No. That's not my argument. I said that throwing at least one six with one die twenty times had the same probability as 20 dice once.
And no-one has, to my knowledge, suggested otherwise.
It's been a while, but I don't think I was disagreeing with you about that. I wasn't seeing the connection you were making from that example to our discussion.
You were asking why I included premisses that stipulate that there is only one agent and that the agent can produce only one universe.
I said that the probabilities would be different unless both these stipulations were met. You asked me how these stipulations affected the probability and I gave the analogy of the dice game
In the dice game the other person has a greater probability of losing than winning if there is the stipulation of one die, one roll. Without both of these stipulations he has almost no chance of losing.
Same thing goes for the universe - if the chances of a life producing universe were a gazillion to one for a particular cause producing one particular universe, the odds would be different if there were a gazillion causes all producing universes, or one cause producing gazillions of universes.
Certainly. But I haven't noticed anybody here jumping to conclusions about the origin of the universe.
You are right, nobody has jumped to that conclusion in this thread.
We have been discussing the viability of various hypotheses about it. Some people apparently feel quite confident that they can dismiss the designer hypotheses as being unworthy of consideration. I don't. Seems to me just as viable a hypothesis as the others.
Currently none of them are viable as hypotheses since there is no way of falsifying or testing any of them.
Whether the intelligent designer conjecture might at some future time become viable as a hypothesis will depend upon whether there can be empirical verification of an intelligent designer. This would only be possible, I suggest, if the intelligent designer in question were able and willing to participate in the experiments.
So we can only judge the plausibility of each conjecture at the moment. But I would point out that a mechanism that can produce the same effect twice is not significantly more complex than a mechanism that can produce that effect once.
A mechanism that can produce the same effect trillions of time is not significantly more complex than a mechanism that can produce that effect once.
On the other hand a mind that can design and operate that mechanism is significantly more complex than the mechanism itself.
So if the choices were really between a cause that produces many universes and a cause that is capable of intentionally designing and executing a universe, then the former would seem to be less extravagant.
I'm sorry. I thought I answered that. I have no idea if there was time before time began in our universe. In fact, I have no idea if time had a beginning at all. It's a very weird concept to grasp.
Well exactly. We cannot assume that there is such a thing as "before" the universe, so we cannot assume that it has a precursor or that it came into existence or that any of these are even meaningful concepts.
In another thread I made the distinction between "has a beginning" and "began to exist". This is not some atheistic semantic trap, St Thomas Aquinas made the same distinction.
Therefore I am using the term "contingent" as something that might be the reason for the universe, without the implication that something which is the reason for the universe had to precede the universe
In other words it leaves open the possibility that the reason for the universe might be something non-temporal.
It does not in any way lock out the possibility of a intelligent designer.
