I do believe weak decay happens. For an individual atom, perhaps weak decay is a low probability event, but the weak decay experiments have been repeated many many times. Low probability events happen all the time.
You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight… I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!
—Richard Feynman
Low probability, but that’s no miracle. Any car you see should have a unique license plate.
I am having a very hard time coming up with any evidence that could distinguish the God in question from other far more probable higher powers.
Definitely not, because they do not start out with equal priors. That’s just Bayes. Every conjunctive detail can only decrease the prior probability, which is the principle known as Occam’s Razor. The God in question is a highly conjunctive claim with lots of burdensome details.
Note also that “The Orthodox Christian God” may have a similar prior to other monotheist’s Gods, when taken individually, but it can’t really be bigger than the set of monotheistic Gods as a whole, which can’t be bigger than the set of gods as a whole, or the set of supernatural creatures as a whole, or the set of unspecified supernatural forces as a whole, as each successive set contains the former set. And if we cut out the burdensome detail of “the supernatural”, then we’re left with natural higher powers like alien teenagers, which is still plenty unlikely on priors, but is at least known to be possible based on established science. We haven’t even established that the supernatural exists at all.
I think in your treatment between different monotheistic gods there would be evidence that would favour one god over another even if both start similarly dysmally low. However if you had two gods and they are indistinguishable from aliens then they should not be distinguishable from each other. I guess there are two senses in that in “evidence we currently have” vs “evidence that could ever exist”. Like I would think that god hypothesis would not have increased probability for flying saucers. But if god doesn’t raise the expectation of saucers does god raise the expectation of anything? If it doesn’t raise the expectation of anything then there is nothing to disagree about because we don’t mean anything.
Do you have reason to believe that valentinlespukhin is in fact using a different definition than he explicitly provided here? The explicit definition was of the form a,b or c and you claim to believe that entities of type a exist. Why would you not believe that the disjunction exists?
Paraphrasing: By the miracle I understand event or series of events that have either: a) extremely low probability, b) seems to break the laws of Nature or c) have significantly higher probability to occur in the world with God rather than without.
“Low probability events happen all the time”
‘I do not believe in “miracles”, in the sense that you probably mean’
The sense in which you replied to “miracles” seems not to be able to be understood in the literal definition provided, so you either used your own private definition or did not believe that their definition was accurately spelled out. Now the discussion has shifted and there has been an additonal feature added that miracles are connected to christian worship. If you are assuming they have additional properties it might be fruitful to be explicit about them.
Yes, I was responding to what I thought he meant instead of his literal wording there. That’s why I included “in the sense that you probably mean”. I don’t think “low probability” by itself is sufficient to make an event a miracle, and was assuming there was more to it than that, like an apparent purpose for being that way, perhaps.
I do believe weak decay happens. For an individual atom, perhaps weak decay is a low probability event, but the weak decay experiments have been repeated many many times. Low probability events happen all the time.
Low probability, but that’s no miracle. Any car you see should have a unique license plate.
I am having a very hard time coming up with any evidence that could distinguish the God in question from other far more probable higher powers.
If the evidence would be exactly the same for god as for other things shouldn’t it be equally likely to be god rather than less likely?
Definitely not, because they do not start out with equal priors. That’s just Bayes. Every conjunctive detail can only decrease the prior probability, which is the principle known as Occam’s Razor. The God in question is a highly conjunctive claim with lots of burdensome details.
Note also that “The Orthodox Christian God” may have a similar prior to other monotheist’s Gods, when taken individually, but it can’t really be bigger than the set of monotheistic Gods as a whole, which can’t be bigger than the set of gods as a whole, or the set of supernatural creatures as a whole, or the set of unspecified supernatural forces as a whole, as each successive set contains the former set. And if we cut out the burdensome detail of “the supernatural”, then we’re left with natural higher powers like alien teenagers, which is still plenty unlikely on priors, but is at least known to be possible based on established science. We haven’t even established that the supernatural exists at all.
I think in your treatment between different monotheistic gods there would be evidence that would favour one god over another even if both start similarly dysmally low. However if you had two gods and they are indistinguishable from aliens then they should not be distinguishable from each other. I guess there are two senses in that in “evidence we currently have” vs “evidence that could ever exist”. Like I would think that god hypothesis would not have increased probability for flying saucers. But if god doesn’t raise the expectation of saucers does god raise the expectation of anything? If it doesn’t raise the expectation of anything then there is nothing to disagree about because we don’t mean anything.
Do you have reason to believe that valentinlespukhin is in fact using a different definition than he explicitly provided here? The explicit definition was of the form a,b or c and you claim to believe that entities of type a exist. Why would you not believe that the disjunction exists?
I’m sorry, you’ve lost me here? What are a, b or c? What entities of type “a” did I claim exist?
Paraphrasing: By the miracle I understand event or series of events that have either: a) extremely low probability, b) seems to break the laws of Nature or c) have significantly higher probability to occur in the world with God rather than without.
“Low probability events happen all the time”
‘I do not believe in “miracles”, in the sense that you probably mean’
The sense in which you replied to “miracles” seems not to be able to be understood in the literal definition provided, so you either used your own private definition or did not believe that their definition was accurately spelled out. Now the discussion has shifted and there has been an additonal feature added that miracles are connected to christian worship. If you are assuming they have additional properties it might be fruitful to be explicit about them.
Yes, I was responding to what I thought he meant instead of his literal wording there. That’s why I included “in the sense that you probably mean”. I don’t think “low probability” by itself is sufficient to make an event a miracle, and was assuming there was more to it than that, like an apparent purpose for being that way, perhaps.