RUU #10 - Intelligent Design and Modus Tollens

[Ludde365]

Dude, are you Norwegian?

[trondreitan]

Yes. Guess you could tell from the accent... :)

[Ludde365]

Ja.

[gregrutz]

That's not Modus Tollens.

IF A then B

A is a fact

therfore B follows

[trondreitan]

No, what you described is Modus Ponens.

[Newton1692]

Do you know if or how they could calculate the probability of a false negative?

[trondreitan]

As I understand it, in a medical setting, a false negative probability is typically calculated by doing two tests on each person in a small to moderate set of patients. One is the test you are interested in, and one is a more elaborate and often quite more expensive string of tests assumed to have a much smaller false positive and false negative rate. And for some diseases, you will get to know the state of the person after some time has passed after the test.

[thethikboy]

I agree that if ID depends on a misapplication of modus tolens reasoning as probabilistic.

It certainly is the case that given the truth of if E is true then motor flagella would not evolve

Motor flagella have evolved then E is not true.

But that does not make ID true.

That is called argumentum ad ignoratiam.

However it doesn't make ID false because that would also be argumentum ad ignorantiam.

ID must advance itself on more than a refutation of evolution.

[flyingscience]

NOVA - "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" will premiere Tuesday, November 13 at 8PM ET/PT on most PBS stations. See video preview search the tittle on You Tube.

[trondreitan]

Thanks for the tip.

[jwlthe4th]

What is the probability of any one human fulfilling all of the Biblical prophecies ascribed to Jesus Christ?

[trondreitan]

Considering that Simon bar Kokhba was considered a better candidate for the title of the messiah by his jewish contemporaries than Jesus, the probability must be considered great, wether there is a christian God or not. In fact, wikipedia has a whole list of 'jewish messiah claimants'. This is not hard to understand, as the prophecies are vague and thus open to interpretation and available for any messiah candidate and his later writers. See Nick Gisburn's video for more: watch?v=B7WYGJaKxlI

[Desertphile]

"What is the probability of any one human fulfilling all of the Biblical prophecies ascribed to Jesus Christ?"

Before the fact or after?

[jwlthe4th]

At that exact time. Even the place in time was prophecied to the day.

[trondreitan]

Seeing that other messianic figures were born on other times without that being held against them, this is not convincing.

[Desertphile]

"Seeing that other messianic figures were born on other times without that being held against them, this is not convincing."

Seeing how Jesus was created by people who wanted to believe there would be a great messiah, his bold and unsupported assertion is even more unconvincing.

[trondreitan]

Certainly. A rewriting Jesus' life story (if he at all existed) to fit the prophecies better is definitely a possibility. This must also be considered when contemplating the probability of the existence of a story like that in the bible, conditioned on no Christian God.

[Desertphile]

"Even the place in time was prophecied to the day."

No, there are no prophesies in the Bible that have come true. I suppose we will have to wait another 1600 years?

[jwlthe4th]

If you have convinced yourself of this you may be missing the truth. Have you ever looked at the evidence to see if it is true rather than look for evidence to convince your self it is not?

[Desertphile]

"If you have convinced yourself of this you may be missing the truth."

It took no convincing on my part: lack of belief in "prophesies" is the default.

There are no prophesies in the Bible that have come true. NONE AT ALL. Sorry.

[jwlthe4th]

The time in history was predicted to the day.

Daniel 9:25

"Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven 'sevens,' and sixty-two 'sevens.

[jwlthe4th]

This calculates to the day.

Nisan 10, 33 AD - Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

[trondreitan]

Daniels has a very vague prophecy. The numbers can be interpreted in many different ways, just like 666 from Revelations has been. As I understand it, you need 360 day years(!) for one of the sets of sevens and weeks for the other, in order to fit the *claims* in the new testament. You also need to specify one of the many decrees to rebuild Jerusalem. Also, the temple wasn't destroyed before 40 years later and Jerusalem wasn't denied Jews until the rebellion of Simon bar Kokhba 100 years later.

[Desertphile]

"Daniels has a very vague prophecy"

The book of Daniel was written 300 years AFTER the time it pretends to prophesy about. That it, it was written in the negative second century but it "prophesies" for the negative fifth century. Funny way to "prophesy." :-)

[trondreitan]

Yes, but I didn't think that relevant, as Christians think this specific passage hints to events in the author's future, around 25-35AD (33AD only one option).

Here's the problem:

(arbitrary pick of starting time in a set of imprecisely dated similar events) +

7*7*(arb. time unit) +

62*7*(another arb. time unit) =

arb. pick in a set of possible end time subjected to Christian editing and possibly entirely fictional. With fractional years as an option, this doesn't entirely convince me. :)

[trondreitan]

Before the fact, yes. You want to compare prediction power for two model in statistical analysis (Bayesian or frequentist). If you calculate the probability of the event conditioned on that event, you are using data twice. As I described in the first comment, the probabilities will be pretty comparable.

[jwlthe4th]

I dont have to convince anyone of anything. If you want to convince yourself, you achieved this long ago. As to the particulars, Jesus was the only person in history to fulfill the prophecies and at that time in history as foretold.

[Desertphile]

"...Jesus was the only person in history to fulfill the proph...."

Sorry, but there is no evidence to support that claim. DISMISSED!

[jwlthe4th]

Ultimatly this is not a matter of probability or material science. It is a matter of the mind and spirit. Yours is convinced. It serves the purposes of your desires. What do you achieve in the end?

[chimaster123]

and your "spirit" is fixed jwlthe4th because your a dumbass, look, all data needs to be dissected, and debated, so that it can with stand scrutiny, yours has not, you ignore all scrutiny because it doesnt agree with your world view, this makes your assumptions false, besides, if its so perfect, why don't you TEST your shit with other knowledge, a good quote

"the best way to prove a hypothesis is to ignore all data against it"

[JCMac777]

Faith has a way of encouraging willful ignorance and ignoring all contrary evidence. Yours has nothing to do with mind and spirit, but simply blind faith.

[chrisinsocalif]

Seems many creationists don't know the meaning of faith. Faith means "belief without proof." Science doesn't consist of faith since it needs proof, but religion has an absolute without proof or it wouldn't be called faith. Science gives more to this world than religion, or we would still be living in the dark ages.

[meth00in00venice]

Very interesting and well presented. Fitelson and Sober have criticised a somewhat similar Bayesian argument made by Alvin Plantinga about the probability of "evolutionary naturalism" given our cognitive ability to form beliefs about the world:

fitelson(.)org/plant(.)pdf

[trondreitan]

Thanks for the tip! I'll look into it.

[trondreitan]

I've taken a peak at the note you mentioned, and from what I can see, Plantinga's arguments have so many holes it's not even funny. Some of the flaws were obvious immediately, much before reaching to Fitelson/Sober's treatment of them. For instance, the prior probability of evolution and theism is assumed about as probable. Then the assumption that there's some data with the property Pr(D)~=1 when Pr(D|evol.) is low is then plane nonsense, as can be seen from rule 6, described in clip 8.

[meth00in00venice]

Yes, that's right. Plantinga's thesis can be summarised as: evolution is exceedingly unlikely to produce mental faculties beyond foraging, fighting, and finding mates, and so believing in evolution is irrational, i.e. it's self-defeating. How about learning grammar (pattern finding) and making tools?

He assumes that our cognitive faculties provide us with beliefs that are reliable. This doesn't seem justifiable given that we used to believe in geocentrism and that the earth is flat.

[trondreitan]

There's of course also problems with the assumption that evolution is unlikely to create minds that do well on general rational reasoning. Maynard-Smith showed that a mind that did optimization as good as evolution was itself an optimal evolutionary strategy. Our changing environment contains social encounters with other humans, so general handling of uncertainties are needed. Of course there are limitations, for instance on brainsize.

[trondreitan]

Even birds can solve novel problems that requires a little abstraction, so I think it stands to reason that humans should be better at it, when we've had to cope with communication and changing technology for more than 100.000 years.