God, Quasars, and Coin Flips

[David Sklansky]

[ QUOTE ]
Maybe God's purpose in life is to make as many people happy as possible while still maintaining what appears to us as a perfectly predictable sense of order. Don't underestimate the power of omniscience. If I jump off a steep cliff, God can't do anything that doesn't flagrantly defy everything in my eyes. But if I lose control of my car, maybe sometimes God can nudge a few things around to help me.

Why does he want to maintain this sense of order? Maybe because since He gives us free will, he wants to test what we do with it. It's probably a better test when we're acting on predictable observations than randomly on faith in His random interference.

[/ QUOTE ]

You missed my point. Which is that the God you postulate can achieve those same ends without exploding supernovas a billion light years away and without adhering stictly to the laws of probability. As far as "nudging" things around if you lose control of your car, is he doing that to a small enough extent that you wouldn't realize it or to the point that a trained investigater wouldn't?

[ALawPoker]

I think you missed my point regarding the semantical mystery of omniscience.

[ QUOTE ]
As far as "nudging" things around if you lose control of your car, is he doing that to a small enough extent that you wouldn't realize it or to the point that a trained investigater wouldn't?

[/ QUOTE ]

He's doing it to whatever point is necessary based on whatever sequence of events will follow and who will investigate the situation.

You seem to be thinking strictly in terms you can know and touch. I'm basically talking about the greater mystery of omnipotence. The order you refer to is only order in our eyes. Maybe in God's eyes there is plenty of disarray. But he chooses for us to only see order.

My point doesn't really contradict yours. It's just a different idea. I liked your OP. But your point doesn't seem to contradict mine either.

[Stu Pidasso]

[ QUOTE ]
You missed my point. Which is that the God you postulate can achieve those same ends without exploding supernovas a billion light years away and without adhering stictly to the laws of probability. As far as "nudging" things around if you lose control of your car, is he doing that to a small enough extent that you wouldn't realize it or to the point that a trained investigater wouldn't?

[/ QUOTE ]

Our solar system formed out of the remains of a supernova. Therefore supernovas can serve some purpose to God. Even if a supernova a billion light years away has no purpose to God, an astronomer on earth finds it useful(to determine distance for instance).

What precludes God from "nudging things around" in a manner that would be undetectible by us? David, If you had absolute control over the cards at Party Poker could you not significantly alter the fortunes of player NotReady without him or the other players knowing about it?

Stu

[jakrpanda]

The logic - because we don't observe the system changing it cannot be under the control of an interested creator.

The problem with this logic? It doesn't take into account that the creator has complete and absolute control over the system.

For instance, if I write a computer program and in this program there are entities that consider themselves life. They think therefore they are. In this program I can inspect the inner workings of every entity and change those workings to suit my goals. I can also change the system these entities reside in. These two "powers" would allow me to completely alter the reality of the entities without them ever knowing. They could not observe the changes because their "memory" could be altered without hassle.

Now why would this matter in a monotheistic faith? Well it would matter a lot if the entire system was set up to determine the "best of breed" out of a population, with free-will at the center of this. How can a person be judged if not on his merit when split from this god, not under his whim? If a man resided in heaven he'd be a fool to denounce this deity and commit evil acts. Yet if left to his own devices, the truth will come out.

This metaphor relating the universe and a faith in a creator with a computer program is not mine. It was created by Donald Knuth, computer scientist. He explained in his writings and lectures why he, a scientist, has a belief in God. Essentially it comes down to this - math only scratches the surface of universal complexity. You can choose to believe this immensely complex system arrived by coincidence, or you can choose to hypothesize about a creator. It doesn't make one a fool to hypothesize on such ideas.

[David Sklansky]

"He's doing it to whatever point is necessary based on whatever sequence of events will follow and who will investigate the situation."

In other words you believe it is quite possible that God sometimes violates the laws of physics, to a rather large degree, as long as he knows that the action will never be discovered by someone whom is well versed enough in physics to understand the violation.

Are you aware that the sun may in fact revolve around the earth? Seriously. The main reason we think it doesn't is the motion of the other planets. But there is (I think) some convoluted but logical theories that explain all these planetary movements that are actually consistent with the Earth being the center of the solar system. We can't prove the theories are not true. We can only say they are unreasonable because they are tortuously complicated.

The same goes for a theory that postulates that miracles occur with a magnitude inversely correlated with the scientific knowledge of witnesses or any future investigators. As well as the myriad of other tortured thories or explanations people use to try to ratchet their religion into observed phenomenon even though explanations not invoking their religion, are so much simpler. Yet there is often no way to totally disprove them. If it comforts you to be one of those people so be it. But please admit you are just guessing.

[FortunaMaximus]

[ QUOTE ]
Our solar system formed out of the remains of a supernova. Therefore supernovas can serve some purpose to God. Even if a supernova a billion light years away has no purpose to God, an astronomer on earth finds it useful(to determine distance for instance).

[/ QUOTE ]

There are other uses for the data though that may not be immediately obvious.

I'm sure there are plenty of 'nova models to study, if you can establish a linear timeline that includes the formation of this solar system, backtrack to the nova, you have something that has the potential to model possible emergence of civilizations. Distance is irrelevant, when you realize what local time is there.

Huh. Information as an exponential model with increasing densities and complexity. So for matter-based information, it seems logical that it needs to be a sufficient density, and its interactions must be heavier still.

Analogous to neural nets, I guess, although I have very little actual reading into that or current theory (seems irrelevant somewhat when you consider that we're essentially building/evolving one anyways) it is true that the viability and expression of information has a very strong correlation to the density and complexity of the interconnections.

And like any fundamental force in this Universe, information has its own subsets of rules and laws, I suppose. We're well away from discovering the limitations that are imposed and self-referential.

[ALawPoker]

[ QUOTE ]
In other words you believe it is quite possible that God sometimes violates the laws of physics, to a rather large degree, as long as he knows that the action will never be discovered by someone whom is well versed enough in physics to understand the violation.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, that is my claim.

[ QUOTE ]
If it comforts you to be one of those people so be it.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not religious, I just felt like offering a counter-semantical argument to your semantical OP. Regardless, I don't really see what would be comforting. I'm not saying I have any less of a chance of dying in the car crash, I'm just saying that where someone might interpret "variance" someone else could interpret "hand of God." And since the hand of God only seems to act in a way that can be predicted by the physical realms, then it's effectively the same thing.

I guess merely thinking there is a God out there could be comforting in its own right, but that's not what I was getting at.

[ QUOTE ]
But please admit you are just guessing.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sure. What exactly do you mean by this though? We're basically talking about a paradox here. How wouldn't I be guessing? You're just guessing too. You can claim that your idea is more reasonable than mine, and I might even agree with you, but that's just your opinion. If it makes more sense to me that the physical order is a result of God's desire for us to perceive that order, then that's the belief I might maintain, and neither of us are "wrong." You say this as if you are not also just guessing, and that your interpretation is based on some objective underlying truth.

[Stu Pidasso]

[ QUOTE ]
In other words, quasars and true probabilities are consistent with no God, or a disinterested God, or a non omnipotent God. They are not consistent with a God who is particularly interested in humans even if you postulate that he is going out of his way to make his existence less than perfectly obvious (because he wouldn't be obvious even if there were no quasars or if he did occasionally allow the quadrillion to one shot).

[/ QUOTE ]

Suppose God only interferes in a way that on the surface doesn't appear to be a violation of the physical laws. For instance, perhaps God violated physical laws to cause Napolean to have a malaria attack just prior to the battle of Waterloo and some speculate this is why Napolean lost that battle. If such a God interfered only once in the life of every individual who lives or ever lived would we be able to detect it by statistical means? I doubt it.

Such a God, I would say, meets the definition of being particularly interested in humans. After all he would have violated physical laws to change things billions of times. If such a God exists, many would say there is no God because it appears the universe operates just fine with out one.

The conclusion that true probabilities are inconsistent with a God who is particularly interested in humans is false. God can choose to interfere in ways that maintain true probabilities.

Stu

[David Sklansky]

One of us IS wrong. And for me to be wrong requires a very precisely defined God. For you to be wrong requires ANY other possibility. So unless you can give a good reason why your guess should be given much more weight than any of the other possible guesses, my guess is the heavy favorite.

[ALawPoker]

Well we can't predict the behavior of subatomic particles. Much like we can't predict the behavior of individual humans. But when you examine the world as a whole, you can accurately predict certain trends in the overall population. It becomes more observable to us on that level.

So it makes me think that there is a ton of order that we don't know. I agree it would be almost certainly "wrong" to say that my precise God is the one that's right, but I'm slightly more certain it would be wrong to say that your 21st century human observation of order is exactly what's right.

You're attempting to define the question in a way where it's not possible for you to be wrong. But all I'm really saying is that what good is our perception of "order" in the first place when we're discussing possible intervention by an omniscient force?