Proving God Statistically

Only if you can do this repeatedly. This fits well with the lotto example. When someone gets the winning numbers it is nothing unusual, but if that person had to pick the winning numbers even 1 out of 10 tries, it becomes a completely different kettle of fish.------------------
He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.
- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

How did Dembsky get the 1e80 number, out of curiousity?Visible matter in the universe: 1e53g
Assuming it's all hadrons, we multiply by avagadro's number, and get: ~6e76
Of course, even ignoring the quark issue, it's not all hadrons. The best upper limit for the mass of a photon, for example, is 4e-48 grams, while the upper limit of a gravitron is 2e-62 grams, and neutrinoes are no more than 2e-31 grams. All of these particles should utterly dwarf normal matter in terms of quantity of particles. If you count vaccuum fluctuations (which will need to be counted), the number of particles you're going to have is truly staggering. The universe that is expanding is, if I recall correctly, a sphere with a radius of about 14 billion light years. 1.4e10ly = 1.33e23km = 1.33e26m. Volume = 9.85e69 m^3. I've seen virtual particle pair estimates for vacuum fluctuations as high as 1e90 for any given point in time, which would put the total number of particles in the universe from vacuum fluctuation alone, in the current date (less in the past) at 9.85e159.Leaving only a 1e4 margin of error for "everything else" compared to everything being hadrons seems a bit weak, to say the least.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Dembski doesn't list a source on p209 where he offers the calculation of his Universal Probability Bound. Nor does he mention a reference to an earlier mention there as I would expect if it had been introduced in a previous chapter.

No, I have to disagree. It is very interesting even if it is done once IF it is statistically unlikely enough. That is why one well done experiment that show a high degree of statistical significance receives a lot of attention and publicity (it may change behavior and medical recommendations for example)However, that doesn't mean that the experiment won't be repeated some number of times. This is especially true because we use statistical significance hurdles that are around 1 in 20 or 1 in 100 where the chance of a "fluke" is not all that unrealistic. If we used hurdles of 1 in 10**6 or 10**9 we might not bother repeating an expensive experiment so often.

Could someone explain to me why this Universal Probability Bound is so darned important? It is clearly a ridiculous number that has no meaning in a real world decision making sense.If it is then applied to situations where we don't know enough to begin to calculate probabilities anyway, it really is a silly exercise designed only to fool the credulous and mathematically illiterate (ilnumerate? ).

This is the crux of the problem for Dembski, IMO. He must first define exactly how life originiated (naturally or supernaturally) before the Explanatory Filter can be applied. Unfortunately, this has been lost through the process of evolution, origins have been covered up by subsequent mutations and improvements.Secondly, just on your argument in general, "special sequences" in a biological sense can not be compared to English language in any meaningful way. Random sequences can have meaning in a biological sense because the definitions are self contained. In other words, what a "sentence" means biologically is only defined as the effect it has within the organism. It is somewhat like the analogy of painting the bullseye around the arrow. If biological sentences (aa or dna sequence for example) were the same as english sentences then the organism would select for a given sequence instead of a given effect. Specific sequence selection doesn't happen, effect selection does happen. The purpose of the method is to eliminate chance when all outcomes are known and all "positive" outcomes are defined. Since not all positive outcomes are known for natural origins of life, the method is useless. It is like defining the odds of a lottery without knowing how many winning combinations there are, or even how many numbers in each winning combination. To compare to our understanding of natural origins, we don't even know which number set to pick out of yet.Going back to the OP (and I think you will agree with me, believe it or not), comparing the chance of the human form coming out of nothing to the chance of picking a meaningful sequence of coins is not a fair comparison by any means. The best place to start, to me, is the origins of life. Evolution, as a mechanism, far outweighs chance IMO.

The Universal Probability Bound is important because it saves Dembski the task of trying to calculate a reasonable local probability bound.Then he can calculate some ridiculous strawman (as he did with the flagellum example in _No Free Lunch_) and claim to have proven design...

NosyNedI actually wrote to Mr.Dembski to aask him if the U.P.B was actually on the order of 10*150 and how he arrived at this number.He stated that this was correct and referred me to this website.http://www.designinference.com/ Under The Logical Underpinnings of Intelligent Design.Check it out!

Did you specifically ask where the 10^80 figure came from ?Because the essay doesn't say.

I have seen the 10^80 value for the number of elementary particles in the known universe elsewhere. I'll try a web search.By the way, in that link Dembski does mention that others have calculated certain universal probability bounds and come up with numbers lower than his (that is, the positive exponent is lower than 150).

Here are a couple of independent references to there being about 10^80 elementary particles in the observable universe. Note that exponentiation is oftentimes lost when copying something from one source to a web page: the person making the page must manually go back and add the ^ symbol, which is not always done.

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Density 1 H-atom/m3; 1080 particles in observable universe www.physics.gmu.edu/classinfo

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To simulate the Universe in every detail since time began, the computer would have to have 1090 bits - binary digits, or devices capable of storing a 1 or a 0 - and it would have to perform 10120 manipulations of those bits. Unfortunately there are probably only around 1080 elementary particles in the Universe. www2b.abc.net.au

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edited urls in attempt to fix page width - The Queen[This message has been edited by AdminAsgara, 11-18-2003]

You are free to do that if you want. Interesting, yes, but for my part, unlikely does not mean impossible and unless the feat can be repeated I have no way of knowing that it wasn't just a lucky guess.------------------
He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.
- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

In reference to your astronomy/philosophy class notes (the best that I can come up with as to what that course is about - look at its introduction page), they state what they're counting: hadrons (actually, just baryons), photons, and neutrinos. At the very least, you have to extend this to quarks if you want to talk about "fundamental particles". To generalize, you need to include all quarks and leptons (which encompasses a wide range of different particle types). This ignores counting things such as gravitrons, and all of the vacuum fluctuation virtual pairs, which are an incredibly huge number (they exist; they're what leads to Hawking Radiation; the only question is just how common they are). As referenced in this page (postulating a theory as to why vacuum fluctuations occur, based on the reduction of a higher order spacetime), they reference the energy calculation's for Casimir's experiment, which indicates 4.635e110 ergs in a volume of 10^-4 cm^3, indicating 4.635e114ergs/cm^3 = 4.635e120 ergs/m^3. E=mc^2, E is in ergs, m is in kg, and c is in m/s (299,792,458), so the equivalent mass of this much energy per cubic meter is 5.157e103 kg = 5.157e106g. Just to put this into large particles, lets say, neutrons, you've got about 3.106e127 virtual particles per cubic meter (notably more than the rough estimate I had tracked down on the net before... I should check into where they got their source). Given a volume of the present universe at about 1e79 m^3, we're looking at about 3e206 virtual particles in the universe.Any commentary on these calculations? Regardless of whether we're looking at 1e90 or 3e127 virtual particles per cubic meter currently in the universe, we're looking at a simply mind bogglingly huge number. And they do interact with reality (Casimir effect, Hawking radiation, etc).If you count virtual particles (which I would think you would have to do), the number you get is staggeringly higher than 1e80 in the universe. Vacuum fluctuations (as with all reality) may just be a manifestation of interactions in some higher order space, but regardless, they are part of reality, and interact with it.Also, what use in his his calculation is just multiplying by Planck time? All particles interact at once, not one at a time. One would think that, to be fair, he should square the number of particles in the universe before multiplying by Planck time. All in all, the end number of particles (ignoring gravitrons, but incorporating virtual particles), you get about 3e387 "calculations" in the universe. Even if you use his 1e80 number but factor in that every particle in the universe interacts with every other one, that's 4.3e220.Regardless of all of this, most of my disagreements lie in the use of his number, not his calculation of it.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."[This message has been edited by Rei, 11-18-2003]

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This ignores counting things such as gravitrons...

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...ignoring gravitrons ...

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What's a gravitron?[This message has been edited by DNAunion, 11-18-2003]