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I agree, but I'm also not asking for certainty. I'm asking what would you expect to observe under the assumption that your model is true that makes it different (and mutually exclusive) from prevailing physics. The reason I ask is because for every piece of evidence that your model claims to exclusively expect, you must downgrade the probability that your God model is true if you should fail to see such evidence. That's really how science works.

Your point about physics theories are well taken (though I'm not versed in them enough to comment specifically) but I do take issue with this specific bit: Not being able to observe something should not mean a lack of evidence Evidence, by definition, comes through observation (either directly or through instruments). From how I understand it, theoretical physics can be supported by how closely the model can fit the available evidence. In other words, while something like string theory has been difficult to test experimentally, the models were not simply pulled out of thin air (or physicist asses). They have support in scientific literature precisely because the models can explain the available observational evidence. And they're falsifiable in the sense that, well one day maybe the technology exists to do an experiment or make observations we currently can't. However, you claim that God is inherently impossible to observe. Therefore, your hypothesis or model of God is impossible to test, since there is no evidence which can confirm or deny the model. The model must be able to predict our observations and the best available evidence. It must both explain and rule out alternative explanations. I don't see how your original post does that. I admit to not being a physicist, but I don't think that changes how basic science works.

Ah I think I finally see what you're saying. You're still arguing from 'lack of evidence' here but you've made a key error. In probability theory, absence of evidence IS evidence (though not proof) of absence. While its true that there are real causes which refuse to admit evidence of that cause, the probability of observing evidence of that cause is far less likely if that cause doesn't exist. Therefore, continued lack of observation makes it less likely that the cause doesn't exist. In formal terms: if P(G|E) > P(G) (if the probability of God existing is greater given the condition of observing Evidence - which is true) then P(G|~E) < P(G) The probability that god exists given absence of evidence decreases that probability. In probability there's this little thing called 'conservation of probability.' Since observing evidence must increase our prior belief/estimate about the hypothesis (God exists) observing no evidence must equally cause us to downgrade that belief. The confusion arises, I think, because observing strong, powerful evidence increases that probability estimate swiftly and drastically, while observing no evidence decreases that estimate slowly and in smaller increments.

I'm glad somebody brought this up, because I've wondered the same thing. Even people who subscribe to alt/herbal medicine seem surprised when I've told them to technical definition of 'homeopathic'

He might be able to get away with this with a clever intelligent designer.

If you can't provide an estimate for the probability that god exists, how can you possibly reject claims like this: I interpret this to mean that you believe the existence of god is "probable" (since you rejected iNow's argument that his existence is improbable). Further, since you've detailed the scientific details of a hypothetical God, I take that to reinforce that you believe God's existence is probable. The very title of this thread is "Could there be a God?" But, when I ask you to be explicit and semi-quantitative about this very same question, all the sudden you are unable to answer? I take this to mean that you are unable or unwilling to evaluate the likelihood of your own claims in the original post.

I'm asking you to give an estimate, not a measured statistic. As in, to the best of your knowledge and incorporating your beliefs and observations, how likely do you believe that God exists. And, again, what is your probability estimate that there are invisible lawn gnomes trying eating my face? The reason I give that this thread should be flagged is not because you don't have the answer to life, the universe and everything, but that you have not responded directly to any post made on this thread.

Study is not terribly convincing, given most animals never [have] come into contact with acryllic glass and the above hypothesis (which went untested... ?)

ok, so problem solved... you're just incomprehensible. Seriously, this isn't meant as an ad hom in the sense that your argument should be rejected because you, as a person, are flawed. But your argument is just not clear. Your language is vague and muddled and your grasp of physics seems to be confused at best (in fact, physicists have made very careful inferences about the universe at the beginning of time - though that's off topic) If there's a logical flow, rhyme or reason to your arguments, I cannot detect it. You've responded negatively to other members claims that the existence of God is "improbable" but when asked to clarify your exact position on what your own estimate about the existence of God is, you've completely avoided the question. To me, this indicates that you either have no clear position on the subject (and then why make this thread?) or you have not [or are not willing or able to] think this question out clearly. I ask you one last time: please clarify what your position is. What do you think the probability that God exists? Clearly, you don't think the answer is somewhere 'more likely than "improbable"', so I ask, what evidence do you have that God does exist. You seem to like to argue from lack of evidence so: what is your probability estimate that there are invisible lawn gnomes trying eating my face? If you fail to answer these questions clearly and succinctly or if you attempt to further obfuscate, I'll certainly be flagging this thread for mod review (I'd do it myself but I'm obviously no longer impartial)

I'm not sure if its just 2:30AM, if english isn't your first language or if you're just naturally incomprehensible, but this is how I'm reading your statement. you don't want to give an estimate about God existing because either: 1) the universe as it exists today is just one of many highly improbable possibilities that we can observe through physics 2) the universe as it exists today was pre-ordained. Point 1 makes sense and is pretty much what I and others have said. Point 2 makes little sense, but I'm just assuming that by "high potential" you mean god directing the universe's creation. This point is pretty much what I'm asking you to estimate.

You've managed to both avoid the question and be redundant. The probability that there is no god is simply 1 - p(God exists). Please give an actual answer. if you're saying that the probability that God exists is less that [math] \tfrac{1}{10^{40,000}} [/math], then I agree (though even that's higher than what I'd say). The only question is why you wouldn't consider this as being highly improbable. This number is far below the precision of most modern computers and will default to exactly zero for any calculation.

didn't you get cultures done to confirm the bacterial diagnosis? Anyway, its difficult to tell from symptoms alone what the microbial source could be (you need a more discriminating test). Just an opinion from a non-medical professional, if its been two weeks and its not getting better confirming/IDing the source might benefit you by informing treatment options. OTOH, maybe 2+ weeks is not unusual for pink eye. How have other members of your family fared?

And my point was that we know women wear bras. We can observe bras. We can observe them in different colors. We can observe women with no bras. What can you observe about God? what's your definition of im/probable? As in, what is your probability estimate that god exists. Give an precise number between 0 and 1 (or a range).

So you DO get it! In science, we don't draw conclusions about what we don't or can't observe. oh... so you don't get it. As iNow said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Lack of evidence allows you to draw no conclusions about those claims. So yes, the probability that there is a God is low PRECISELY because there is no evidence. But what claim are you making about Madonna's bra? That the color was red? The thing is, even if you can't observe Madonna's bra, anyone who's been to a department store knows that red bra's exist. In fact, you could even count the frequency of red bras divided by total bras for a rough probability estimate that Madonna's bra is red (under the assumption that she picks her bra at random). It would be a reasonable estimate, but only because its an estimate based on observations and reasonable assumptions. In order to make a similar estimate about the probability that God exists you'd have to observe multiple universes and calculate the relative frequency at which God exists in all observable universes. I don't think this study would be funded by the NSF.

its getting there though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Tennessee_Anthropological_Research_Facility And note that this would have been especially helpful for mammals lower on the evolutionary food chain, since most animals can't grip nearly as well as humans can.

how about at the molecular level? ie - something other than DNA encodes cellular instructions, but through convergent evolution we both become humanoid.

Or to be symbolic about it: p(lawn gnomes) ≈ 0. slightly above 0 is "could" but still pretty much zero.

This seems to be a huge problem in financial markets, as I see it. Day trading has been shown, statistically, to come down to random chance for most buys (as in, people who have reason x, y or z to buy stock tend not to do better than random chance would expect). But of course since you have a large number of people playing the markets, there's a distribution of successes. The winners are seen to be geniuses or have special insight and the losers are ignored. This is a pretty strong observational filter, where winners are viewed as especially smart and knowledgeable, even though its purely observation bias. Of course, this doesn't hold for all financial decisions, but enough to be worrisome.

10 minutes seems like a high threshold, though I guess private messaging is not used much?

Ah now its obvious. I was performing this calculation in R... apparently, a single column/row subset of a matrix in R is treated as a vector, not a single-entry matrix. So the transpose operation failed. Hence the confusion. Thanks!

Need help on a problem and I think there's some notation issues I'm having: [math] A=\sum _{i}^{r}\lambda _{i}\bold{u_{i}v_{i}}^{T} [/math] where A is a nxr matrix with (left and right) singular vectors v_1... v_r, u_1...u_r & lambda are singular values How does summation work in this case? Each product of rank-1 matrices results in a vector which, when summed, should result in a vector. But A is a matrix, so I feel like I must be missing something very simple about matrix addition.

The links seem legit so I'm letting them stand. Note that this is for high school/secondary level, but looks like it could be fun!

Are profits taxed or are revenues?

Where are you going to go? Look at the faculty pages of microbiology department websites, though its probably a mistake to narrow your focus to one pathogen and one pathway. Many great school might vary by program and locking yourself into one investigator before getting accepted into a program is inadvisable. Look instead for micro programs with strong molecular pathogenesis research.

Here's the other side of the coin coming out in a new book: Science Left Behind: Feel-Good Fallacies and the Rise of the Anti-Scientific Left