Probability means that out of a number of events each has the same likelihood of happening. But how can we say they are all equally likely? How can we know that?

The problem with randomness is we don't have a rigorous definition of it. Also, if 100 events have an equal probability of happening they are said to be random but one of them does happen and there must be a reason for that. It may be that randomness is simply a subjective human concept.

What is the prior probability that you are you, and sitting in this particular room with its particular arrangement of stuff? What are the odds that there's any stuff at all? The odds are virtually zero. Yet here you are. — fishfry

It seems everything that happens in human life is highly unlikely - what are the chances of you and all the people in the cinema being there? But, as you say, you are all there!

The universe exists within God. Physical (space)time is a physical object just like a chair or table except it has an extra dimension. 'Before time' is not important. What is important is the fact that time is a property of existence.

God is supernatural. Please don't defile him by equating Him with the profane. — god must be atheist

Supernatural only in the sense that we define what is natural. What is possible for God is natural for God.

I find no unintelligibility {lack of logic or ill logic} about "god is capable of creating a stone he can't lift" if it comes to his power of creation. I find no unintelligibility {i.e. ill logic} about "God is capable of lifting a stone he had created" if it comes to his power of lifting. — god must be atheist

If God creates a stone He cannot lift that does not mean God is not omnipotent it means that there is no natural way to lift the stone. A strong man can create a pile of stones he cannot lift but that does not mean he is not strong. Omnipotence means all that is possible, all that is possible in God's nature. No natural possibilities exist outside God.

Omnipotent does not mean being able to do illogical things. It means God is capable of doing everything that is naturally and logically possible. It is not possible to make mankind free and not free at the same time.

The world we experience is subjective and this subjectivity has been used to create the most preposterous philosophies claiming that the world is not really there at all. What matters here is if our subjective experience faithfully relates something of the objective pattern 'out there'. An example would be colour. We see different colours and these colours faithfully inform us of the electromagnetic pattern out there.

I think the limit of finitude is consciousness, but consciousness grows and can ultimately encompass the absolute.

I agree with Wittgenstein in the sense that the order of the mind is the order of the objective world. Our ability to reason is reflected in the fact that the world is objectively ordered: in our minds there is mathematics and mathemics, in the Platonic sense, seems to be also out there in reality.

But all of these issue from the origin, which is an agency of human consciousness. — Constance

That brings us to the question of whether there is an objective source 'out there' that maps into our consciousness.

there are periods (between lives) that we're not conscious — TheMadFool

Can you be sure we are not conscious in these times? We are conscious in dreams but don't generally remember.

time is not "out there" but in here, experience. Einstein knew this very well having read Kant when he was 13 or so. — Constance

It seems to me that there are many kinds of time. The most obvious is physical time. Another is mental time. Also mathematical time. Mathematics IS time of we define time as the relationship between objects in 'space'. There can be mathematical objects in abstract spaces. Logic is also time. Any order is time of one kind or another.

which is the essence of the ethical prohibition NOT to inflict it on others, or yourself. — Constance

For me the cornerstone of morality is the sacredness of life. One should not harm life because it is sacred (humanists - replace sacred with worthy, valuable, etc)

eternity is not some infinite succession of moments, but rather the absence of time — Constance

Physical time is a physical object just like a chair or table except it has an extra dimension. If physical objects disappear so will physical time. An analogy would be an oak tree and the molecules that make it. If the molecules that make it dissolve into atoms, the oak tree will evaporate and disappear.

the entire story of ethics and the self, rides on the simpler notion of causality. — TheMadFool

It seems that the self is bound up with consciousness. We are only a self in terms of consciousness which is our relationship with the world.

Is there nothing at all that IS the river? — Constance

Perhaps we have a self but it isn't much if it is not in a relationship to something. The ever changing river is the relationship between us and the world. That seems to be what the self is.

the self, the genuine self "behind" the empirically constructed self, if affirmed through ethics, that is, metaethics, the very thing Mackie denies. — Constance

It seems to me that the self - or a large part of it - is our relationship with the world. It is ever changing - you can't step into the same river twice...

As is often the case a correlates with b but there is a hidden variable x that is unknown, such that
x -> a -> b
or
x -> b
or
x -> a and x -> b

These hidden variables or factors can be the cause of much confusion.

I wouldn’t call “there is nothing to stop it” “necessary”. I’d just say “there is nothing to stop it”. “Necessary” usually means that there is a reason it must happen. Which is different from “there is no reason it wouldn’t happen”. — khaled

Alternatively you could say it necessarily exists because it exists. It could not have been otherwise because it is what it is and there is nothing else preceding it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

Thanks. An existence that is not contingent on a previous state is necessary in the sense that there is nothing to stop it from existing. It simply is.

A starting point in time is not really an issue. What matters is that something must necessarily exist if something contingent is to exist; an oak tree is contingent because cells, molecules and atoms must exist if the oak tree is to exist. The question here is 'What is necessary existence?'

The necessary existence - that precedes all other things - is existence itself. It is not something that has the property 'existence'. It is existence itself because existence is not a property. Existence precedes all other contingent things and they inherit their existence from the necessary existence that is.

Very well. The difference between walking and doubting is that walking is an action performed outside of my brain whereas doubting is an action performed not only inside of my brain but performed by my brain.

But if I should say, "I doubt, therefore I am" would that not prove that I exist? — Ken Edwards

Walking is the same in this context as thinking because he cannot know he walks unless the knows - ie thinks - he walks. Even if he is not walking he thinks he walks therefore he thinks therefore...

So, I am interested in other people's thoughts on the question of what becomes of consciousness at death? — Jack Cummins

What happens a person's consciousness when they leave university? Not much. University is a concept or a context designed to bring about certain ends; educate the student for further things. Likewise with human life. As matter is a concept, rather than a substance, so is human life a concept - a physical, biological, social context and concept. (Matter is an idea, not a substance)

I believe that when the spirit leaves this university/concept/physical domain, it continues on.

You know this how? — Isaac

Anything else is illogical. Nothingness cannot have anything in it. Nothingness is not even an 'it'. If there is something happening in nothingness, there is something, not nothingness. Nothingness cannot have potency because potency is something.

Secondly, how can Ex nihilo nihil fit possibly be scientifically satisfying? We've just established that there are things the origin of which you don't know, so what is satisfying about a theory the postulates nothing comes from nothing? — Isaac

If something comes from nothing you have to begin with nothing. And for nothing to become something there must be an impulse within nothing. But nothing with potency or an internal catalyst or impulse, is not nothing because there is already something in it.

Perhaps everything that can be, is. Because there is nothing to stop it. Therefore both nothingness and existence are possible and existence wins out because it is the only other option and there is nothing to stop it from being.

while physical spacetime as you call it is an emergent property of complex wave combinations as generated by the interaction of quantum fields, on some scales giving rise to what we recognize as shape (equilibrated superpositions?) and relative motion. Then what are waves an emergent property of? — Enrique

Good question. It is possible to dismantle matter so that you are left with energy. Is it possible to dismantle energy and find a deeper energy? And dismantle that to reach an even deeper energy? But this process cannot go on without end, it cannot be 'turtles all the way down'. Some ultimate existence must be reached. This substance is existence; ie that which always is.

The relationship, what exactly does that mean? There is always change in an 'event'. Unless by 'relationship' you are referring to the way in which molecules interact or bind together, but even then there is no way for them to bind without some kind of change taking place, unless you are referring to a timeless Universe in which those molecules have been binded together since the beginning of time. — Justin Peterson

Change is evidence of time but time is more than change, it is the mathematical description of change. In Relativity this description is the geometry of spacetime. Time is the way change happens. In quantum spacetime change seems to happen according to a different geometry. The mathematics of how change happens in quantum spacetime is different from the mathematics of physical spacetime, so we have two spacetimes.

1. If human is inherently good, then evil won’t exist.
2. Evil does exist.
3. Therefore, it is not the case that human is inherently good. (1, 2 MT) — Isabel Hu

But some humans are good.
God is creating a situation where 'all will be well and all manner of things will be well'. But in order to do this creation must reject evil of its own free will.

The question is 'how does God know what we will do at T2?' He knows because that is what we chose to do. That is, God's knowledge is a result of our actions, not vice versa.

But how does any of this make it any more likely that the being exists? In general, to experience something by sight is to prove that it exists, but God cannot be experienced in this manner, or any other manner for that matter. I.E. God cannot be heard, touched, smelled, etc. so by this logic no human could truly have experienced God sensorily in spite of their claims. — Maureen

The senses are not the only means to knowledge. The mind is conscious. Religion is only an interpretation of God. Maybe many people were aware of God before religion, as we understand it, evolved.

3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime...
$P_{1}:$ all odd numbers greater than 1 are prime.
3 x 5 = 15 which is composite.
$\neg P_{1}:$ At least one odd number is composite.
$P_{2}:$ Not all odd numbers are prime.
$\neg P_{1}$ forces the positive statement $P_{2}$

I don't quite get you there...Mind elaborating a bit? — TheMadFool

Reductio Absurdum makes a conjecture and follows that conjecture through until a contradiction is reached. The negation of the conjecture can then make a positive statement.

If I had asserted ~E first and then E, the same process is involved, only the propositions are now switched. — TheMadFool

Yes. See also Reductio Absurdum as a (dis)proof.

erasing the words "God exists" from the blank space and we return to:(..........), the blank space we started with. — TheMadFool

Negation can be a positive statement, not just a blank. If I say X is an integer and X is not even I am not saying nothing about X, I am saying it must be odd. Let E = even and O = odd.
$\neg E = O$ which is saying X is odd, a positive statement.

Okay, so then how would you define what an 'event' is? — Justin Peterson

In physical time it is the relationship between physical objects in space.

Well let me ask you this, do you deny that time is man made? — Justin Peterson

Yes. There is a difference between our subjective experience of time and time as it is objectively. Time is the geometry of events (this is what Relativity describes).

Also would you agree that time is relative, not even in the same way previously mentioned as being the transfer of information, but instead in the way that ten minutes can seem like an eternity to somebody pulsing with epinephrine, — Justin Peterson

Time as a subjective experience can be relative. Time in the mind is not the same as physical time. Confusing physical time with our experience of time is a recipe for confusion because our consciousness can be 'locked on' to physical time or it can drift away into mental time which is not the same thing.

And so I come back to my argument that heat and time coexist together, and that one cannot exist without the other. — Justin Peterson

Maybe, but I don't believe that entropy determines time. Just because the arrow of entropy and the arrow of time point in the same direction, does not mean they are the same thing.

If the greatest common divisor of a and b is 1 and ab is a square, both a and b are squares.
With the same restrictions, if $ab^2 = c^2, a$ is a square.

The set of all sets that do contain themselves likewise does not require that a set contain and not contain itself. It would have merely all the individuals in addition to their groupings. — Gregory

The 'set' of all sets...is a contradiction since it is not a set. But it can be an infinite collection of sets. The paradox is superficial and only exists because it is assumed that this set exists when it doesn't.

It does use math to describe the HOW+WHAT of a 3D Reality we are all part of.
Would agree /disagree Yes\No — Chris1952Engineer

Up to a point. Science can only show basic primitive relations. It cannot address higher or more sophisticated questions like meaning and consciousness etc.