Logical explanation: why a god must exist

@Fil Albuquerque,

yeah, I'll keep that in mind when I hit Vegas.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

only 1 per cause.

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@HeroicOvenmitt,

HeroicOvenmitt wrote:

Again, if the Law of Causality is not Law, what caused the universe?

Begging the question?

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@Night Ripper,

I don't quite see how...

Yes, the odds of flipping 20 heads and then 1 tails is the same as flipping 21 heads but, so what?

The odds(due to landing on heads so many times in a row) of both are still insanely high? And as I stated, we aren't just talking about 20 coin flips we are talking about a near infinite number of flips all of which would have landed on heads....so regardless of what the next coin flip is, the odds that we've gotten this far without having landed on tails, is astronomical. Why you're disputing this is beyond me.

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@HeroicOvenmitt,

That was not the question...the question was actually WHY a so called "cause" is to be a cause ? Where is the establishment that it is so ? where´s cause causing ? The full mechanic of it...once what one actually observes is the correlation...my argument makes the efficient cause depend of final causation...a closed system...a "trigger" is not a cause...

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@Amperage,

Amperage wrote:

I don't quite see how?

Yes the odds of flipping 20 heads and then 1 tails is the same as flipping 21 heads but, so what?

The odds(due to landing on heads so many times in a row) of both are still insanely high? And as I stated, we aren't just talking about 20 coin flips we are talking about a near infinite number of flips all of which would have landed on heads....so regardless of what the next coin flip is, the odds that we've gotten this far without having landed on tails, is astronomical. Why you're disputing this is beyond me.

I'm not disputing that. You're not giving the whole picture though. The odds of any sequence of flips gets larger and each sequence has the same odds.

You're committing the gamblers fallacy by treating the coin flips as dependent on each other. The next flip always has 0.5 probability. It doesn't matter what was before. Like I said, pull that jackpot handle all you like, it doesn't owe you anything. You are not owed something going faster than the speed of light just because there have been a lot of trials. Why are you disputing that?

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@Night Ripper,

How do you figure?

the probability getting 10 straight heads off of 10 flips is 0.5^10 = 0.0009765625

yet the probability of getting 5 heads and 5 tails in any order off 10 flips would be 0.24609?
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_probability

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@Night Ripper,

"You're committing the gamblers fallacy by treating the coin flips as dependent on each other."
noooooooo, he's looking retrospectively at all the 'coin flips' in the universe and compiling the odds. He has come to the logical conclusion that the chance of this series of outcomes of the 'coin flips' is so unimaginably small that it is illogical to believe it happened shall we say... just 'cause?

1 Reply

@joefromchicago,

Okay, I'll rephrase.
If the Law of Causality is not Law, WHY is the universe at all?

Of course there can be no answer to that, because the answer would be a cause.
This reasoning seems to me to be very irrational.

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@Amperage,

Amperage wrote:

yet the probability of getting 5 heads and 5 tails in any order off 10 flips would be 0.24609?

That's not a specific sequence. You're moving the goalposts.

Let's work backwards. Let's just say that there has been time for 100 billion coin flips since the Big Bang and all have been heads. That's a large number I hope, but if you don't like it substitute any larger number you like because it doesn't matter.

So, we've had 100 billion heads, what's the odds that the next coin flip is heads? It's 0.5.

Now rewind the universe to the point where there have only been 90 billion coin flips and all were heads. What's the odds that the next flip is heads? Again, it's 0.5. All throughout the universe, at any instant, the next flip is always the same odds for heads. It's never less likely to get heads just because of the prior results.

You're invoking the gambler's fallacy if you assert otherwise.

Please tell me you at least understand and agree with with this...

1 Reply

@Night Ripper,

I understand and I have been agreeing that each individual coin flip is 50/50. I also understand that each flip of the coin is not dependent on what happened with the previous flip. They are independent.

What you seem to be unwilling to admit is that if something is really 50/50 then the odds of getting the same result an increasing number of times in a row becomes less likely since at any instance the opposite option has a good change of coming up. The odds don't decrease because they are dependent on the previous flips but because of simple statistical mathematics and probabilities.

1 Reply

@HeroicOvenmitt,

HeroicOvenmitt wrote:

You say science does not use causations but functions. Could you elaborate or provide an example?

Take any formula in Physics and you'll notice that there is no causation involved. Given any formula in the sciences, we only need to apply functions to the formulas. And no we do not say that we cause the function. For any given domain, we can find, by use of a function, the range of any formula (with constants and such given).
Here is an article that I think you may find interesting: it is pertinent to the issue at hand. Perhaps it will clear up some of the problems you are having.

http://hotfile.com/dl/95826075/57efbec/DOCUMENT.PDF.html

HeroicOvenmitt wrote:

There is inductive and deductive reasoning.
Inductive is drawing general conclusions from specific observations.
This is pretty close to the scientific method.

Deductive reasoning is lining up premises in an argument to arrive at a valid conclusion.
Even using deductive reasoning requires the use on inductive reasoning.

For example, you can deduce using valid premises that all people die. This is still based on inductive reasoning since you have to observe specific examples to draw that general conclusion. It's a valid conclusion and it used inductive reasoning as well as deductive reasoning.

False. Not every argument that is deductive is also inductive. Using an argument with nothing but existential quantifiers should reveal the falsity of your assertion.

People may or may not die in the future. But then again I cannot tell you this. Hell, I cannot really tell you that the sun will rise tomorrow. This is beside the point though.

HeroicOvenmitt wrote:

My point there is that using inductive reasoning, you specifically observe the effect of a certain cause.
Even if you use deductive reasoning, you still have inductive reasoning underneath.

False. Refer to the aforementioned reponse above.

HeroicOvenmitt wrote:

As for the gunshot thing, good clarification.
Point being, the cause of death would be more or less a chain reaction of cause and effect.
Gun is shot
Bullet strikes body
Bullet does damage to vital functions
vital function(s) cease
death
Science tells us the "Cause of Death" would be bleeding out or a punctured lung, etc. There you have it, death was caused by an effect.
What would the scientific function of that death look like?

But we cannot infer from the chain that, because a person was shot that the cause was the gunshot wound. And now we have a chain of causes: does that mean me shooting the gun caused you to die? No That is only a sufficient condition for your death to occur (if that).

Another thing you keep forgetting to mention is necessity and sufficiency. Does a cause necessarily entail an effect? How about the other way around?

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@Amperage,

Amperage wrote:

The odds don't decrease because they are dependent on the previous flips but because of simple statistical mathematics and probabilities.

Gambler's fallacy.

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@Night Ripper,

no... it's not... I mean... I don't think it can be much more clear that it's not.

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Quote:

Logical explanation: why a god must exist

For no other reason than I believe in the existence.

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@HeroicOvenmitt,

After the fact a lottery winner looks back and claims that he must have been chosen by God to win, because the odds were just so astronomically against him winning that it couldn't have been chance.

You might claim there's a difference because of how many players there were in the lottery and that someone was bound to win. That's ultimately irrelevant though--even if the man didn't know whether there were other entrants (as we don't know if there are other universes), it would not make his logic sound.

1 Reply

@Foley,

Foley wrote:

You might claim there's a difference because of how many players there were in the lottery and that someone was bound to win.

Yet, many lottery drawings have no winner. The Powerball jackpot starts at $20 million and is raised each time someone fails to win. It sometimes gets to be over $100 million.

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@HeroicOvenmitt,

HeroicOvenmitt wrote:

Okay, I'll rephrase.
If the Law of Causality is not Law, WHY is the universe at all?

Easy -- because it was not caused.

Look, HO, this is really very simple. "Effect" is defined so that for every effect there is a cause. We can frame it as a simple syllogism:

All effects have causes.
This is an effect.
Therefore, it has a cause.

But that's only true deductively. It is, therefore, just as true as the following:

All unicorns are white.
This is a unicorn.
Therefore, it is white.

You wouldn't say that unicorns exist in the real world because of the second syllogism, yet for some unknown reason you contend that all effects have causes in the real world because of the first syllogism. We can, however, change the terms of that syllogism quite easily:

Some effects have causes.
This is an effect.
Therefore, it may or may not have a cause.

There is nothing preventing us from adopting the revised syllogism over the original, since they're both equally valid. It's only because the definition of effect includes the requirement of a cause that you insist that every effect has a cause. But the definition just determines how words work, not how the world works.

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@joefromchicago,

Mr Joe sir, In order to help me see your viewpoint more clearly, could you assist me with an example of an effect without a cause?

If something has no effect, does that mean it had no beginning, and therefore is infinite?

1 Reply

@Smileyrius,

Anything can be uncaused, depending on how we define "cause" and "effect."

1 Reply

Logical explanation: why a god must exist

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