Devans99

'Did the murderer do it?' is a good example. In absence of statistics for how many people in court actually come out guilty, we'd start by assuming it...

My justification is inductive from everyday experience. Questions that are boolean and that have an underlying boolean sample space, have in my experi...

...is the fact that we know the distribution of answers to unknown boolean questions is definitely not 100/0 or 0/100. We know that boolean questions ...

If 'only now exists' and you take away the 'only now' you are left with nothing. Creation ex nihilo without time is then required, which is impossible...

But we have information on the distribution of answers to unknown boolean questions; we know its definitely not 100/0 or 0/100.

If 'only now exists' and 'there was a start of time', what was there to cause the start of time? There is nothing; not even time, not a single quantum...

I thought the justification given here was adequate: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/270560 Most things follow the normal distributi...

I think that we lead our lives on the principal that induction/statistics yields true results. We can be 100% sure of virtually nothing so we rely on ...

Yes I'm just arguing for a creator, not God (it's not my OP). There are two possible states: either the universe was created or it was not (I am not a...

Thats not what I'm arguing for. I'm saying 'was the universe created?', that is not the same question as 'Is there a God?'. I think the 2nd is not a 5...

It's not a 50/50 proposition - we know the distribution of cases of gold is very low - you are taking into account evidence against the proposition im...

Well it does not matter mathematically whether you do the 50% allowance as a first step in the analysis or as a last step, the calculation comes out t...

I think you can object on philosophical grounds that one should not take a position for/against a proposition without evidence. But if you look at my ...

If you have a proposition X and also propositions Y and ~Y then you can prove X is absolutely false if you can show: X AND Y = false X AND ~Y = false ...

I think there is an assumption in my argument that the universe won't do anything deeply illogical or magical. I think you will find the same assumpti...

Presentism is usually defined as 'only now exists'. 'Only now exists' and 'there is a start of time' are incompatible views (IE what then caused the s...

Starting any any value other than 50%/50% would be arbitrary. Its optimal to assign 50%/50% - no bias at all for/against the proposition.

I think the nature of eternity varies depending upon the model of time: 1. Presentism. Then there is a distinct difference between past and future ete...

The idea is for a boolean question like 'was the universe created?' that we start at 50%/50% yes/no before considering any evidence. Then we modify th...

I'd argue that matter cannot exist forever; see points 1-6 in the OP. I give more arguments against the possibility of 'infinite existence' here: http...

So you mean the 'block universe' view? The universe itself its eternal and in a sense timeless so it does not need creating. With this view, the futur...

Fair point, but I can then argue that the universe itself could not exist either. If matter cannot exist forever (IE a clock) then nothing can.

You are criticising my argument without understanding it.

No, 2 means on its own, what is the probability that the Big Bang was caused by a creator? So I assign 50% to that probability. We already have a 50% ...

I think you are making rather too much of it; it is just a probability estimate not an actual answer to the question of whether there was a creator. A...

You are so confused. You have done a completely different kind of calculation. You have calculated the chances of simultaneous events which is a multi...

It is not a multiplicative process as for when you are calculating the probability of two events occurring simultaneously, but an additive process to ...

Nice post. I too find it hard to fathom faith in ancient religious texts. On a simplistic level, the older a source is, the less reliable it is making...

Well you are a true agnostic then. On the other hand, I personally have an urge to try to answer all questions even if the answer is only a probabilit...

I believe the question it is probably not answerable deductively. It might be answered through inductive or empirical routes though. But both of these...

It's not my OP. So how then do you solve problems that require a meta-analysis? For example, we have a proposition for which we have multiple inductiv...

I have not solved the problem of whether there is a God or not, I've just done a probability analysis of whether there is a creator of the universe. A...

Probability that a creator of the universe exists (I’ve plugged in very conservative estimates this time): 1. Start at 50% / 50% for a unknown boolean...

The point I'm making is that we know that the statement: (there are no Gods) OR (there are God(s)) Is true. So scientific investigation should allow f...

I don't need God. For example, I am very much a humanist, I think that humans should help themselves rather than rely on the possibility of God helpin...

IMO I'm trying to be scientific about it. Also IMO, I don't think science takes a very 'scientific' approach to God: We don’t know if there is a God o...

The evidence of fine-tuning for life counts against accidental creation. - Timeless. Has to be else we'd have an infinite regress in time. - Powerful....

I'm sorry if it came over as pontificating; I am definitely not insisting my argument is correct; it goes against intuitiveness on the nature of time ...

Yes. I think we can conclude if there was a creator, then he would have the following characteristics: - Timeless - Powerful - Benevolent But there is...

I am not insisting that my arguments are correct; I think there is a reasonable probability that my arguments are correct and I'm arguing for them. I ...

I think a logical argument can be made for a similar but distinct question 'Is there a creator of the universe?'. For example, the fine-tuning argumen...

I think you need a larger sample size than one before drawing any conclusions. 'Recent medical studies on prayer have generally shown mixed results wh...

Yes, traversal does requires us to traverse an infinite series so we are prone to the paradoxes of Zeno. This is the problem from my perspective: actu...

Presentism is incompatible with a start of time so that leads to the conclusion that 'only now always existed' follows from 'only now exists'. Europea...

I think of potential infinity as iterative processes carried out in time and then as actual infinity as the result of carrying on these iterative proc...

Thanks very much!

I have a paper under review with a journal at the moment. It is the term 'Potential Infinity' that comes to mind when thinking of computers. I don't h...

I've spent years thinking about infinity; what in your opinion do I not understand?

In your version: 1. Says that the number of events (in an infinite regress) is a number 2a. Says that infinity is not a number So that means that the ...

Look at it this way, say our eternal universe has a clock (its just a thought experiment). What time would it read?