Proving God Statistically

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Crashfrog: After all why would aliens necessarily use radio?

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DNAunion: Hmm, no possible method of transmitting messages faster? Travels out in a bublle-like sphere, unlike light which travels in a straight line? Able to be detected even while the "sun" is out, unlike light? Readily travels through dust clouds in space, unlike light? Longer wavelength than light provides less loss due to redshift?

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Travels out in a bublle-like sphere, unlike light which travels in a straight line?
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No, actually it doesn't. The radio stations deliberately tune the attennae so the signel is strong where the population is and not other places. The signel can have odd shapes.

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When a single straight antenna is used, the signal radiates out in circles perpendicular to the axis of the antenna. By using multiple antennae and orienting them appropriately, the waves can radiate out in all three dimensions, basically as an expanding sphere.Of course light (that is, visible light) can also be made to radiate out in an expanding sphere — use a light bulb. But there is at least one problem with using visible light that radio waves don’t face. Visible light has wavelengths much shorter than radio waves, and thus have higher frequencies and pack more energy: thus, it takes more energy to produce them. How intense would a light bulb have to be to send out a message that could be received, just as readily as a radio wave, at a distance of 100 LY, in any direction, and how much energy would that require? And this should "go double" for wavelengths even shorter than visible light.PS: I actually meant television transmissions, not literal radio transmissions.

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Able to be detected even while the "sun" is out, unlike light?

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Easily solved by using restricted frequencies of light away from where the sun is strongest.

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But one advantage of radio astronomy (versus normal astronomy using visible light) is that radio waves can be detected even when the Sun is out, whereas visible light cannot. That gives an advantage to radio waves over visible light.

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Readily travels through dust clouds in space, unlike light? Longer wavelength than light provides less loss due to redshift?

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This makes sense, but only if the civilization is trying to communicate over intersteller distances.

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So are you suggesting that technologically advanced, intelligent civilizations exist in our own solar system and are sending messages? That’s not the main view, which DOES deal with interstellar communication. Hence, the context within which my statements were framed.The original question was why would aliens use radio waves?It is a form of electromagnetic radiation and thus transmits information at the greatest possible speed. Only other forms of electromagnetic radiation can do the same. Also, radiation does not require a medium to be transmitted and thus only radiation can be transmitted through the vacuum of space. Thus electromagnetic waves seem to be the way to go.Visible light here on Earth suffers from not being detectable during the day, giving radio waves an advantage over visible light. Radio waves can also be made to radiate out in an expanding sphere more easily than light can (the huge light bulb problem). Visible light also does not travel through dust clouds in space as readily as radio waves: another advantage of radio waves. Thus radio waves have advantages over visible light.As far as wavelengths shorter than visible light, there is the point I brought up: the longer wavelengths of radio waves provides less loss due to redshift, so shorter wavelengths would suffer from more loss. Also, to produce an expanding sphere, it would require much more energy to do so with x-rays or gamma rays than with radio waves. Thus radio waves have some advantages over shorter-than-visible-light wavelengths.In other words, radio waves are a pretty optimal choice and it’s a safe assumption that any intelligent civilization at least as sophisticated as ours would consider (or would have considered) them as a possible best mechanism for sending messages over vast distances.[This message has been edited by DNAunion, 11-21-2003]

That you know of. What indications? How can you have indications about something we don't know anything about? Sure. And SETI's failure to date may disprove that assumption, or render it doubtful at best. But that hardly disproves the existence of intelligent aliens in general. It just disproves the existence of aliens that are working really hard to be detected by us. Young compared to what?[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 11-22-2003]

Um, no. He's saying that aliens are talking to themselves, on their own planet, and aren't trying to talk to us. So if they're not talking to us, why would they care about how far radio penetrates interstellar dust? You keep saying that, but I can send a visible light message over 2 km on a clear day using nothing but a mirror. Again, why is that an advantage to an alien race who's not concerned about talking to other planets? But you haven't addressed why you think they would want to do that. SETI isn't looking for "Hello, Earth" messages, they're trying to pick up routine radio traffic from other worlds.

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SETI isn't looking for "Hello, Earth" messages, they're trying to pick up routine radio traffic from other worlds.

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Two things.1) Please support your assertion.2) How do you propose SETI would recognize "routine radio traffic from other worlds" as being such?

They'd have to know we were here in order to be sending us messages.I'm sure that if we got a "Hello, Earth" message, SETI would pick it up. I didn't mean to imply that they're ignoring those kinds of messages. But that's not the only thing they're looking for. It would be different than the normal background radio/microwave radiation. You might be interested in this link: Page not found | The Planetary Society

This seems to be heading off to a galaxy far, far from the topic. Would someone like to start a new thread?

I noticed something from the page you provided a link to.

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Our first assumption is that the signal will be received at or around the frequency of 1420 MHz. This is the spectral frequency of hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, and therefore a universal reference point for different intelligent species. The arguments about this frequency have raged ever since Philip Morrison and Giuseppe Cocconi first proposed it in 1959. But although we don't know for sure that the aliens will hail us at that frequency, it does seem like a plausible place to start. Most SETI projects have proceeded on this assumption.

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That frequency is in the radiowave range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

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In addition, a narrow band transmission will be easily recognized as artificial, as against a naturally occurring signal. No known natural radio signals are narrow band.

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Are they claiming that the asbence of evidence for natural narrowband radio signals is evidence of absence?

I don't plan to start a new thread: not something I feel like investing too much time into. I'll simply stop discussing this now that I've seen your post.[This message has been edited by DNAunion, 11-22-2003]

No, I'd say that they're saying that our current models of radiation emission don't allow for the spontaneous generation of narrow-band signals, and that this is confirmed by observation.Why are we talking about this? Can we get back to the topic, whatever that was?

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ANYONE WHO DOES NOT BELIEVE DEMBSKI IS A MORON

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People who post single sentences in all-caps usually do so because they cannot defend their claims very well.

Joralex, perhaps you missed my post #50 a couple of pages back?I'll paste it here for your convenience:Joralex,How can we tell the difference between a Intelligently Designed system and a natural one that we:1) currently do not understand but will in the future, or2) do not have the intelligence to ever understand?Additionally, I am of the opinion that, because ID makes no testable predictions, is not falsifiable, is not based upon positive evidence, and does not inspire scientific discoveries in other fields, it is philosophical in nature rather than scienctific.If you know of any testable, falsifiable predictions of the ID proponents or positive evidence (not a lack of evidence for another theory) can you list them here?

Unless someone else posted either of these two messages under your name, I've certainly got the right person. "... or misunderstood something of mine" - I did write that also, did I not?Heres where you brag about knowing all about _The Design Inference_ "Brag"? Stating a fact is called "bragging" where you come from?Post 166And if you go to post 173 you will find a direct link to where you made your original error.Post 42 "Error" as defined by who? You?I quote : "There is no need to compute the probability or to compare it to any bound. You et al. create a strawman so that you can demolish it and claim victory. NO SALE here." You are taking things out of context. Why don't you start again ... Here's a more complete version :

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"Unless we wish to embark on Alice-in-Wonderland excursions, the scientist must go wherever the evidence leads and must make decisions on the most plausible explanation given the present state of knowledge and the objective observations.

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As things stand today, neither chance nor physical laws provide a sufficient/scientific basis for materialistic Naturalism's explanation of the emergence or complexity of life. The filter simply infers that Design constitutes the best explanation for this observation. There is no need to compute the probability or to compare it to any bound."

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IOW what I had said is that (a) Given that there is no known mechanism which would account for the purely natural emergence of life, and, (b) Given that the probabilistic resources of the universe don't even begin to supply the requisite for a 'chance' emergence of life then, (c) that leaves only one alternative - Design!This is in direct contradiction to Dembski's own words in _The Design Inference_ as I showed in my reply.
Post 46 Thanks for your input but I have half-a-dozen of Dembski's books, scores of his papers, and I've corresponded with him directly. However, given that you oppose ID so adamantly, I must conclude that you haven't grasped the essence of the theory. What is your primary objection to ID?So we have established that you made a serious error in regard to the nature of Dembski's design inference and then tried to insist that you knew too much to make such mistakes. Which rather begs the question of why you said something that blatantly contradicts Dembski, doesn't it ? I did say, "... or [you] misunderstood something of mine", did I not?

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Joralex

What are the probabilities? There simply isn't enough known to calculate them so the validity of this statment can't be determined one way or the other. Of course there is a mechanism! The life we see is simply chemistry. The only difficulty is finding a path using those mechanisms which could plausibly have arisen in the conditions on earth 3+ Gyrs ago. All the basic structures of life can form as they do all the time so there is not a mechanism problem. The problem is what mechanisms can do it without the scaffolding of existing living things. Again the answer is we don't know. Not knowing is not good enough a basis on which to jump to any conclusions about any specific solution. This is pure God of the gaps theology. I would have thought by now that you would understand both how dumb this looks in the historic context and how dangerous this is with the possibility of future advances.Does this mean you will become an atheist when the question of abiogensis is answered? I would expect not. In the same way, why would you expect someone to be a believer in God because it is not as yet answered?

So what you are saying is that you can work out whether the unoiverse fails to provide the "probalistic resources" for a chance even without any idea of what the probabbility of that event is ?That is obvious nonsense - you need to show that the probability is too low, because that IS the only way to establish that claim.It doesn't matter how many of Dembski's books you have read if you can't understand a basic point like that.So we have established that I have got the right person and that there was no misunderstanding. You rejected an accurate statement about Dembski's Design Inference as a "strawman", and claim to have done so repeatedly. Obviously you fail to understand Dembski's method.Now I've clearly stated my objection to Dembski's Design Inference as applied to biology. It simply isn't a practical method.

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ANYONE WHO DOES NOT BELIEVE DEMBSKI IS A MORON

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People who post single sentences in all-caps usually do so because they cannot defend their claims very well.

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I didn't make the statement you are addressing: chance did. I wrote a program that generates random letter seqeuences and that is what it spit out, purely by chance, first run.Here's the code again:

lnSequenceLength = 46=RAND(-1)
lcString = ""
FOR lnLcv = 1 TO lnSequenceLength
	lcString = lcString + CHR(RandomNumber())
ENDFOR
? lcString

FUNCTION RandomNumber
	LOCAL lnMin, lnMax
	lnMin = 65
	lnMax = lnMin + 26
	lnRandom = FLOOR((lnMax - lnMin + 1) * RAND() + lnMin)
	IF (lnRandom = lnMax)
		lnRandom = 32
	ENDIF
        RETURN lnRandom
ENDFUNC

[This message has been edited by DNAunion, 11-23-2003]