Very simple and very cool analogy

[Dante]

Can you suggest a viable alternative?

Whether there has to be a first cause or not is not important. I will not debate this point further.

[Faetarius]

I agree with Dante that there is no such state as something being truly "random". If we knew every facter we could calculate the outcome with a 100% success rate (excluding errors). However we, as humans, use the word random to explain something that we cannot predict and so *seems* random to us. This is a technical misusage, but allows easy understanding. Wrongful use of words is just part of everyday speech. The point is merely a verbal nuance.

[Dante]

As for the word random, here is a very good example: when playing a card game, the cards are dealt "randomly". Now everyone with common sense knows that when the deck was shuffled the cards ended in a certain order, unintended, unknown. The word random is used to facilitate communication.

I don't care if it's a word used to facilitate communication, so are the words 'good,' 'down' and 'humane.' Just because there is a word for a concept, does not mean that it exists objectively. The order of the cards is unknown, yes. It is without pattern and seems random but is in fact determined by preceding factors.

Calling a chicken a duck or saying normalcy are obvious mistakes on your part.

Either you are misinterpreting what I say or you're just being dense. Either way I don't need to counter.

Thank you, Faetarius. Though I would say that the point is a bit more than mere semantics. It's involved, yes, but there's more to it than that...

[Dante]

But the matter is not objective. We see it as random, we call it random.

We are making up a word for a concept that does not exist. Much like legality.

Nay, not misinterpreting. Your part = the people who do it.

That just doesn't make any sense.

[Faetarius]

But that's what language is for! Making up words that have no real use but sound good! :P *ahem*

[Dante]

I'm trying to talk about reality, not language. Random exists in language, and so do chairs. But random does not exist in reality. Chairs do. Am I getting through here?

[Faetarius]

Yea, I understand what you mean, and I must say I agree. Just trying to lighten the mood a bit.

[GUNWOUNDS]

i hate to rehash... but being a scientist.... i was taught that in order to claim something as a fact scientifically you had to be able to replicate the events/experiment/whatever.

[Faetarius]

So we can't really accept this idea fully as it is unproveable?

[Dante]

If it's as theoretical as evolution then it's factual enough for me.

[Faetarius]

I'll go along with that

[Acriku]

i hate to rehash... but being a scientist.... i was taught that in order to claim something as a fact scientifically you had to be able to replicate the events/experiment/whatever.  Thats why things like the Big Bang and Evolution will always be theories  and not fact because you can never replicate them as observable events.  So if you cannot replicate a particular past event... such as someone throwing dice or the Big Bang... then how is it possible to say for certain that if the conditions were exactly the same that you would observe an exact dice roll or creation of a universe?  You cant and therefore doesnt that mean that you cannot prove that random doesnt exist?  ???

Being a scientist you should know that there is no heirarchy of certainty amongst law, theory, or fact. Come on gunwounds, this is basic science 101! The only difference between a law, a theory, and a fact is: a law describes the phenomena (law of gravity describes that an object will fall under normal conditions due to gravity); a theory explains why the phenomena occurs (the theory on why an object falls is not yet formualated, or composed); and a fact is a piece of data (an object will fall on Earth at an acceleration of 9.8 m/s). And you can replicate evolution, what do you think genetics is? What do you think biology is? I'm beginning to doubt your credibility as a scientist with this post gunwounds. I hope you're not just another "Doctor" Hovind.

[Dante]

Except that we can't make the other choice. Even the simplest decisions, between cake and apple for example, is predetermined. Whichever choice you make was determined by prior factors, and once made it cannot be undone. Even if we knew everything there is to be known, we would still be unable to break free from this. Because if we knew that all of the factors led up to us choosing the cake and then chose the apple, it would be because of the predetermining factor that we knew all the other predetermining factors. There is no crumbling here.

Unless it's apple crumble. Mmm...

[Acriku]

We, humans, are able to collect data. Therefore, it is theoreticaly possible to collect all data (the likelihood of this happening is not relevant). If we have all data, we can compute any previous or future state of the universe. This way, when we come to a decision between A and B, we are able to know what our choice is. Yet, we can make the other choice. Predeterminism crumbles beneath itself.

If we truly know all data, then we would know the state of the universe as it would be with the knowledge of our knowing all data. I don't know, I'm confusing myself.

I think theoretically it's impossible to have all data because you cannot know if you know everything (a piece of data in itself).

[Dante]

Then the computed state is itself a factor, which is put into a computed state which becomes a factor... You see, there's no beating this. There is no possible way to prevent the decision making process from becoming a factor itself.

And you can't know everything because you can never be sure if you know everything. By its very nature the unknown is... unknown. So you might be absolutely convinced that you know everything but still have something missing without realising it.

[GUNWOUNDS]

Being a scientist you should know that there is no heirarchy of certainty amongst law, theory, or fact. Come on gunwounds, this is basic science 101! The only difference between a law, a theory, and a fact is: a law describes the phenomena (law of gravity describes that an object will fall under normal conditions due to gravity); a theory explains why the phenomena occurs (the theory on why an object falls is not yet formualated, or composed); and a fact is a piece of data (an object will fall on Earth at an acceleration of 9.8 m/s). And you can replicate evolution, what do you think genetics is? What do you think biology is? I'm beginning to doubt your credibility as a scientist with this post gunwounds. I hope you're not just another "Doctor" Hovind.

From the dictionary....

THEORY IS DEFINED AS:

1.) A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.

[GUNWOUNDS]

@ Dante & Spectral Paladin -->

[GUNWOUNDS]

And of course that is assuming that data is infinite. It could be finite though.

The paradox could also show that we can't have predeterminism (rather than not able to have all data).

True true....

[Acriku]

From the dictionary....

THEORY IS DEFINED AS:

...

Obviously some of these theories can be FALSE... but the FACT that your face and my hand are bruised is FACT.... SO YES THERE IS A HEIRARCHY.  FACT beats theory  (get that thru your head acriku)  *yeesh*

However since we all have different PERSONAL thresholds for believing things (degree of factuality as Dante put it)  that doesnt stop any of you from believing or disbelieving whether random truly exists or not. So this basically is a theory you can accept or reject.

You're using SOCIAL definitions for SCIENTIFIC terms! What kind of scientist are you? Of course theories can be falsified, it's a tenet of being a valid scientific theory. Laws can be falsified as well. Data can be falsifie as well. There is no heirarchy of certainty between any of them, inherently anyway. The difference in certainty is based upon how much evidence supports them. The THEORY of evolution has as much evidence supporting it as the LAW of gravity, but they as valid as they are, they can be falsified.

Read this excerpt from Stephen J. Gould's article in Discovery:

In the American vernacular, "theory" often means "imperfect fact"--part of a hierarchy of confidence running downhill from fact to theory to hypothesis to guess. Thus the power of the creationist argument: evolution is "only" a theory and intense debate now rages about many aspects of the theory. If evolution is worse than a fact, and scientists can't even make up their minds about the theory, then what confidence can we have in it? Indeed, President Reagan echoed this argument before an evangelical group in Dallas when he said (in what I devoutly hope was campaign rhetoric): "Well, it is a theory. It is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science--that is, not believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was."

Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.

Moreover, "fact" doesn't mean "absolute certainty"; there ain't no such animal in an exciting and complex world. The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us falsely for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Evolutionists have been very clear about this distinction of fact and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (theory) by which evolution (fact) occurred. Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory--natural selection--to explain the mechanism of evolution.

- Stephen J. Gould, " Evolution as Fact and Theory"; Discover, May 1981

taken from http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html

Two scientists who say opposite things. Hmm, I wonder who to believe... An evolutionary biologist and paleontologist who has published many books and hosted thousands of seminars, or you.

You are mistaken, sir.

Oh and just to rub it in a little bit more, here's a Professor of Biology and Zoology at Harvard:

It is time for students of the evolutionary process, especially those who have been misquoted and used by the creationists, to state clearly that evolution is a fact, not theory, and that what is at issue within biology are questions of details of the process and the relative importance of different mechanisms of evolution. It is a fact that the earth with liquid water, is more than 3.6 billion years old. It is a fact that cellular life has been around for at least half of that period and that organized multicellular life is at least 800 million years old. It is a fact that major life forms now on earth were not at all represented in the past. There were no birds or mammals 250 million years ago. It is a fact that major life forms of the past are no longer living. There used to be dinosaurs and Pithecanthropus, and there are none now. It is a fact that all living forms come from previous living forms. Therefore, all present forms of life arose from ancestral forms that were different. Birds arose from nonbirds and humans from nonhumans. No person who pretends to any understanding of the natural world can deny these facts any more than she or he can deny that the earth is round, rotates on its axis, and revolves around the sun.

The controversies about evolution lie in the realm of the relative importance of various forces in molding evolution.

- R. C. Lewontin "Evolution/Creation Debate: A Time for Truth" Bioscience 31, 559 (1981) reprinted in Evolution versus Creationism, op cit.

from same link

Oh, and I couldn't resist posting this one, taken from an INTRODUCTION TO BIOLOGY textbook:

Today, nearly all biologists acknowledge that evolution is a fact. The term theory is no longer appropriate except when referring to the various models that attempt to explain how life evolves... it is important to understand that the current questions about how life evolves in no way implies any disagreement over the fact of evolution.

- Neil A. Campbell, Biology 2nd ed., 1990, Benjamin/Cummings, p. 434

from same link

Good day, sir.

[GUNWOUNDS]

You're using SOCIAL definitions for SCIENTIFIC terms! What kind of scientist are you? Of course theories can be falsified, it's a tenet of being a valid scientific theory. Laws can be falsified as well. Data can be falsifie as well. There is no heirarchy of certainty between any of them, inherently anyway. The difference in certainty is based upon how much evidence supports them. The THEORY of evolution has as much evidence supporting it as the LAW of gravity, but they as valid as they are, they can be falsified.

Read this excerpt from Stephen J. Gould's article in Discovery:

taken from http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html

Two scientists who say opposite things. Hmm, I wonder who to believe... An evolutionary biologist and paleontologist who has published many books and hosted thousands of seminars, or you.

You are mistaken, sir.

THERE are many CONFLICTING SCIENTIFIC THEORIES about the BIG BANG ... therefore THEORIES can be flawed or COMPLETELY FALSE.

[Acriku]

Are you telling me that Stephen Gould is completely wrong in the article? Lewontin, as well?

[GUNWOUNDS]

Are you telling me that Stephen Gould is completely wrong in the article? Lewontin, as well?

Your splitting hairs....They prove my point... that a theory such as the Big bang or evolution that has no reproduceability or observable events (SUCH AS APPLES FALLING FROM A TREE) then it holds less water than one that does.  You know what i am trying to say but you want to play with semantics.

[GUNWOUNDS]

As far as your "basic biology textbooks" ... what if i show you what the renowned Biochemist Michael Behe wrote... called "Darwin's Black Box"

[Acriku]

They in no way prove your point. Let me requote, since you didn't seem to have gotten it:

Stephen J Gould:

Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts.

Lewontin:

No person who pretends to any understanding of the natural world can deny these facts any more than she or he can deny that the earth is round, rotates on its axis, and revolves around the sun.

An INTRODUCTION TO BIOLOGY textbook:

Today, nearly all biologists acknowledge that evolution is a fact. The term theory is no longer appropriate except when referring to the various models that attempt to explain how life evolves...

What: Evolution happened - FACT

How:  Natural selection - THEORY

Oh, and I only brought up a textbook excerpt because you spoke about failing Biology class. Thought it'd be ironic or just plain funny. And for your comment about atheist Professors, I don't think the two have much to do with each other.

[GUNWOUNDS]

All of your statements are ambigous....