The definition of GOD

Except of course you then go on to talk about probability in relation to sequences. The thing about a sequence of coin flips is that any specified outcome depends on the order in which each head/tail occurs. So even in the ”all heads’ scenario, where it appears that the order is unimportant, a head must always follow a head, ad infinitum - if it didn’t, it would be an alternative unique sequence.No doubt for your own reasons you chose the ”all heads’ sequence to represent your case. Somebody else may have arbitrarily chosen another sequence entirely, e.g. HTHT . ad infinitum. In this sequence, a head must always be followed by a tail and vice versa. The odds of the ”wrong’ side coming up at any point are exactly the same as in the ”all heads’ scenario - at which point the sequence will have ”failed’ to be possible by your reckoning.If we were to take an infinite number of people, give them an infinite number of coins and give each a specified, unique infinite sequence against which to compare their actual coin tosses, each and every one of these people would have a 1/2 chance of ”failure’ on the first flip, the cumulative chance of ”failure’ increasing two fold with each subsequent flip. This means that each sequence has exactly the same chance of failure. Hence, all sequences are equally probable.As has been said previously, there is a problem with you choosing the coin analogy to illustrate your argument - it is not a good fit. There are more obvious alternatives. I offer you one.You have introduced the idea of a possibility space. You also define your god as knowing every possibility and having the power to bring any of these possibilities into actuality. So this offers us the opportunity to use randomness in another way. This time we could say, “if we randomly select any possibility space, this represents the god bringing it into actuality”. However the problem with this would be, according to your rationale, that if we continued to do this over and over, we risk the possibility of selecting the NO-GOD possibility space, which immediately wipes out the god. By your reckoning, at some point it becomes inevitable that the NO-GOD possibility will be selected. Goodbye the god.

Oh no, I made a typo! But let’s not panic, that was two days ago and the universe hasn’t been blown to smithereens yet, so I probably got away with on this occasion. I’ll try not to make another because I might not be so lucky next time.The correct answer, as you probably know is 7.96%. In case you don’t, it’s real easy to calculate using a spreadsheet, Excel in my case. We have 100 spins, so an even split is 50 heads, 50 tails. To calculate the probability of any sequence that contains a 50/50 split we use the formula (0.5^50) x (0.5^50). Next we need to find out how many ways a 50/50 split can occur within 100 flips. In Excel we use the COMBIN function. For the record, Excel tells me there are 1.00891E+29 unique sequences that contain a 50/50 split. We then multiply the probability of any unique sequence by the number of possible combination to get our answer of 7.96%.Applying the above method to all the possible numbers of heads in the sequence would give us the normal distribution I believe. I honestly don’t know for sure. The problem is that Excel runs into problems when asked to calculate combinations in any quantity above 1,029 flips - the number of combinations is too large. But below that number of flips, the number of 50/50 splits decreases as a percentage every time the total number of flips is increased, so I suspect that the opinion expressed on that forum may well be wrong. This seems more likely to me. In the interests of balance, when I calculated the number of heads that we would expect to occur in 100 flips, the probability of 45 to 55 occurring was about 75%. When I increased the sample size to 1,000 flips, the probability of 450 to 550 flips occurring was over 99%. So whilst the probability of an even 50/50 split appears to diminish as the sample size increases, the probability of ”about’ 50/50 increases. This is what we would expect in a normally distributed population.But now we run into a problem and it regards our old friend infinity again. How would we calculate the average expected number of heads in an infinite sequence, given that the calculation of the average requires a division by infinity, which is deemed either to produce a value of zero or to be not quantifiable? Further, the means used to determine the normal distribution require the probability of each unique sequence to be known as well as the number of possible combinations. If we agree that neither of these things can be known then the notion of normal distribution becomes irrelevant, along with any preconceptions we might have about how many heads or tails we might expect.

To make your ”logic’ work you have asserted that your god, because it knows all possibilities, affects all possibility spaces. However it can only do this if it actually exists in the first place. You claim to have started from a position of neutrality, i.e. that the existence or non-existence of the god is not determined at the start of your thesis. It has still not been determined at the point where you assert that your god must directly affect all other spaces. Even if I were to accept your premise that the YES-GOD “space would certainly directly affect all other spaces”, which I don’t, it can only do so if the god exists.I have tried, for the purposes of this debate, to understand what you are attempting to impart when you describe your god and its relationship with what you call possibility spaces. My current interpretation would be that when you say your god affects all other possibility spaces, it can effectively be found to co-habit those possibility spaces. However, if this is the case, the very fact that YES-GOD is no more than a possibility at the start, the NO-GOD space must also co-habit all other spaces, to allow for the fact that the god may not exist.I’d like to end with offering a variation on the coin flip scenario, where the number of coins is finite, but very large. Let heads represent NO-GOD and tails represent YES-GOD. If we are able to flip ”all heads’ we can say the god does not exist. If we are able to flip ”all tails’ we can say the god does exist. If neither of those outcomes occurs, we can say only that we don’t know whether the god exists or not using arguments based solely on logic.I don’t believe for a second you can ever prove the existence of your god without bringing forth some evidence. Why not turn your attention to that if it so important to you?

Yes I know what you were trying to say! It was a tongue-in-cheek comment, hence my use of the smiley face in the original post and my comment of “Don’t you ever take any time out to take yourself a little less seriously?” in Message 272.I really think you need to lighten up a little. If you do, you might find people are willing to interact with you in a more positive manner, which not only makes the EvC experience more rewarding, it also leads to a better quality of debate in my opinion.

We as humans use our own model of reality to attempt to understand that reality. It is entirely dependant on our own perceptions and thought processes. We already know that in some areas the human perception of reality is fundamentally different to that of other species - we know that because we can test the differences.As individuals we each have a model of reality that makes perfect sense to ourselves but still frequently brings us into conflict with others who have an entirely different model of that same reality.As a single species living on a small planet in a remote corner of the universe, we have what might be described as a consensus model of reality. How that may compare with any other consensus models of reality that may exist in the universe, we have no idea - and that includes our perceptions of ”logic’ and ”mathematics’. Just because something walks like a duck, etc, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is a duck.

It looks like time is about to run out on this thread as it reaches the 300 post mark.As such I’d like to get ask one last question before the curtain is brought down. It concerns the potential influence exerted by one possibility space on any other. I’d like to drill down and try to establish what you are actually proposing.So I’d like to start by asking you what I might expect to see if I were to ”open’ a possibility space and take a look inside. How would I recognise the influence exerted by the YES-GOD possibility on other possibility spaces? More importantly, how could I measure it?In the ”real world’ physicists are still trying to fully understand what gravity is and how it works. They are also trying to formulate equations that accurately account for its behaviour in all circumstances. However, despite these shortcomings, we are still able to accurately measure the influence gravity exerts. It is one of the most fundamental forces in the universe and we know of its existence solely as a result of the observations and measurements we make. So, given what you claim is the fundamental phenomenon of the influence exerted by the YES-GOD possibility, how should we go about observing and measuring that influence in any possibility space we may examine?

Given that the thread is due to be wound up very shortly, I am not going to respond to your latest replies. I think it’s also a good time to agree to disagree about pretty much everything you’ve proposed on the thread, which is frequently the nature of the beast around here. I’m glad you've taken something out of the exchanges you have had with everyone on this thread. Formulating ideas in your head is one thing, but the model of reality we hold inside our head is invariably subjective. We can start to develop a much more balanced view of reality if we allow ourselves to listen to the perspective of others, who will have formulated different models of reality, based on their own experiences of that reality, which will certainly be different to our own.Edited by dogrelata, : Typo