The arguement that recently convinced me of god's existence

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Would you mind explaining why you think the universe being ordered has to be an axiom, rather than a scientific fact?


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I did, in the other thread that I guess you don't want to take the time to read.

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I don't know what thread you're talking about. Linky linky.

[jthegreat]

"On Hume and order in nature". Should be on page 2 by now, hehe.

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An axiom is an idea that is self-evidently true.

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Why is the universe being ordered "self-evidently true", but god's existence is not?

I would say that the universe's existence is axiomatic. We assume we are not in a dream. But, the fact that it's ordered does not have to be. I'd like to see that other post where you explain why it has to be an axiom rather than a fact.

[jthegreat]

Okay I've already pointed you to the thread AND, in this thread, restated my argument. Not ordered = chaos. Think about that. Nothing you do, not even your very *existence*, would be possible in chaos.

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"On Hume and order in nature". Should be on page 2 by now, hehe.

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Ah... this one:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...Number=4003996

Hadn't seen it. I'll read it now.

[Jeff V]

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Biochemist Michael Behe said the probabliity of linking 100 amino acids to create one protein molecule would be the same as a blindfolded man finding a marked grain of sand in the Sahara desert- not once but 3 different times.


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LOL... What a statement.

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This was not meant to quantify anything.

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But the grossest error committed by the biochemist (? obviously with zero knowledge of statistics or science) is that he fails, by insidiously putting forward an erroneous view pushed by creationists. That somehow, specifics known linking of 100 amino acids are the ONLY way to create a protein molecule useful to life. as they are are something remarkable or peculiar and somehow they only one that could be related to the phenomena of life. Of course, a scientist make no such claim. We have far from exhausted investigating all possible proteins structures (if in themselves they are neccesary to life and there are NO other possibilities. Not known either). To put the analogy a bit more correctly, altough still lacking in quantification, assume that the sand is made up af yellow, black and red grains. Now the probability may be mooted a bit more accurately by saying it would be equivalent to the likehood of the blind man picking three yellow grains in a row if he kept picking grain all his life.


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That's pretty special- you can debunk a man's life work in one paragraph.

[hmkpoker]

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Yeah... and we know the universe is ordered by induction. We examine it. Since every oberservation has shown it to be ordered, we induce that it is ordered


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As Hume proved and I've argued, you are arguing in a circle. The fact that the sun rose today says nothing about whether it will rise tomorrow unless you assume order, then when the sun rises tomorrow you say, "See, order".

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No, it's basic conditioning. If each time a certain man gets out of his car he gets a static shock when he touches the door, he will eventually realize that it is going to happen again and will brace himself when he closes it. (this happened to me, because of the shoes I was wearing) Then I wore different shoes, but found myself bracing for the shock. It didn't come. Again and again, I went shock free. I stopped bracing myself.

Humans and animals are very similar in this regard. In my psych experiments we'd lock a rat in a cage where he could press a lever and get food. Eventually he figured it out, and pressed the lever often. Then we disabled the food mechanism, and after a flurry of lever pressing he realized it was worthless and stopped.

The sun is the same way. Let the sun stop coming up a few times, and we won't expect it. This is not circular.

[atrifix]

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Some people here are crying for quantification and you are right. Youve got to look at the math and the specifics. Just as a rough example - The odds of picking one correct number in a lottery with 4 numbers is one in 10 to the 4th power - or 1 in 10,000. But if I tell you that you have 1,000 numbers that are winners your odds aren't that bad. But what if the lottery has 1 million numbers and you only have 1,000 chances (the corvette, the porshe, the boat and the plane etc...). So whether you have one chance or a thousand chances at a lottery with one million digits doesn't really change the argument of the likelyhood of winning.

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It doesn't? Your odds of winning at least once with one chance in a million are 1/10^(10^6), your odds of winning at least once with 1,000 chances in a million are 10^3/10^(10^6). Your odds of winning at least once with infinite chances for a finite probability >0 are always at least 1. That is, if there was ANY (finite) probability that the universe/life/etc. would have come together in the way it did, and there was an infinite timeline for that to happen, then it would have happened with certainty.

[atrifix]

I agree that there are axioms, but the big problem is that no one can ever know with certainty what those axioms are--other than the obvious ones like "there is a world" etc.

I don't understand why existence isn't possible in chaos. It would certainly be different from what we're used to, but there's nothing inherently contradictory about chaos. Why not chaos?

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Okay I've already pointed you to the thread AND, in this thread, restated my argument. Not ordered = chaos. Think about that. Nothing you do, not even your very *existence*, would be possible in chaos.

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OH. WOW. I wish you would simply have pointed me that that thread to begin with. That's the perfect thread to discuss this idea... and... you started it. So, any response from me on the "axiom propostion" will go in there now. Sorry to hijack the thread. Move on. Nothing to see here.