Bad Math Used in Apologetics

[Jagella]

Recently I've noticed that some apologists like William Lane Craig are using mathematics-based arguments to assure us that the Christian god exists. I would like to explain why those arguments use poor logic.

A very broad argument is that mathematics in general seems to explain the cosmos in a way that seems to work unreasonably well. An intelligent designer like Yahweh is then required to explain this apparent mathematical basis for the universe. He is "the great mathematician in the sky."

Not really. The reason math works so well to explain the world--in at least some cases--is because we humans created math to describe the cosmos. There is no mystery here. We are the mathematicians describing the universe.

Also, many apologists like to wow us with enormously improbable events that they say cannot be attributed to chance. Since chance is ruled out, "God musta done it."

Wrong again. The only probability that rules out an event happening by chance is an event with a probability of zero. Extremely improbable events--like the conception of any of us--happen all the time.

Also, to state how improbable a natural event might be doesn't say much if you don't know the probability of an alternate event. So if apologists wish to argue that an event like the apparent fine-tuning of the universe by chance is only one out a a gazillion, they must compare that probability to the probability that "God musta done it." If they cannot say that the probability of God fine-tuning the cosmos is greater than chance, then they haven't proved anything.

Finally, a really laughable argument is that the universe cannot be infinitely old because if it was infinitely we could never have reached the present! Such apologists must have slept through their high-school algebra. Consider the number line with numbers increasing infinitely with positive numbers to the right and negative numbers to the left. All you need to do is have any point on that line represent a moment in time with zero being the present, points on the positive direction are the future, and points on the negative direction are the past. See that? You're at 0 (the present), but the past is infinite. You can go back as far as you want to with no limit.

I can go on, but for now let me ask the...

Question for Debate: Are apologists sloppy mathematicians, or are they deliberately trying to deceive people with numbers?

[Guy Threepwood]

[Replying to post 77 by Guy Threepwood]

Without going into the details you gave in your analogy in post 77, let me say this. The point of my question ("by mere fiat?") was to have you think for a moment, to get you to realise that the only way your analogy even begins to work is if you declare, flat out, that there ARE no people around to arrange stones so as to spell help.
However, in the real world...you cannot know this for sure. Even the details you give in post 77 don't rule it out. Even an island guarded can have someone sneak onto it and rearrange stones (since no security is perfect).

BINGO

It is impossible to rule out ID on the beach to the extent required to conclude chance, no matter how stringent the security measures are, you are still going to conclude that somehow, somebody managed to get onto that beach right?( or flew a drone in?!) but we know that ID was involved beyond reasonable doubt by the existence of it's output

Again this is even though you are granted the random generator (waves) 100%


Same goes for the gambler playing 4 royal flushes in a row, if your security measures make the probability of successfully cheating 1 in a trillion, that ain't nearly good enough, the gambler cheated beyond any reasonable doubt.

Even though once again, you are granted a random mechanism that could technically create that sequence just as easily as any other.


i.e. it's not that chance creation of the universe is impossible, just that it sets an extremely low bar for other explanations -given even the slightest mathematical probability- to jump over

[marco]

likewise by your own rationale- "origins of the universe. The declaration that there were no [gods] there, ever, is odd. How would anyone know? "

Again, we can't, we have to allow at least the merest possibility, however remote, and that's more than enough..

I didn't declare "there are no gods". You are taking an example that applies in human terms. We see human writing, interpret it and deduce a human wrote it. The deduction is acceptable because of experience in the human field.


Cavemen hear a roar and deduce an animal. They hear a noise from the sky and deduce a god. This seems reasonable, using human experience. However, it is NOT reasonable to assume that human experience covers areas outside of human experience - as you are doing. Chance would not have been likely to have produced HELP because the probability is so remote and there are better explanations. In the area of the universe, we do have enormous numbers, an almost limitless time period , so the situation is different. God is not a necessary deduction.

[Guy Threepwood]

[Replying to post 82 by marco]

I didn't declare "there are no gods". You are taking an example that applies in human terms. We see human writing, interpret it and deduce a human wrote it. The deduction is acceptable because of experience in the human field.

Cavemen hear a roar and deduce an animal. They hear a noise from the sky and deduce a god. This seems reasonable, using human experience. However, it is NOT reasonable to assume that human experience covers areas outside of human experience - as you are doing. Chance would not have been likely to have produced HELP because the probability is so remote and there are better explanations. In the area of the universe, we do have enormous numbers, an almost limitless time period , so the situation is different. God is not a necessary deduction.

as above then, you disagree with SETI? it's impossible to deduce alien intelligence from information in a radio or light signal, unless you can directly verify the intelligent source itself?

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 81 by Guy Threepwood]

You think I didn't anticipate this? I knew you were going to say Bingo or gotcha or something along those lines and say this.
The reason why your gotcha fails is that your ID, the one your religion promotes, is a supernatural one, doing things in undetected and undetectable ways.
The person shifting rocks in your island scenario is not doing what would be, to all intents and purposes...magic. He doesn't teleport magically to the island, he doesn't arrange the rocks by Earth-bending Avatar style. No, he exploits a flaw in the security and sneaks in where the security isn't looking, or he suborns one of the security guards.

Let me turn the island scenario back on you. There are rocks on the island saying help. You assert (in my own version of the scenario) that it was a supernatural god who did so.
Okay...how? If you're going to assert that a god did this thing...how did it do it? In your own original island scenario, we are able to explain how, or propose several hows (like I did up above). Your god...?

[marco]

as above then, you disagree with SETI? it's impossible to deduce alien intelligence from information in a radio or light signal, unless you can directly verify the intelligent source itself?

I cannot believe I am in this discussion. Scientists are understandably assessing the possibility of alien life. I am not one of them. I was discussing the view that small probabilities can be discarded in favour of the proposition that God created life. They cannot.

If you are saying God is communicating to us via asteroids, earthquakes and snowstorms then that's a proposition, but not one I would endorse. If God has sent a message saying: "Here I am. I am God," then I haven't seen it.

My view is that a freak chance produced the first spark of order, and from this further order might follow. This is a possibility, based on probabilities. It is not a declaration that it is so. God is an invention, a possibiity. His dramatic appearances in the Old Testament do nothing to advance the God theory.

[Guy Threepwood]

[Replying to post 84 by rikuoamero]

Let me turn the island scenario back on you. There are rocks on the island saying help. You assert (in my own version of the scenario) that it was a supernatural god who did so.
Okay...how? If you're going to assert that a god did this thing...how did it do it? In your own original island scenario, we are able to explain how, or propose several hows (like I did up above). Your god...?

Not meant as a gotcha, I was agreeing with you, we can never be certain enough that the creative agent could not possibly exist, to conclude chance

when you deduce that HELP in rocks or the Rosetta Stone, or an arrowhead, or a SETI signal, must be the result of creative agency- is that a supernatural argument?

No, you are just acknowledging the objective fingerprints of the phenomena of creative intelligence, even though you can't directly observe the agent, and may know nothing else about them other than their creative output.

You can argue that consciousnesses itself is a supernatural phenomena, and I would be inclined to agree with you in a sense, it can transcend what nature alone can do and is essentially inexplicable by natural laws as we currently understand them

but that's a semantic argument. We know creative intelligence is a real phenomena- we are using right now, 'supernatural' or not

[William]

[Replying to post 84 by rikuoamero]

So am I to understand correctly that the analogy is that GOD wants "HELP"...otherwise I do not understand the analogy...unless to suppose it means that language is what signifies the presence of GOD.

It certainly signifies the presence of conscious intelligence.



If we collate that idea to the Island being The Earth, is there any sign on the sand made with rocks which shows a potential observer that any GOD needs "HELP"?
Yes there is. But one has to look really closely.


Is this because we are like a GOD left all alone in a real BIG reality?
Mostly the point is, if we were not alone, how is it that the anomaly we feel that we are, is not visited by 'others'?



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The mathematical equation for just the existence of this planet in this universe, is mind-boggling in light of happenstance.

The 'easier' way to understand it has to be "GOD"
Not any particular religions idea of 'what is GOD' either. That just complicates things.

Sure, an atheist informed me recently that the idea of GOD was not as simple to understand as it was to simply delete the idea from ones data-banks as not being relevant as GOD is not needed to 'explain' the universe.

But that is only part of the story. Consciousness is in need of explaining itself.

The universe cannot do that for it. It can simply assist that process.

That is why the word "HELP".

[Guy Threepwood]

[Replying to post 85 by marco]

Scientists are understandably assessing the possibility of alien life.

it is NOT reasonable to assume that human experience covers areas outside of human experience - as you are doing

just trying to reconcile these two statements, is SETI only looking for human intelligence then? because it would be impossible to recognize any other kind?

Even here on Earth there are objective measures of intelligence to be made in animals, which differentiate the result of their actions from purely 'naturalistic' mechanisms.

My view is that a freak chance produced the first spark of order, and from this further order might follow. This is a possibility, based on probabilities. It is not a declaration that it is so.

That sounds reasonable to me, though I think it was a more compelling argument in the classical age of physics and biology, when a handful of simple 'immutable' laws+ lots of time and space to randomly bump around in... were all that were required to create everything we see around us.

science has come along way, the universe and life developed according to a mind boggling amount of extremely finely tuned information, the slightest 'error' in which would have resulted in an infinite variety of dark cold lifeless blobs.

enter the multiverse to help out with those odds- that's fine but we come full circle- the point of the analogies was that intelligent agency cannot be discarded purely by the existence of a random generator- even if generously granted.

Like the hands of cards that don't win anything, there are always going to be infinitely more variations of random universes that do NOT end up contemplating their own existence! That sets the bar extremely low for other explanations that do not exclude creative intelligence

His dramatic appearances in the Old Testament do nothing to advance the God theory.

I'm no Biblical scholar, but the Bible is the most influential book in the history of humanity, so apparently... they did!

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 87 by William]

So am I to understand correctly that the analogy is that GOD wants "HELP"...otherwise I do not understand the analogy

It's not my analogy, so you'll have to take it up with the person who brought it up. shrugs

The mathematical equation for just the existence of this planet in this universe, is mind-boggling in light of happenstance.

The 'easier' way to understand it has to be "GOD"
Not any particular religions idea of 'what is GOD' either. That just complicates things.

Here's the thing though. What is "GOD"? What do those three letters, put together in that order, signify or mean? As of now, that space where those three letters are might as well be blank.
"The easier way to understand it has to be ______"

That's what I'm seeing, what I'm parsing what you say as. And to me, that looks ridiculous. That conversation you and I would be having, as to the origin of life, would be me on one side saying he doesn't know...and you on the other side saying essentially the same thing, but not in as clear a way as I am.
If we don't know, then we don't know. I at least am upfront about it.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 86 by Guy Threepwood]

when you deduce that HELP in rocks or the Rosetta Stone, or an arrowhead, or a SETI signal, must be the result of creative agency- is that a supernatural argument?

And now we're back to the watchmaker's argument.
I can deduce that help in rocks is the result of an intelligent, creative agency, because I've seen the word before, from other creative/intelligent agents, and never on its own in the wild, in nature.
I can deduce that the marks made on the stone that came to be called Rosetta are writings because similar writings were found in pages or in other stones we know are from creative/intelligent agents. In fact, that was how Rosetta's hieroglyphs were translated - there was Greek on one part of it, that was a repeat of the message in the hieroglyphs in the earlier part. Greek was already well known as a language.

Same with the arrowhead, same with potential SETI signals. We are already familiar with other arrowheads, and radio signals, from intelligent agents.

But life itself...the world...the universe...? Excuse me, but when was the last time we had a verified case of an intelligence forming life where previously there was no life before? Or designing it? There was a news item a short few weeks ago where a Chinese doctor gene edited some babies, but that required a lab and technicians etc. If you're going to tell me that not only was there an intelligence that formed life itself, well how did it do it? Did it use a lab?

You can argue that consciousnesses itself is a supernatural phenomena,

I have never argued that, nor do I think I ever would.