Proving God Statistically

The president of the New York Scientific Society once gave eight reasons why he believed there was a God. The first was this: Take 10 identical coins and mark them 1 to 10. Place them in your pocket. Now take one out. There is 1 chance in 10 that you will get number one. Now replace it, and the overall chance that number two follows number one is not 1 in 10, but 1 in 100. With each new coin taken out, the risk will be multiplied by 10, so that the chance of ten following nine, is 1 in 10 000 000 000 or 10 billion. It seemed so unbelievable to me that I immediately took pencil and paper and very quickly discovered he was right. Try it yourself.
That is why George Gallup, the American statistician, says, "I could prove God statistically. Take the human body alone — the chance that all its functions would just happen is a statistical monstrosity."
Surely no thoughtful person would wish to base their eternal future on a "statistical monstrosity"? Perhaps that is why the Bible says in Psalm 14:1 "The fool hath said in his heart, 'There is no God.'"

David that would be true if the various events had to happen independently of each other and if they had to happen in one trial and if only one result is what is looked for.None of the above applies to the case of the human body. I'm afraid you have been very badly mislead and fooled by rather simple minded ideas.This may simply be because you want the answer to be as you think it is.There are two paths you may take:
1) Take on faith those things which belong there. These do not include the nature of the universe around us. They do include the idea of a purely supernatural God.
2) Insist that there be scientific proof of the idea of a God. Grasp at anything which you think does this.The problem is if you insist on bringing God and more specifically the Bible into the realm of being proven you also being it into the realm of being disproven. Make your choice carefully.You seem to think that the Bible is wrong if the earth isn't 6,000 years old. That is a shame, the earth is much, much older. If you disagree please go to the Dates and Dating forum or Geology and the Great Flood and defend your claims.You might want to take time to do a little research before you start there. If you are using Hovind as a source you will be very disappointed. He is so bad he has even been disavowed by some creationist organizations.

Well I thought that your post would be a laugh, and it was.Unless you are prepared to actually discuss matters instead of making silly assertions you won't last long here.

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That is why George Gallup, the American statistician, says, "I could prove God statistically. Take the human body alone — the chance that all its functions would just happen is a statistical monstrosity."

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The human body did not acquire "all of its functions" by chance. Try this experiment: Drop 10 coins onto the floor. Pick up all those that are tails. Drop those again. Again, pick up the ones that are tails, and drop them. After repeating this a few times, all 10 coins will be heads.
This still isn't a very good analogy for evolution, but it is better than yours. Chance variation with a process of selection can achieve very "improbable" outcomes in a relatively short time.

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Perhaps that is why the Bible says in Psalm 14:1 "The fool hath said in his heart, 'There is no God.'"

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The assumption here is that no one who accepts evolution believes in God. That, too, is false.Edited to correct a stupid typo![This message has been edited by Chiroptera, 11-13-2003]

David, all you've done is shot an arrow blindly into the air, painted a target around it where it hit the ground and exclaimed "The odds of hitting a bullseye right there are astronomical!! Therefore God must have guided the arrow!"Not a real convincing argument.The fact is that things of seemingly impossible odds happen all the time in reality. If I were to randomly draw 52 cards our of a deck one by one, the resulting series would have the probability of occurring in that order of 1 in 52! (the ! means 'factorial'), or 1/(8 x 10^67). Yet there there sits the series against what you claim to be impossible odds.

I don't think so.The odds of any occurance are the number of desired outcomes divided by the number of possible outcomes.The odds of drawing number one are 1 in 10, because there's 10 coins. The odds of drawing number two on your second draw is 1 in 9, because there's only nine coins in your pocket. Remember, "dice have no memory".Think of it this way. Pretend that, in an astronomical conincidence, you've drawn coins one through 9 in order. There's only one coin in your pocket. What are the odds that it's number ten? According to your model, something like one in a bazilion. But there's only one coin in your pocket. The odds that it's number ten, if all other nine coins are out of your pocket, must be one. Obviously your model is in error.

I almost made this same point, but then I re-read his post and I noticed he included replacement of the coin in his procedure. You would be correct if the coins were not replaced in the pocket.Not that it makes his argument any more convincing either way.

Oops, you're right.But even then it's still 1 in 10 every time. The odds of drawing one on the first draw are one in ten. The odds of drawing 10 on the tenth draw are one in ten.The odds of succeeding on all draws are 1 in 10^10, obviously. But the odds don't go up for any one draw.

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The president of the New York Scientific Society once gave eight reasons why he believed there was a God. The first was this: Take 10 identical coins and mark them 1 to 10. Place them in your pocket. Now take one out. There is 1 chance in 10 that you will get number one. Now replace it, and the overall chance that number two follows number one is not 1 in 10, but 1 in 100. With each new coin taken out, the risk will be multiplied by 10, so that the chance of ten following nine, is 1 in 10 000 000 000 or 10 billion. It seemed so unbelievable to me that I immediately took pencil and paper and very quickly discovered he was right. Try it yourself.

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Tornado In A Junkyard, Strawman

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Surely no thoughtful person would wish to base their eternal future on a "statistical monstrosity"? Perhaps that is why the Bible says in Psalm 14:1 "The fool hath said in his heart, 'There is no God.'"

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Pascal's Wager, Game Over.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."[This message has been edited by Rei, 11-13-2003]

David, how is this supposed to prove the existence of your god? All you've done - assuming your argument is valid, which it's not - is prove the existence of whatever creator you like.Well, you've done it. Vishnu is obviously my lord and creator thanks to you.

Oh dear, I also misread the original post. When he said "coins" I assumed that it was going to a "heads/tails" argument, and I answered based on that.Nonetheless, it is true that adding a selection process will dramatical change the probability of obtaining an "unlikely" result.

The chance of getting 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and 10, in that order, is 1 in 10 billion. However, the chance of getting 2,1,7,5,6,3,9,4,8 and 10 are also 1 in 10 billion, the change of getting ANY predetermined combination in ten draws is 1 in 10 billion.Just because the sequence of 1 to 10 has more significance to you makes not difference to its odds. It isn't more special than any other combination.------------------
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[This message has been edited by compmage, 11-14-2003]

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DavidPryor writes: so that the chance of ten following nine, is 1 in 10 000 000 000 or 10 billion

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The chance of getting 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and 10, in that order, is 1 in 10 billion. However, the chance of getting 2,1,7,5,6,3,9,4,8 and 10 are also 1 in 10 billion, the change of getting ANY predetermined combination in ten draws is 1 in 10 billion.

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Good so far, but

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Just because the sequence of 1 to 10 has more significance to you makes not difference to its odds. It isn't more special than any other combination.

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I disagree: the sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 is special.You are correct that that particular sequence is just as unlikely as any other SINGLE outcome, but we have to look at the larger picture. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 is a perfectly sequential outcome and such an outcome can occur in only an extremely limited number of ways (2, ascending and descending) whereas a non-perfectly sequential outcome can occur in a multitude of different ways (9,999,999,998). Therefore, the probability of getting a perfectly sequential outcome is only 1 in 5 billion.But why partition the possible outcomes into two sets according to what might appear to be an ad hoc condition, that of being perfectly sequential? Because it jumps out at us: any school child would recognize that pattern.Nevertheless, we can expand the definition of the "success" set and the same conclusion is reached.The vast majority of possible outcomes do not fit any recognizable pattern (for example, the one you listed appears to fall into this set). The flip side is that the number of outcomes that falls within the set of easily recognizable patterns is extremely small: probably not too much larger than the following:{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10;
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1;
1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10;
2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9;
10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 9, 7, 5, 3, 1;
9, 7, 5, 3, 1, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2}Since the cardinality of the set containing non-recognizable patterns is immensely larger than that of the set containing recognizable patterns, (1) there is something "special" about sequences corresponding to recognizable patterns, and (2) the probability of hitting upon any of the recongnizable patterns is extremely small.However, even within this expanded "success" set the number of perfectly sequential outcomes is small: only 2 out of x. And it is within this subset of all recognizable patterns that the outcome is found. So we are NOT looking at the probability of getting ANY recognizable pattern but of getting one that is perfectly sequential, since that is a better and more accurate description of the actual outcome. So we are back to 1 chance in 5,000,000,000.Therefore, while we should not be surprised to hear that "Frank" hit upon your sequence by chance in a single shot, we should be surprised to hear that "Frank" hit upon the sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 by chance in a single shot (in fact, we should probably reject "Frank"'s claim).************************
PS: I agree that the original poster's probability calculation was flawed. However, the counter offered had it's own flaw.[This message has been edited by DNAunion, 11-15-2003]

If 1 increased the odds of 2, which in turn increased the odds of 3, which in turn increased the odds of 4... etc, up to 10, then it's not that remarkable. The closer you get to a self-replicator, the better the odds of getting a self-replicator, because even something that helps catalyze broken, non-replica molecules that are just "similar" to it, the closer it is getting to a form in which a random modification can make a proper form.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Rei, if you are going to respond to my posts the least you could do is respond to what I said. I didn't mention self-replicators or incremental improvements at all in my post to which you replied.Now, do you find fault in what I actually said in that other post?