Wednesday 30 January 2013

Elliott – Lesson 5 – The Hide and Seek Argument.

P1: Mathematicians say the odds of an event occuring, with a probability less than 1:10^50, is very close to zero.

P2: Someone who blindly accepts an event occured, with a probability less than 1:10^100, is denying an obvious truth.

P3: The odds of our universe being life permitting, without a creator, has a probability less than 1:10^200.

P4: Atheists blindly accept our universe became life permitting without a creator.


T:  Atheists are denying an obvious truth

Elliott; this one is easily dealt with. Essentially, you’re just rehashing the “fine-tuned” argument. The probability of you being born as the individual you are is 1:10^102,685,000; far, far smaller than the odds of the Universe spontaneously coming in to existence the way it is. And yet, here you are. As you say, very close to zero is NOT zero. Thus, the possibility of a non-zero-probability event occurring always exists, and as you can see from the probability of your own existence, such non-zero events DO occur; in the case of the human race, some 7 billion times just at the present moment.
Hawking’s research shows clearly that the present state of the Universe could have developed from a range of different initial states, without the need for a “designer”. This dramatically reduces the chances of the Universe we inhabit displaying just those qualities needed for life to exist without the need for a designer to control or create them. (http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=347).
Furthermore, there is no way to know whether or not this Universe is a singular event, or one of an infinite series. Since space/time as we understand it cannot exist without a Universe such as our own, the possible existence of such a scenario does not violate the infinite regress problem.
Once again, you are allowing your own emotional responses to Atheism to get in the way of rational debate. Atheists do not “blindly” accept the existence of such a possibility precisely because credible evidence DOES exist to support it; far more, in fact, than exists to support the theory that a Deity was involved in the Univers's creation. You really MUST learn to formulate your arguments more precisely and to support them more effectively; I managed to demolish this one in only a few minutes, and I am not even formally trained in mathematics (though I do have formal education in logic). You need to do more research, especially when traversing fields of knowledge with which you are unfamiliar.

No comments:

Post a Comment