Philosophy Discussion Forums

Reading this thread is like reading several different languages.

It would help if you all agreed to use terms such as "order", "chaos", and "random" in a specific and singular sense. There seems to be confusion by what one person means compared to the others.

The common dictionary definition of these terms should be sufficient:

Chaos: A state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of organization or order.

Random: Proceeding, made, or occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern.

The Universe is obviously orderly and therefore to some degree nonrandom, theists and atheists argue about the extent of the randomness. If there was no reason or pattern to its organization and development, we would not be able to make any sense of it and evolution could not occur.

Anthony Edgar wrote:I can't think like an atheist for very long - it's too depressing.

I entirely agree, sadly just because something's depressing doesn't mean it isn't correct, a lot of people have died because of optimistic idiots starting wars they couldn't lose, using equipment "That couldn't possibly injure someone", planting crops that created dust bowls, or all died from fungal infections in unsuitable ground, the list is endless.

-- Updated 18 Oct 2016 12:12 to add the following --

Burning ghost wrote:Reading this thread is like reading several different languages.

It would help if you all agreed to use terms such as "order", "chaos", and "random" in a specific and singular sense. There seems to be confusion by what one person means compared to the others.

Isn't that what Philosophy's all about. We all use words to mean what we want them to. You learn so much about a person by how they manipulate language.

Burning ghost:

It would help if you all agreed to use terms such as "order", "chaos", and "random" in a specific and singular sense. There seems to be confusion by what one person means compared to the others.

Case in point:

Felix:

The common dictionary definition of these terms should be sufficient:
Chaos: A state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of organization or order.

This particular common dictionary definition may be sufficient for what you mean by chaos but it is not how the term is used in physics. As long as you ignore the meaning the term has in physics you will never understand what is being said.

Fooloso4: This particular common dictionary definition may be sufficient for what you mean by chaos but it is not how the term is used in physics.

I've heard physicists define it in various ways but equivalent to the definition of "random" that I gave: "proceeding, made, or occurring without definite aim, reason or pattern."

How do you think physicists define it?

Felix, see post #143.

Felix wrote:

Greta: Chaos not only creates order, the probabilities suggest that chaos must produce order. Throw a pair of dice for a billion years and you will get shocking, seemingly impossible sequences of repeated numbers and patterns.

That is not order proceeding from chaos, that is random variation coalescing into orderly sequence. If the universe was chaotic, there would be no dice to throw and no one to throw it.

"Random variation coalescing into orderly sequence" is a clear way of wording it, although I prefer "chaotic" to "random" because the latter has a semantic that suggests something outside of knock on effects, as though an intrinsic disorder represented by Loki in Norse mythology exists, something outside of cause and effect.

Probability ensures that order must ensue from chaos. While most accidentally orderly forms will dissipate quickly, some will persist for longer, and it is the degree of persistence of forms that accidentally appear in chaos that makes all the difference. In a sense, there is no real difference between a star billions of years old and a particle that forms and then immediately winks out of existence. It's all stuff that aggregates and dissipates, shrapnel from the big bang taking on different temporal forms over tracts of time so vast that we can only comprehend them in a weak, abstracted way.

That is why the current universe intuitively seems so unlikely to many to have formed spontaneously; we are accustomed to the kinds of events that can occur over decades, centuries and, to some extent, millennia. To our limited perspective very long periods of time produces "miracles".

Greta wrote:
Probability ensures that order must ensue from chaos.

... So the unpredictability of chaos produces the predictability of physical laws and non-life produces life. Such beliefs are based on waving the magic wand of billion of years, which I suspect - despite the "scientific" rhetoric - requires as much blind faith as a theist's belief in a Creator. Hence my motto when it comes to science: Don't trust any scientific claim unless it has a practical use, can be observed or can be verified experimentally.

Greta wrote: While most accidentally orderly forms will dissipate quickly, some will persist for longer, and it is the degree of persistence of forms that accidentally appear in chaos that makes all the difference. In a sense, there is no real difference between a star billions of years old and a particle that forms and then immediately winks out of existence. It's all stuff that aggregates and dissipates, shrapnel from the big bang taking on different temporal forms over tracts of time so vast that we can only comprehend them in a weak, abstracted way.

That is why the current universe intuitively seems so unlikely to many to have formed spontaneously; we are accustomed to the kinds of events that can occur over decades, centuries and, to some extent, millennia. To our limited perspective very long periods of time produces "miracles".

The laws of physics must have preceded any Big Bang, otherwise no Big Bang could have occurred. So I'm wondering where these laws come from. Don't laws of any kind in nature suggest Intelligent Design? Otherwise, how does cold, dead matter come up with laws?
Why should the words, "intelligence" and "design" be anathema to the word, "science"? I'd have thought they'd sit very well together.

Don't laws of any kind in nature suggest Intelligent Design?

They suggest an orderly system, but not that it was designed. But I consider it a big leap of faith to believe that order arose from chaos, because we live in an orderly universe and chaos is beyond our experience and our comprehension. Even for randomness to exist, there must first be a stable structure that allows for the interaction of random variables.

I'm reminded of an Alfred North Whitehead quip: "Scientists animated by the purpose of proving that Nature is purposeless would constitute an interesting subject for study."

Anthony Edgar wrote:

Greta wrote:
Probability ensures that order must ensue from chaos.

... So the unpredictability of chaos produces the predictability of physical laws and non-life produces life. Such beliefs are based on waving the magic wand of billion of years, which I suspect - despite the "scientific" rhetoric - requires as much blind faith as a theist's belief in a Creator. Hence my motto when it comes to science: Don't trust any scientific claim unless it has a practical use, can be observed or can be verified experimentally.

I have as little interest for Iron Age myths as you seemingly have for fossil evidence and spectroscopy. There is no need to believe in deities. The order-from-chaos scenario seems logical and obvious to me, which is why I embrace it. If reliable evidence contradicts this then I will change my views. Would you change yours?

While most accidentally orderly forms will dissipate quickly, some will persist for longer, and it is the degree of persistence of forms that accidentally appear in chaos that makes all the difference. In a sense, there is no real difference between a star billions of years old and a particle that forms and then immediately winks out of existence. It's all stuff that aggregates and dissipates, shrapnel from the big bang taking on different temporal forms over tracts of time so vast that we can only comprehend them in a weak, abstracted way.

That is why the current universe intuitively seems so unlikely to many to have formed spontaneously; we are accustomed to the kinds of events that can occur over decades, centuries and, to some extent, millennia. To our limited perspective very long periods of time produces "miracles".

Anthony Edgar wrote:The laws of physics must have preceded any Big Bang, otherwise no Big Bang could have occurred. So I'm wondering where these laws come from. Don't laws of any kind in nature suggest Intelligent Design? Otherwise, how does cold, dead matter come up with laws?
Why should the words, "intelligence" and "design" be anathema to the word, "science"? I'd have thought they'd sit very well together.

There was apparently nothing physical present before the big bang, so there could not be physical laws. Reality was in a different state, seemingly subject to its own potentials, limitations and thresholds (the term "physical laws" is misleading, but it's useful shorthand). During the Planck Epoch of the big bang the "physical laws" were not as they are today.

The problem I have with "the God solution" is that that is the end of the story. Stop thinking, stop looking, the problem's solved. Now to learn more, go read a book written by people naive enough to think bacterial pathogens were evil spirits. I would rather try to work my way logically up to a "God solution", if that is an/the answer, rather than make assumptions and work down.

It seems to me that everything forms spontaneously without intelligence being involved, aside from creative behaviour displayed by humans and to a lesser extent by other intelligent animals.

Anthony Edgar:

... So the unpredictability of chaos produces the predictability of physical laws and non-life produces life. Such beliefs are based on waving the magic wand of billion of years …

Chaos is not a thing that produces something that is not chaotic. Chaos is a state of a dynamic system about which we cannot make reliable predictions of outcome. When we are talking about the development of the universe we are, of course, talking about billions of years, but many chaotic states and the transition to stable states are observable in real time.

The laws of physics must have preceded any Big Bang, otherwise no Big Bang could have occurred. So I'm wondering where these laws come from. Don't laws of any kind in nature suggest Intelligent Design?

That is an open question. It may be that the laws are merely descriptive of the behavior of matter, energy, fields, etc. The laws of physics may also have been created by the conditions at the beginning. This is why those who support the possibility of a multiverse say that in other universes there may be different laws.

Felix:

chaos is beyond our experience and our comprehension.

See the wiki article “Chaos Theory”. There are many systems in our experience that are chaotic and it is fully within our comprehension despite the fact that we cannot make precise predictions.

Fooloso4: There are many systems in our experience that are chaotic and it is fully within our comprehension despite the fact that we cannot make precise predictions.

If they are systems, they possess some order or stability, they are not absolutely chaotic, merely disorderly. True chaos (not the physicists' transcript of it) is by definition incomprehensible to us. Everything we know is the product of an orderly Universe and yet people assert that it is all the offspring of happenstance.

Anthony Edgar wrote:The laws of physics must have preceded any Big Bang, otherwise no Big Bang could have occurred.

There are no laws of physics and physicists who use this term are lazy and stupid, there are only those explanations which most consistently fit the observed data.

Anthony Edgar wrote:Don't laws of any kind suggest Intelligent Design? Otherwise, how does cold, dead matter come up with laws?

Firstly see above, but 'invariable interpretations of data that repeat with massively high frequencies' don't 'suggest' anything, humans may infer from such data that....

Anthony Edgar wrote:Why should the words, "intelligence" and "design" be anathema to the word, "science"? I'd have thought they'd sit well together.

Science involves explaining the evidence, the term 'intelligent design' implies a designer and so far most scientists can't find any evidence of same; further it's actually quite easy to find evidence that any designer isn't that intelligent, look up squid eyes and mammal eyes and ask yourself if we are the last species to be designed why is the squid eye so well designed and the human eye back to front.

Felix:

If they are systems, they possess some order or stability, they are not absolutely chaotic, merely disorderly. True chaos (not the physicists' transcript of it) is by definition incomprehensible to us.

This is like saying a river has no banks because there is no money in them and true banks by definition have money in them.

This is like saying a river has no banks because there is no money in them and true banks by definition have money in them.

No, more like saying: a river that has no banks is not a river or a system that has no organization is not a system. You cannot catch chaos in a net.

the squid eye so well designed and the human eye back to front.

The squid eye is good for seeing underwater but not so good for seeing in the open air and the opposite is true of the human eye. Gaining one biological advantage often requires relinquishing another one.