Q&A: Statistics in Reverse
Statistics in Reverse
Question
In the chapter on the physico-theological argument, you claimed that the probability of God's existence (based on the current argument) is one minus the probability of chance.
You also explained there why the claim that this is statistics in reverse is incorrect. And indeed, that is so.
But I still do not understand why this method of calculation is correct:
If the probability of a chance occurrence is p, that does not mean that all the remaining probability belongs to directed agency. It could be that the rest of the probability belongs to the possibility that this thing would not happen at all. True, if it did happen, there is a tremendous puzzle if we say it was by chance, and therefore it is appropriate to conclude that there is some hidden guiding hand here, but the way to calculate the probabilities is not one minus the probability that it happened by chance.
An example:
Suppose that initially there is a fifty-percent chance that the world will be constituted as it is in its current state, and a fifty-percent chance that it will not. Now that it has happened, the probability that it occurred by chance is twice what it was initially, since initially there was a fifty-percent chance that it would not happen at all.
To sum up, I am not disputing that it is still fairly clear that there is some guiding hand here, but I did not understand why the probabilistic calculation written in the book is correct. (Certainly the probability that there is a guiding hand is one minus the probability that it happened on its own—because those are the two possibilities known to us—but the probability that it happened on its own after it happened is not equal to the probability that it will happen in the future.)
Hoping for clarification.
Answer
Who was talking about whether it will happen in the future? The issue is conditional probability. The world was created. That is a fact. Now there are two possibilities: it was created by chance, or it was created by someone/something. The sum of those two is 1. That is all.
Discussion on Answer
Obviously. I explained this in the conversations in the book. That is no longer correct once we know about the Big Bang. Beyond that, an eternal world is a concrete infinity. And it too requires an explanation, even if not a cause.
In the book it does not seem that the intention is conditional probability. It may be that this needs to be spelled out more, because I see others also got this wrong.
Also, the claim that was rejected on the Hofesh website spoke about probability before the thing happened, so you were not talking about the same thing.
Regarding the eternity of the world,
(first, one can think that with low probability a concrete infinity exists)
second, it is true that it is customary to say that matter was created in the Big Bang, but there are scientists who claim that there were more "primordial" factors before it.
So in fact there are three possibilities –
1. By chance, from a "natural" cause.
2. By some primordial thing (natural – Aristotelian teleology)
3. Or by some primordial someone (metaphysical – teleology resembling free will).
Usually you present why 3 is preferable to 1.
But you hardly discuss why 3 is preferable to 2.
If the world was created by some primordial thing, the question returns to it. Who created it? And if no one created it, then that is God.
If it is primordial then no one created it… but in any case that is not a God that one should call deistic.
Just as you would not call a stone a deistic god even if it created the entire world.
You are playing with words. That is the conception of an eternal world. There is no reason to produce yet another turtle holding up this turtle.
Exactly!.. So according to the view of an eternal world, there is no reason to assume there is a deistic God, right?
If so, the physico-theological proof is strong only in light of current scientific knowledge—that the world was created.
And therefore hypotheses 2 and 3 are preferable to 1.
But in practice, even after the scientific knowledge, there is no way to know whether the primordial cause is a deistic God or just some "primordial stone" that is designed to create a world.
I will repeat myself one last time, because we are just going in circles.
There is no option of a primordial stone. A stone is not the cause of anything, because it itself requires a cause. A primary source that can serve as a first cause can only be a volitional-intelligent source. Our world is not eternal because none of the entities in it is its own cause. And besides that, there is the Big Bang. Therefore there must be something that created it, and that is God.
This sentence:
"A primary source that can serve as a first cause can only be a volitional-intelligent source"
requires explanation.
No other kind of source solves the problem. Then we would ask what its own cause is and how it came out so special—that it produces such a special world.
1. Then say that it is another source, of another type than the things you know (only it is teleological in the Aristotelian sense).
2. Why are you satisfied with a source that is volitional and not with a programmed source? After all, will too has something very special about it (see the sciences of freedom regarding how to describe free will…).
I do not see where this discussion is going. A programmed source needs a programmer. That's it. We've exhausted it.
Would you then connect the main proof to your dualist approach?
What does that have to do with anything?
There is also a third possibility: that the world always existed.
Which the Rabbi tends to omit in these internet discussions (as in the columns).