The definition of GOD

Actually, the problem is that you haven't provided any real reason to take the idea of a god seriously.- The other problem is that you want to discuss what you think are my psychological issues rather than admit that your reasoning is flawed.- Okay, I've owned pets, and I have done this very thing. What was I supposed to have observed, and how do these observations support your thesis?

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If I had a million dollars, I'd buy you a monkey.
Haven't you always wanted a monkey?
-- The Barenaked Ladies

The word 'before' implies time. Time is part of reality. There can be no 'before' reality exists. If reality does not exist, there is no possibility of it existing. Yes, defining reality as being that which includes all things that exist does cause problems. How do you define reality? Show your data. Indeed - thus God cannot create reality. (Though as previously mentioned, time and space can exist without matter and it might even possible for space to exist without time) I don't know what this 'metaphysical existence' is. Yes, when flipping a coin there are only two actual possibilities (as well as countless hypothetical possibilities). Now - how many actual possibilities are there to the question 'Is there a God?'? There are either one or two possibilities. You don't know if it is one or two.Put it like this: I flip a coin which has two heads on it but you don't know that. You think there are two possibilities: heads or tails, when there is actually only one possibility. This is the problem you face - you have to show that God is one of the possibilities not just say he either exists or he doesn't. Either the coin collapses into a composing black hole structure or it doesn't. There are only two answers to the question "Will it collapse into a black hole and compose music?" YES-black_hole and NO-black-hole. But they are not both possibilities since one of them isn't actually possibility.

But you did not say these possibilities “cannot exist in our physical existence”; you said, “cannot actually exist as a reality.”Either way though, there is an internal inconsistency contained within your thesis. In the first instance you define your god as:- A little later you say:- If your god knows all possibilities and “has total control over them . having the power to bring any possibility that it chooses into existence”, I think you need to explain how some possibilities, “while still being possible cannot actually exist as a reality.”

To be able to communicate with another, we need to be able to assume a few things, otherwise we’d spend our time predefining and qualifying everything we say to the nth degree. I assume that any functioning adult is able to understand that running is a bio-mechanical activity which utilises the force of friction that exists between two surfaces - in this case the sole of the foot or shoe and the floor of a train. The speed at which an individual is able to run is measured in relation to the surface on which they are running. I know that and so do you. To pretend otherwise makes it look like you wish to evade the question.Of course your whole thesis involves you ”finding a way to break the rules’ of the scientific process in an attempt to promote your own agenda, so the above is simply another example of the same.

You’ve pointed out a misconception I had about infinities, for which I thank you. However, from what I have read, if my current understanding is correct, division by infinity is not quantifiable, which is not the same as saying it is impossible. If that is the case, it is incorrect to say the ”all heads’ scenario is impossible - rather it is not quantifiable.

In Message 8 we find:- A little further along in Message 51 we find:- I could go on wading through post after post, but there is no need, you have called your god “all powerful” on numerous occasions. By your own definition, if it does not have the power to cause an infinite number of coins to be ”all heads’, it is not “in control of all power” and therefore “couldn’t be god”. So there is clearly an internal inconsistency to be addressed. Would you like to do so?

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.

Hold on. The number of sequences does not dictate the probability of flipping any particular sequence. Why do you think it does? Flipping all heads or all tails are two possible outcomes of any sequence at any time.Think about it. If I flip the coin 4 times and get all heads, do you think that all heads is suddenly eliminated as a possibility for the next 4 flips?With your bent logic you should be winning the lottery every week.Edited by reiverix, : No reason given.

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.

Dear Everyone,Unfortunately as I was typing up replies to you guys, my cat came along and knocked my class of water over my computer, and now my comp doesn't want to turn on anymore. I am hoping that it will be OK tomorrow when the comps dried out. So please bare with me, I'm using my brothers computer to type this. But I might not be able to reply for a day or so.

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?

Dear Chiroptera,

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Actually, the problem is that you haven't provided any real reason to take the idea of a god seriously.

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Thanks for proving my point.

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The other problem is that you want to discuss what you think are my psychological issues rather than admit that your reasoning is flawed.

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Well this is untrue, I don't care about your psychological issues, they are irrelevent. Although I have come to the conclusion that you simply disagree for the sake of disagreeing.

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Okay, I've owned pets, and I have done this very thing. What was I supposed to have observed, and how do these observations support your thesis?

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Exactly what I already said, "This simple experiment can show how possibility spaces affect other possibility spaces". You can observe how the animals interact with eachother, whether any animals can enter another box (possibility space). Can an animal in a completely closed box interact with any other animals, and so on. Do the positions of the boxes effect the relationships?Dear Modulous,

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The word 'before' implies time. Time is part of reality. There can be no 'before' reality exists. If reality does not exist, there is no possibility of it existing.

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Are you saying reality and/or time is infinite?

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Yes, defining reality as being that which includes all things that exist does cause problems. How do you define reality?

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The reason it's a problem for you as you now admit is because you have defined reality is existence, and existence is reality, which is of course a meaningless circular argument. Unless we expand on what these words actually mean.The Dictionary defines reality as;1. the state or quality of being real.
2. resemblance to what is real.
3. a real thing or fact.
4. something that is real.
5. something that constitutes a real or actual thing, as distinguished from something that is merely apparent.
6. The quality or state of being actual or true.
7. One, such as a person, an entity, or an event, that is actual.
8. The totality of all things possessing actuality, existence, or essence.
9. That which exists objectively and in fact.Notice these definitions talk about something that physically exists, so reality can now be properly defined as physical existence only.However possibilities do not exist as physicalities, they are metaphysical. Which means there are at least 2 forms of existence.

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Show your data.

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well all the data is on this thread, Dogrelata's YES and NO-SUNLIGHT possibilty spaces are a good example, he created them.

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Indeed - thus God cannot create reality. (Though as previously mentioned, time and space can exist without matter and it might even possible for space to exist without time)

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God can indeed create physical existence, which is what reality actually is.Where has it been previously mentioned time and space can exist without matter?

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I don't know what this 'metaphysical existence' is.

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Things that are non physical or without material form or substance, but still having some form of "existence", like possibilities, concepts, prospects, potentials, thoughts, imagination, dreams, abstracts, and numbers even (numbers seem to be both physical and metaphysical), Things like that.

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Yes, when flipping a coin there are only two actual possibilities (as well as countless hypothetical possibilities). Now - how many actual possibilities are there to the question 'Is there a God?'? There are either one or two possibilities. You don't know if it is one or two.

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There are only ever two actual possible answers to the question "Is there a God"? YES and NO!

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Put it like this: I flip a coin which has two heads on it but you don't know that. You think there are two possibilities: heads or tails, when there is actually only one possibility. This is the problem you face - you have to show that God is one of the possibilities not just say he either exists or he doesn't. Either the coin collapses into a composing black hole structure or it doesn't. There are only two answers to the question "Will it collapse into a black hole and compose music?" YES-black_hole and NO-black-hole. But they are not both possibilities since one of them isn't actually possibility.

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Well it doesn't matter if both sides have heads, as the coins still have only two opposite sides.Possibilities are always possibilities, every example you can come up with is a possibility, it's only when you actually flip the coin will a possibility become part of existence. You can come up with as many possibilities as you like, but there is only one possibility I am interested in, that of the possibility of GOD's existence, and that particular question of whether GOD exists, only has 2 possible answers.Dear dogrelata,

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But you did not say these possibilities “cannot exist in our physical existence”; you said, “cannot actually exist as a reality.”

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Either way though, there is an internal inconsistency contained within your thesis. In the first instance you define your god as:-

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There is no inconsistency when you realise reality simply means physical existence, as was shown in my response to Modulous.

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To be able to communicate with another, we need to be able to assume a few things, otherwise we’d spend our time predefining and qualifying everything we say to the nth degree. I assume that any functioning adult is able to understand that running is a bio-mechanical activity which utilises the force of friction that exists between two surfaces - in this case the sole of the foot or shoe and the floor of a train. The speed at which an individual is able to run is measured in relation to the surface on which they are running. I know that and so do you. To pretend otherwise makes it look like you wish to evade the question.

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Of course your whole thesis involves you ”finding a way to break the rules’ of the scientific process in an attempt to promote your own agenda, so the above is simply another example of the same.

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My thesis breaks no rules at all. But to get back to the original subject, running at 100mph is a possibility, if it is not actually possible to do, it is an impossibility. However it would be difficult to prove that it was impossible, so from our standpoint today it remains for us a possibility.

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You’ve pointed out a misconception I had about infinities, for which I thank you. However, from what I have read, if my current understanding is correct, division by infinity is not quantifiable, which is not the same as saying it is impossible. If that is the case, it is incorrect to say the ”all heads’ scenario is impossible - rather it is not quantifiable.

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The chance and odds against such a thing occuring are what makes it impossible, not whether infinity can be quantifiable.

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I could go on wading through post after post, but there is no need, you have called your god “all powerful” on numerous occasions. By your own definition, if it does not have the power to cause an infinite number of coins to be ”all heads’, it is not “in control of all power” and therefore “couldn’t be god”. So there is clearly an internal inconsistency to be addressed. Would you like to do so?

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This is a great example of you taking things out of context and you lack of respect for facts.I clearly said "Well my DEFINITION and my THESIS never call GOD "all powerful" anyway", and then you take a quote that is part of neither. Not only that but this was at the time when omniscient and omnipotent where being discussed, and my definition of all powerful was different to everybody else, and so the confusion had to be cleared up. Infact I said that when I talked about power I meant power as in energy or force.GOD has the power (energy or force) to do anything that's possible. Having ultimate power, does NOT mean GOD can DO anything and everything.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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You wrong again because, chance doesn't follow arbitary sequences. And you fail to mention that in reality about half of the people would flip "success" flips.

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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.

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Well actually you have clearly misunderstood what a NO-GOD space is, "God does not exist in this possibility space. From now on these will be called NO-GOD possibility spaces". God not existing in an individual space has no bearing on whether God exists outside of the possibility space.Dear reiverix,

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Hold on. The number of sequences does not dictate the probability of flipping any particular sequence. Why do you think it does?

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I never said it did.

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Think about it. If I flip the coin 4 times and get all heads, do you think that all heads is suddenly eliminated as a possibility for the next 4 flips?

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Nope.The argument was simply that all sequences are not equally probable,Dear dogrelata,I apologise but I am going to break here as it has just gone 4 in the morning and I am using my brothers wireless keyboard amd mouse which I am not used to and my wrists are hurting because of it. But it seems this may be the last post so I will take this oportunity to thankyou and everybody else for contributing. I have a lot of things to think about, which was the whole point of the exercise.