You bet. It is not a more inlikey configuration than any other possible configuration. You don’t seem intelligent enou to get that, so let’s see if we can’t drive a nail in your stupidity this way.
The Grand Design. Hawking’s latest book spends time talking about just this sort of thing. M theory ( the latest candidate for GUT) states that “systems don’t have jus one history, but every possible history.”. (pg 6)
What this means is that if the tableu you are proposing possible I is in fact required.
Hawking cites Feynman to back this up.
So, on the one side of this argument we have the idiot, you. On th other Sid we have me, several other posters and two of h most brilliant physicists who ever lived.
Niggling point–if he’s talking about such a configuration forming via erosion, you’d expect that certain patterns of high and low points would be significantly less likely than others, yes? Here again, we’re not discussing a totally random phenomenon, but one with rules based on physics.
Clarke’s First Law; When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
So when Steven Hawking says heaven is impossible, “he is very probably wrong.”
Actually we have you, the moron, who is unable or unwilling to understand what they are talking about.
If you think that highly detailed knights are as likely as, say, Everest’s current shape, you’re simply not up to this conversation. So why not go watch some Nascar or run barefoot through the woods and let the sane people talk, kay?
You are kind of mixing a bunch of stuff together. While any two possible outcomes are equally likely to occur, a particular outcome that has very low entropy is more likely to have occurred non-randomly than an outcome with high entropy.
In other words, there are more outcomes that look something like mountains then there are outcomes that look a lot like knights. Think about the classic grid of nails that you drop marbles onto. There are many more occurrences of a bell shaped distribution than there are of marbles being equally distributed along the bottom.
There’s a difference between a logical impossibility (omnipotence) and a scientific unlikelihood (demonstrable proof that there is no such thing as a soul; I can personally think of a very good way to demonstrate the existence or lack thereof of a soul given advanced enough technology).
When Steven Hawking says heaven is impossible, which is he banking on?
Hey! I’m on his side on this one…
But no seriously, Lobo, you’re really wrong on this count.
“When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion – the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right.”
Given the general public’s position on Heaven, we’re back to Hawking being probably right.
IS this an extremely selective application of a off-the-cuff statement, or are you also advocating the probability that Santa Claus, Oz and unicorns exist?
That isn’t what we’re discussing. We are discussing obviously artificial statues of knights, arranged in a circle, with armor and gear appropriate to the late 14th century, with hair, eyes with pupils, individual links of chain armor, spurs and pointy implements with which to enforce the will of their lord.
There are an infinite number of possible mountain ranges. Of that number there are some that are so unlikely to be created by natural weathering that the odds start to beggar understanding.
Look, the protons in your shoe could randomly choose to decay at the same instant (assuming proton decay happens). But the odds against that render it simply as close to impossible as possible. Likewise perhaps a mountain could erode to look like 12 highly detailed armored knight statues, but the odds would be so far against it that it would work as reasonable evidence that the mountain were created by an outside force.
Note that this isn’t the watchmaker paradox, because the mountain, like the watch has no natural means to come into being without outside intervention. The people who assert the watchmaker paradox use it for the perfectly natural results of evolution over time, eyes, flagella or whatnot.
Sorry. You, I’ll assume are misguided, Scylla is just broken.
I think you are missing the point. Information theory allows us to look at a group of things and measure its degree of organization. Consider two very long strings of bits: one has 6 '0’s for every ‘1’ and the other has about 50% of each. Each of those particular string of bits is a likely as the other to occur randomly. On the other hand, it is much more likely that a random string of bits is close to a 50/50 distribution than it is to 60/40. So when we look at a string of bits it is possible to judge how likely it is that it occurred randomly.
Real information theory guys please excuse my feeble attempts at explanation.
Are youaware that you are arguing a version of the anthropomorphic principle?
Also, backing up for a second, and assuming that the knights are metaphorical for any event or feature so extremely unlikely as to be confused for evidence of God, well, statistically speaking, examples like that are to be expected.
You are making still another mistake that people commonly make while assessing risk.
While the possibility of any particular really really weird thing happening may be astronomically low, there are an astronomically large number of really really weird and unlikely things that could occur.
So, what would be odd would be if one or two of them did not occur in any given universe.
Hawking uses a better example (and a more unlikely one then your knights) in ABHOT. It is statistically possible that Stochastic ooze might occur in such a fashion that your car would ooze through the wall of your garage and appear alongside it. However, if you were to wait long enough for there to be a 50/50 chance of that occurring you might have to wait several trillion times the length of the estimated age of the universe.
However: 1. Things like that will tend to occur
2. They are not proof of God but a natural expectation in an extremely complex system.
3. Quantum Mechanics states (according to Feynman and Hawking) that all possibilities must occur.
So, your knights exist. It’s unlikely you’ll ever get to see them, as they probably don’t exist in this universe.
I’m then confused why are using Hawkins, in other interviews and writings he clarifies that M theory is evidence that you do not need to use god at all, as in we do not need god to get the universe.
BTW this is close to my Deism/agnosticism. For all intentions and supposes of this universe we inhabit, there is no god, but who is to say that it is not possible in other universes? Of course, that just leave us with the assumption that “there is no god here” as the one that we should consider as the most likely.
According to what you’ve just said if I take three fair dice and role them once then the degree of organization in that system is subject to change based on the outcome? You can tell from that outcome whether or not the dice are loaded?
Nope. Three sixes are just as likely as any other specific combination, I.e. Die one being a 4, die 2 being a 6, and die three being a 1.
Second part first, that is almost verbatim what Hawkings Is saying.
For the first part, I cringe to write this, but I actually think that Hawking’s explanation for a creator-less creation of the universe through m theory is a bit weak and a little contradictory (or at least as I understand it.)
Basically, was created the same virtual particles come into being (according to Hawking in the Grand design as I understand him.). However time and space are required for virtual particles to occur neither of which was in existence at the big bang.
There is a quantifiable difference between dice (where three fair dice, on one shake, can be expected to have a 1-in-216 chance of any given combination (assuming we treat the order as significant) and erosion into a specific pattern, which has a wildly lopsided chance of a mountain looking like “a mountain”. For a mountain to randomly erode into something that looks like “detailed statuary”, we’re discussing not only a significantly lower chance, but an ongoing process of those lower-chance events happening–every raindrop that hits that mountain is essentially a separate “trial” for the purposes of determining whether what’s happening is random or directed.
That does not rule out the possibility that it’s nonetheless a freakishly long-running collection of random effects, certainly. I think your estimate of “one in trillions of years” becomes lower and lower the further that Lobohan’s Statue Mountain diverges from the expected results of erosion.
The main issue I have is that we’re talking about something fundamentally different from trying a coin and trying to determine whether it’s biased from a single sample. Since we’re talking about an ongoing process, you’d be better off analogizing from an increasingly long string of trials. It’s possible that a coin that throws 10,000 heads in a row is unbiased, but just that every head you toss increases the likelihood (from a statistical perspective) that the coin is not what we expect (that is, having a 50/50 chance of heads or tails), every separate erosion interaction with Lobohan’s Statue Mountain that maintains the distinctive appearance increases the likelihood (from a statistical perspective) that the mountain is not what we expect (that is, forming a basically mountain-shaped hunk of rock).
I’ll diverge from Lobohan, somewhat, to say that Lobohan’s Statue Mountain is not PROOF of the existence of supernatural forces, any more than hundreds of thousands of normal mountain-shaped mountains is proof of the nonexistence of said forces. What it represents is a statistical anomaly, one whose likelihood can be calculated.
It’s anthropic principle. And I’m not saying it’s unstoppable evidence for a created universe. This whole tangent started when someone asked what a created universe would look like. And I suggested that utterly unlikely things in the physical universe would be some evidence that would at least point at one.
Now that said, we don’t live in a universe with that sort of evidence, we live in a universe where assuming a designer is a stupid proposition. Especially if you do it based on a moronic “Everything needs a creator so God exists. Also God has no creator.” :rolleyes:
The universe isn’t infinite. The odds against that particular mountain existing isn’t something that would be expected to happen anywhere in our universe. It is akin to assuming that a mountain with the complete Oxford English Dictionary printed on it would exist on some planet. There are things that would not happen without an infinite number of tries.
Again, I’m not offering a slam dunk. I’m offering what would be considered evidence for a created universe. As it is, only someone quite dull would assume a created universe based on our evidence. If there were obviously unusual things, like photographic images in place of the stars, many more people would be convinced of a created world.
