Chance as a sole-product of the Universe

Lack of belief is not a belief.

It is a belief in reality as you understand it to be...backed by evidence. In general, and in science specifically, evidence is a useful and logical belief. Whats the old saying? Seeing Is Believing....

I can only guess why you think the way that you do. Several possible reasons come to mind.

Evidence of human behavior.

Belief in secular evidence concerning the Bible as a human document and no proof that God exists or interacts with humanity. Having a history of challenging religious people who claim to have special imputation but who are evidently no wiser than secular people and in many cases worse.

You just like to be a contrarian

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Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. –RC Sproul
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." –Mark Twain "
~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith

John 20:24-29 writes: 24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called The Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail prints in His hands, and put my finger in the nail prints, and put my hand in His side, I will not believe.” 26 After eight days His disciples were again inside with the doors shut, and Thomas was with them. Jesus came and stood among them, and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then He said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and look at My hands. Put your hand here and place it in My side. Do not be faithless, but believing.” 28 Thomas answered Him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen, and have yet believed.”

Does that answer your question? If Jesus thinks it is blessed to believe without seeing, who am I to argue with Him? (Unless you throw the silly argument at me that the redactor is telling us what Jesus said!)

What I'm saying is that it is blessed to believe without seeing the evidence. If God wanted us to see evidence, he would have. The Bible never suggests that without evidence it is impossible to please God. It rather suggests that without Faith it is impossible to please God.

What reason do you have to think that Jesus' words were written down with perfect accuracy?

Because Jesus wanted us to get the point. I agree that it can be argued either way....but I'm of the inclination that God wants us to have accurate information as to what He expects from us...otherwise He has no reason to expect humanity to make an informed choice. By the way, I'm struggling to tie this all in with chance. I suppose my argument is that there is no chance that God exists nor is there a chance that God exists. God exists, period. The argument of necessary certainty.

God and Other Necessary Beings

Ontological Arguments

ramoss writes: Philosophically, chance is every reason to say there IS no designer.. From a physics point of view, the universe is governed by probabilities.. and is not deterministic. This was shown with a number of experiments. Nope.. no need for a designer, unless you already assume a designer.

I respect mainstream science to a point....because if science in general--as we know it today---is wrong, the argument concludes that we have a Creator who tricks our intelligence.

Critics may assert that we trick ourselves through faulty assumptions in our human logic and wisdom. Probability is only useful if it can be absolutely determined as a finite fixed number. Random probability is the same as chance in that it simply assumes that "there is a good chance"....and chance in and of itself cannot create anything. By the same token, one side may say that there is no need for aq designer while the other side would go so far as to boldly assert that a designer must be a 100% certainty for without Him, life itself would not exist. We always joke that its "turtles all the way down"...but seriously look at the origin of human wisdom and logic.
Thats right....humans.

Intelligent Design by definition points to certain intelligence versus random probability. Does this make any sense or am I again serving up word salad? I struggle to put into words what I feel and believe.

Todays Quote: The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan. As long as chaos dominates the world, God is an anachronism; and every compromise with one’s own conscience is perfidy. When the accursed inner voice speaks to you, hold your hands over your ears…
~― Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon

Edited by Phat, : added quote

jar writes: What were the odds that the puddle would be located exactly where it had to be to capture the pine cones and those bicycle tire tracks and that two different people would walk along the same path or that not one but two cars would wander through that same spot.

Thats my point. There are no odds.
To wit:

Phat writes: Intelligent design makes much better sense than random design. The whole idea of we humans being the "winner of a cosmic lottery" is so much nonsense.

jar writes: Now that is just a really silly statement that makes God look pretty stupid. You seem to like making God look either stupid or evil or more often, both. How are humans any greater winners of some cosmic lottery than cockroaches or pond scum?

Again, my point is that there was no cosmic lottery.

Are you asserting that humans are no more special than cockroaches or pond scum? Did God so love the pond that He sent His only begotten scum?
Did God send a cockroach born of a virgin to fight the evil Black Flag Empire?

Can you attribute any degree of probability that God exists?

what sort of evidence would people accept?

In my opinion, God gave no evidence on purpose.

People by nature don't want God to exist. Am I wrong in my assumption? What do you think personally?

Yes, I am asserting that humans are no more special than cockroaches and certainly nowhere near as successful as a species.

Why shouldnt humans be special? We are, after all, the only species to have built all this stuff. No other species comes close...unless you think beaver dams are as amazing as skyscrapers and supercomputers.

Humans wrote the story about God sending his son and so the story is human centric.

Did they make the story up or did they write about an event that happened? Why do you believe in the Nicene Creed if the whole idea is simply a story spun by a campfire on a cold night? If the story has value, would it not testify to human imagination versus an actual Creator of all seen and unseen?

And Theodoric...why is evidence held in higher regard than faith?

Faith tells us absolutely nothing about what is correct.

There simply is no science to religion.

Who is right the Hindu or the Christian?

The Christian, of course.

Always this need from believers to make faith equivalent to knowledge......

For me, the reason is the inner confirmation of my belief. Of course I cant provide objective evidence...

Evidence points to the best answers and increases our knowledge.

From a humanist manifesto perspective, this makes sense.

Seeing how this is a science forum, I will defer to you and Theodoric regarding evidence...although I still ascribe to the philosophy that nothing happens "by chance."

Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

Edited by Phat, : fixed quote

Coin toss, dice roll......?

Is it possible to calculate a fixed probability for either of those?

Did someone toss the coin and/or throw the dice or did they simply toss themselves?

Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

My point is that you cant calculate probability on cosmic events.

Do scientists not calculate the probability of a given asteroid or comet hitting the earth; the probability of meteor showers over a given location and period of time; of accurately reaching a given cosmic object ...

Sure, but these are not macro cosmological events. Do they calculate when a super nova will erupt?
Do they calculate the speed of the Big Bang Expansion?
Do they have any way to calculate at what point in time The Bang occurred?

The Bible tells us "In The Beginning"...was this simply akin to a storyteller saying "Once Upon A Time...."? Or is "15 billion years ago" little more than a guess?

Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

You can calculate probability on anything with enough information. But in any case, none of this seems relevant to anything....?

My point is that I believe that the universe cannot be said to have occurred by chance. The universe was in fact created by necessary certainty. That it is means that we are. I struggle for the words I want to say. It may well be that one could assert that a Designer/Creator is unnecessary, but I would say that if the universe exists by necessity and if we exist and can intellectualize this stuff, than Certainty is involved rather than chance.

Getting back to one of our older arguments....

tanle writes: ...nobody understands and it can't be resolved just by thinking and talking bollox - people far cleverer than you and me have failed to get anywhere with these sorts of arguments for thousands of years. The only progress we've made towards answers have come from mathematics and physics and those are beyond our comprehension.

My point is that I see it as a spiritual war of ideas. Perhaps I am overthinking it in regards to science and physics...but look what this author suggests. He is basically describing chaos as a belief.

Read my link in the last post and tell me what comes to mind comparing that philosophy to classic scripture. See the contrast?