, for this crowd, be their solution, to support the YEC people in their silence and non-involvement, and letting the YEC people fight the battle they don't wish to and in return voting at the ballot box or on school boards as part of that silent majority, sometimes pro-YEC...much the same way as a nation might silently but somewhat firmly support a smaller, "pitbull" nation that can be used to antagonize their enemies without jeopardizing their standing and, in return, they grant support for that smaller, more radical nation; we see this with China and North Korea, the latter being the pitbull for the former against the West when it serves China's interests...and in return, China regularly is North Korea's biggest advocate in the UN and on the Security Council, both formally and informally. The same may be the case with this sect of Christians--they let the YEC people fight the battle, and if they win, great, and if they don't either they don't mind too much--nothing lost or gained--and at the very least they and their sect have saved face by not loudly backing a losing side.

So while YEC's may be in the "minority," they're still a radical and dangerous minority academically and politically speaking in the US for educators and proponents of science, and, again, it's not just the YEC's who back YEC projects, they're just the ones doing the yelling and rallying, there are others who are silent, passive supporters, and THAT group could well be in the majority.

2. Now, by now, you may be saying "He's COMPLETELY ignoring the point made that you shouldn't exploit the 'worst' of each group."

And...I am, to an extent, because, well, I don't wholly agree with that.

Yes, I agree--
It's unfair to judge Christians by the Westboro Baptist Church.
It's unfair to judge Atheists by Joseph Stalin.

But to g back to #1...and my argument there...

WBC="Bad" Christians doing bad things in the name of their interpretation of Christianity
Stalin=An evil person doing evil things in his OWN name...and he just happened to be an Atheist as well, he didn't KILL in the name of Atheism

So, with that said, to ALSO reference something I've said before, and this being me referencing someone else, Stephen Fry:

In that Intelligence Squared debate, Anne Widdecome and an Archbishop of some African nation vs. Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry:

1. The Archbishop starts by saying why he feels Catholicism is a force for good
2. Hitchens disagrees and lists atrocities the Church itself had condoned and has "apologized" for, and references the Pope's lie that condoms increase the chance of getting AIDS, and chastises him for it,
3. Widdecome attempts to lambast Hitchens, saying "I KNEW they'd bring up condoms" and saying that Atheists only ever mention the bad the Catholic Church does without acknowledging the good in help centers and whatnot,
4. Stephen Fry responds to Widdecome with an analogy to the "I KNEW they'd bring up condoms" to a burglar saying "I KNEW you'd bring up those burglaries...you NEVER mention that I always got a present for my dad for his birthday!" and that, obviously, in that case, the latter goods don't trump the wrongdoing, and such is the case, Fry argues, with the Catholic Church and all the atrocities it has publicly apologized for (to list a few named--the Inquisition, silence during Hitler's final solution, the Crusades, the forced conversion of people in Africa, South America, and all over the world, anti-Semitic preachers past, child molestation, and its own admitted subjugation of women) the good done by help centers and such don't begin to outweigh the bad.

So.

My response is similar--I DO dwell on the bad, because:

1. The bad does outweigh the good, I don't think it's even close in that regard (and that's if I DO count great art that was partially or wholly religiously inspired, without that, the "good" really begins to dwindle until the 20th century...all the corruption of the Church in the Dark Ages, and how Orwellian and controlling it was, and what it used its power for--for one, to start a series of wars, the Crusades, that we've just seen them apologize now for--and how it hurt people and retarded science and formed new hatred and subjugated so many people...not even CLOSE the Good vs. Bad debate, in my opinion, you're welcome to challenge it.)

2. Simply put--the bad is what matters, especially if it outweighs the good. If the Mets lose 10-0 to the Yankees, I don't say "Well, David Wright went 2-4 for 2 of the Mets 5 hits on the day, why don't we focus on that a bit, and not the negative?"

10-0=an overwhelming negative...and in my view, in the view of many Atheists, I think, the negatives far outweigh the positives morally, and that's WITHOUT getting into the science of it and asking if all of this is even justifiable in a theological sense.



So yes, they're the easiest target.

But there's a reason they're a target--and if Christians don't want to be judged by the standards of the YEC or the atrocities of the Catholic Church, then perhaps a bit more vocal and active denunciation of sects that are on the fringe or radical (like, say, those very YEC folks) would help, SHOW US you're not in line with them...

Other wise, they appear not wholly dissimilar from you--just more radical.

I've made the point several times--Religion is not the same thing as trusting Jesus. I was raised in a church and a "religion" that emphasized doing good, but the relationship with God was missing until I sat down and told God that yes, I accepted his gift of payment of my sins through the death of Jesus on the cross. So yes, religion can be both good and bad, but there's nothing bad about Jesus' dying for me on the cross, about the Holy Spirit slowly getting more of a foothold in my life (slowly because it takes me so long to give difficult areas of my life up to him).

Anyone want to take it from here?

Lol Obi,

You missed the two line post that I was curious about your response on so here it is:

"Neither atheists nor Christians are immune to being brought into a mob mentality that allows atrocities to take place."


"We're all human; it's our duty to realize that we can commit atrocities, so we can be on guard against them in the future. "

I'm afraid I'll only be able to address one monster post; I'll leave this to others. I to appreciate the wonderful irony of you telling me to be louder in my objections to a vocal minority, lol. Should I spread that around evenly, or am i just to be more vocal against the specific minorities you set me lose on :-)