Proving God Statistically

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.

I think in this case the coins were deliberately numbered to pick *in advance* the sequence 1,2 ... 10. This makes it "special". As you say any sequence has the same odds against. Calling it amazing after it has occured sounds pretty silly. However, calling it in advance and then pulling it is something else altogether.

The real point is that you know the number of all possible results and you can define the number of "acceptable" results to calculate the odds.Even in this case there is some prior selection being done. We speak English, in fact we are really interested in the odds of something coming out in any language.If we were to compare this to the patterns in DNA we would have to accept all possible languages as well. I'm not sure we can even calculate the odds in the case of letters talk about anything else.

Yes, Crash there is a threshold but it isn't very specific. It would vary depending on the importance of making a decision one way or the other.In fact, picking a threshold would have to involve some of what you are suggesting. How many trials can be performed? If a lot then a very low probability is still over the "threshold".

Well, the problem is that still only eliminates chance for things which are independant random events.With letters drawn from a hat we can be careful that it is random (but have to work at it a little). With chemistry we know that many reactions are not random so the whole calculation goes out the window.Of course, in addition, we have to know how to calculate the "success" probability. In our letters example, as you noted, we have to know for all possible languages. And we can not know all possible languages.[This message has been edited by NosyNed, 11-16-2003]

But the probability of any number of head and tails in 500 trails is just as low. We do have to specify it as you say. All heads isn't "special" unless it is specified to be in someway.The problem with our letters drawn from a hat example is we don't know the limits of the specificity. If we are using it as an analogy for things like different physcial laws in universes or different bases patterns in DNA (or some other possible life like chemical ) then we have to know not just all EXISTING languages but all possible languages that would "work". We don't know that.Also if we did prespecify heads as being "special" then we would be surprised by 500 in a row. And what would our first guess be about what is going on? A fixed coin! In other words the chances are not random. We know in chemistry that things aren't random. We don't have a clue about universal physical laws one way or the other. (not yet anyway).On that basis the whole chance calculation comes to pieces.Additionally, if we are talking about the origin of life we still don't know how complex the simplest form of a self replicator can be. So we don't know how many "heads" we have to through.

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? ).

Which is way the calculations might as well be in units of "Angels".

Hey, Welcome back.Maybe you think I'm "blast"ing away at ID because I don't know it as well as you do. I've been waiting for a rather long while now to understand what CSI is.http://EvC Forum: Complex Specified Information (CSI) -->EvC Forum: Complex Specified Information (CSI)Perhaps you can catch that thread up for me?

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. Easily solved by using restricted frequencies of light away from where the sun is strongest. This makes sense, but only if the civilization is trying to communicate over intersteller distances.I think the reason that SETI is using radio is that it can piggy back on radio astronomy. We are, I think, looking for our keys under the street light since it is all we can do right now and it is pretty cheap to do so with a huge but unlikely payoff.It may well be that our "radio bubble" will get to be maybe 100 light years in radius and then cut off. We are starting to use light (in pipes) for a lot of communications now. We may find that directed laser (at radio frequencies perhaps) will be better for commuications in the near future.We may do long distance communications by other means that broadcast radio in the near future and go "radio quiet".

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?