Numbers, what are they?

What is the basis for reason? And mathematics?

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Belinda
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Re: Numbers, what are they?

Post by Belinda »

cicero117 wrote: Wed Nov 18, 2020 1:18 am
Skip wrote: Tue Nov 17, 2020 5:06 pm If the universe were chaotic instead of orderly, life couldn't exist. If life couldn't exist, humans could never have evolved. If humans had not evolved, there would have been nobody to conceive of gods. Therefore, the orderliness of the universe is responsible for Jehovah, Quetzalcoatl and all their nasty ilk. But without numbers, gods couldn't multiply.
What if I counter your argument by stating that because of God, orderliness of the universe is created.

Because, how can an order be maintained when there's no one controlling it?
I think you are right, and there is order that transcends human cultures of belief. Order does not imply that an intelligent Being is the agent of order.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Numbers, what are they?

Post by Immanuel Can »

Belinda wrote: Wed Nov 18, 2020 8:35 pm it was indeed astronomical good fortune and each leap ahead took place within geological time scales.
That's what you're not getting, B. The "geological time scales" hurt your argument, not help it.

Think of it this way: if you go to the casino, and win on a single roll of roulette, you can say, "Gee...wasn't that a lucky chance." 1 in 100 is very unlikely odds. You don't make those odds more likely if you make the numbers on the wheel more multitudinous, like 1 in 1,000 or 1 in 1,000,000. The bigger that scale gets, the LESS likely you'll win at all.

Likewise, the more geological time you posit, the greater the chain of "lucky changes" you have to suppose. And by the time you get up to the billions of years evolutionists want us to buy, you've decreased your own odds astronomically. You no longer have any reason to wager that what produced the result was nothing but chance. In fact, by the time you posit an infinite universe, you've reduced such odds infinitely.

So good luck with the old "geological time" argument. It only hurts your case.
Ginkgo
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Re: Numbers, what are they?

Post by Ginkgo »

Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Nov 18, 2020 3:42 am
cicero117 wrote: Wed Nov 18, 2020 1:18 am Because, how can an order be maintained when there's no one controlling it?
It's not just the problem of "maintaining," C. The question is, "How can highly-complex, rationally-ordered, intelligible things come out of sheer nothingness?"

An analogy for you, if I may.

Go and find a big, desk-sized hole punch, and tip all the little round punch-outs of paper into a pile in your hand. You'll probably have a few hundred paper dots, at most. If you throw those up into the air, what are the chances they're going to fall to the ground and spell out "Cicero117" perfectly? How many times would you have to do that in order to get "Cicero117" to form perfectly out of them? Not very likely, right?

But that's only some few hundred variables. The universe is composed of quintillions of atoms...more than can be counted. And yet they all accidentally "fell" into their arrangement by chance?

But it gets worse. For in your paper-punch-hole experiment, there were already bits of paper in existence, and your hand beneath them, and the concept "cicero117" in existence, even before your experiment began. So to make a really functional experiment, don't just need untold quintillions of paper-punchouts, but you need them to appear from nothing -- spontaneously -- then without your help, scramble themselves into a form immeasurably more complex, but no less intelligible and rational than the words "Cicero117."

The conclusion? Order does not "just appear" out of chaos. And matter does not "just appear" out of nothing. And anyone who thinks it can, should go to Las Vegas, find a casino, and put their life's savings on one number; because doing that is far more -- vastly more, infinitely more, in fact -- likely to issue in a win than their belief that the rationally-intelligible universe just popped itself into being out of nothing is likely to be true.
According to chaos theory order can appear out of chaos, so I don't think that is a problem. The bigger problem is the intelligent design argument. In the future we will have a quantum explanation for intelligent design that will do away with the need for irreducible complexity.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Numbers, what are they?

Post by Immanuel Can »

Ginkgo wrote: Thu Nov 19, 2020 1:06 am According to chaos theory order can appear out of chaos, so I don't think that is a problem.
Actually it's far worse a problem than you imagine. For you not only have to get order out of chaos, but something out of nothing...if you understand the mathematics involved. And then you have to get an astronomically improbably collection of serendipitous chances to all work out in your favour, contrary to many of the physical probabilities we now observe. And after all that, you're pretty much home free on the basic mathematics, and maybe ready to tackle the design arguments.

Good luck. You will need it.
Ginkgo
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Re: Numbers, what are they?

Post by Ginkgo »

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Nov 19, 2020 3:43 am
Ginkgo wrote: Thu Nov 19, 2020 1:06 am According to chaos theory order can appear out of chaos, so I don't think that is a problem.
Actually it's far worse a problem than you imagine. For you not only have to get order out of chaos, but something out of nothing...if you understand the mathematics involved. And then you have to get an astronomically improbably collection of serendipitous chances to all work out in your favour, contrary to many of the physical probabilities we now observe. And after all that, you're pretty much home free on the basic mathematics, and maybe ready to tackle the design arguments.

Good luck. You will need it.
There has always been something rather than nothing, so again I don't see this as a problem. I think the design argument is a good one, however, the big question from my point of view is the source of this design. As I hinted at before, I think it will be discovered that the quantum world world is responsible for design.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Numbers, what are they?

Post by Immanuel Can »

Ginkgo wrote: Thu Nov 19, 2020 4:18 am There has always been something rather than nothing,
Aha. 8)

Nothing could be quite so certain as that that is not true. For it's actually mathematically impossible. It literally can't ever happen.

The infinite regress of causes problem applies to that. An infinite sequence of causes and effects never begins, by definition. The mathematician who has done the work on that is David Hilbert. It's one of the implications of his "hotel" thought experiment, actually...which is pretty entertaining. You should check it out.
Scott Mayers
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Re: Numbers, what are they?

Post by Scott Mayers »

cicero117 wrote: Wed Nov 18, 2020 1:18 am
Skip wrote: Tue Nov 17, 2020 5:06 pm If the universe were chaotic instead of orderly, life couldn't exist. If life couldn't exist, humans could never have evolved. If humans had not evolved, there would have been nobody to conceive of gods. Therefore, the orderliness of the universe is responsible for Jehovah, Quetzalcoatl and all their nasty ilk. But without numbers, gods couldn't multiply.
What if I counter your argument by stating that because of God, orderliness of the universe is created.

Because, how can an order be maintained when there's no one controlling it?
You guys need to study Set Theory because it demonstrates HOW 'order' can be defined in a static way.

For simplicity, if you have a set {X}, Then you can have a set {{X}}, a set containing a set. "Order" would be a set such as

{ {X}, {X, {Y}} }

...which implies that you can have something that is an X by itself OR as a coexisting pair of X with something else. This defines 'order' and is summarized as an 'ordered pair, (X,Y).

To the question,"how can an order be maintained when there is no one controlling it?" should be,

Why does an origin in Nothing REQUIRE obeying a law of consistency?

Order is dependent necessarily on Non-order to mean something by contrast. But if anything originates unordered (chaos of an infinity of things OR nothing at all), then what is 'non-ordered' is not complelled to require 'order' by default.
Ginkgo
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Re: Numbers, what are they?

Post by Ginkgo »

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Nov 19, 2020 5:56 am
Ginkgo wrote: Thu Nov 19, 2020 4:18 am There has always been something rather than nothing,
Aha. 8)

Nothing could be quite so certain as that that is not true. For it's actually mathematically impossible. It literally can't ever happen.

The infinite regress of causes problem applies to that. An infinite sequence of causes and effects never begins, by definition. The mathematician who has done the work on that is David Hilbert. It's one of the implications of his "hotel" thought experiment, actually...which is pretty entertaining. You should check it out.
Actually, I am familiar with Hilbert's hotel argument. I don't see what Hilbert's argument has to do with there being something rather than nothing. My argument is quite clear, the universe has always existed in one form or another. No need for a first cause.
Last edited by Ginkgo on Thu Nov 19, 2020 1:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Belinda
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Re: Numbers, what are they?

Post by Belinda »

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Nov 19, 2020 12:09 am
Belinda wrote: Wed Nov 18, 2020 8:35 pm it was indeed astronomical good fortune and each leap ahead took place within geological time scales.
That's what you're not getting, B. The "geological time scales" hurt your argument, not help it.

Think of it this way: if you go to the casino, and win on a single roll of roulette, you can say, "Gee...wasn't that a lucky chance." 1 in 100 is very unlikely odds. You don't make those odds more likely if you make the numbers on the wheel more multitudinous, like 1 in 1,000 or 1 in 1,000,000. The bigger that scale gets, the LESS likely you'll win at all.

Likewise, the more geological time you posit, the greater the chain of "lucky changes" you have to suppose. And by the time you get up to the billions of years evolutionists want us to buy, you've decreased your own odds astronomically. You no longer have any reason to wager that what produced the result was nothing but chance. In fact, by the time you posit an infinite universe, you've reduced such odds infinitely.

So good luck with the old "geological time" argument. It only hurts your case.
But games of chance are supposed to be random, not designed. Evolution is powered by design. Design does not imply intelligent designer.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Numbers, what are they?

Post by Immanuel Can »

Ginkgo wrote: Thu Nov 19, 2020 10:12 am I don't see what Hilbert's argument has to do with there being something rather than nothing.
Then let me make it dead simple, if I may.

In an infinite line, there is no end point, right?

In an infinite regress of causes, there is no beginning point. (This is because each earlier step is an absolute prerequisite (or "cause") for the next one. So no step happens until AFTER the previous one has ALREADY happened. :shock: )

If we posit an infinite universe, then it never would have begun.

This universe has clearly begun.

Therefore it was not past-infinite.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Numbers, what are they?

Post by Immanuel Can »

Belinda wrote: Thu Nov 19, 2020 11:48 am Design does not imply intelligent designer.
Yeah, actually: it does.
Skip
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Re: Numbers, what are they?

Post by Skip »

Obviously.
This:
nothing > chaos > coalescence > pattern > order > organization > evolution > consciousness > intelligence > agency > mathematics
cannot happen, never, ever, nohow
Whereas this:
nothing > intelligence > consciousness > agency > mathematics > pattern > order
is self-evident
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Numbers, what are they?

Post by Immanuel Can »

Skip wrote: Thu Nov 19, 2020 4:13 pm nothing > intelligence
is self-evident
Okay, gotta ask?

How? :shock:

"Nothing" is "self-evidently" the source of "intelligence"?

That's so wrong it's (i)ambiguously [/i] right. Why should anyone take for granted that a "nothing" just kinda spits out an "intelligence"? :shock:

And it's quite true that "nothing" about the emergence of "intelligence" is "self-evident".
Skip
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Re: Numbers, what are they?

Post by Skip »

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Nov 19, 2020 5:29 pm
"Nothing" is "self-evidently" the source of "intelligence"?

That's so wrong it's (i)ambiguously [/i] right. Why should anyone take for granted that a "nothing" just kinda spits out an "intelligence"?
Uh. I thought intelligence was a pre-requisite for creating order 'n' universes 'n' numbers 'n' stuff.
You mean God isn't intelligent? Is he at least conscious?
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Numbers, what are they?

Post by Immanuel Can »

Skip wrote: Thu Nov 19, 2020 7:31 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Nov 19, 2020 5:29 pm
"Nothing" is "self-evidently" the source of "intelligence"?

That's so wrong it's (i)ambiguously [/i] right. Why should anyone take for granted that a "nothing" just kinda spits out an "intelligence"?
Uh. I thought intelligence was a pre-requisite for creating order 'n' universes 'n' numbers 'n' stuff.
You mean God isn't intelligent? Is he at least conscious?
I don't "mean" anything here. I'm asking you about what YOU said.

You said it's self-evident that "nothing" gives rise to "intelligence." Now, on the face of it, that's a pretty wild claim. So I'm assuming you misspoke somehow, and I'm giving you the opportunity to show the rightness of your claim.
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