My Apple Challenge

[Chris81]

You know your friend better than I do, Chris.

Are you asking me to guess for you?

Or is this your way of saying, "I don't know, but I'm too proud to admit it"?

I'm not trying to be mean here, but I'm beginning to think you're just trying to rile me up with nonsense.

You guys wonder why you don't understand anything; this thread is a perfect example.

You guys either joke, ridicule or insult -- then wonder why you don't understand anything.

Oh, well -- you've accomplished what I think you came here to do, and that's make friends with my antagonists at my expense.

So have a nice day with your new friends, and I pray you can show them the Light in a way that I am unable to do.

What are you talking about? In my previous post I was being completely serious. The evidence that I would use to convince my friend that you had created the apple, would be completely dependent on the amount of evidence that he would need to be convinced of the reality of the event. As I said he may need no evidence, some evidence, a lot of evidence, or there may be no amount of evidence that would convince my friend that you created the apple. I provided four hypothetical situations in which I provide evidence to my friend to convince them of the event.

Maybe the better question is if you created the apple in the palm of the hand of a friend that I greatly trust, what evidence would I need to be convinced of the event. For me personally I probably would be satisfied with both my friend relaying the account of the event of you creating apple and the actual video footage. I might still have some doubts but I think that I would be reasonably convinced that you indeed created the apple. All doubts may be removed if I also had some scientific data of some sort to further provide evidence of the reality of the event but this is not necessary. Rest assured that I and many other people could be convinced of the event of you creating the apple.

 

[AV1611VET]

What are you talking about? In my previous post I was being completely serious. The evidence that I would use to convince my friend that you had created the apple, would be completely dependent on the amount of evidence that he would need to be convinced of the reality of the event. As I said he may need no evidence, some evidence, a lot of evidence, or there may be no amount of evidence that would convince my friend that you created the apple. I provided four hypothetical situations in which I provide evidence to my friend to convince them of the event.

Maybe the better question is if you created the apple in the palm of the hand of a friend that I greatly trust, what evidence would I need to be convinced of the event. For me personally I probably would be satisfied with both my friend relaying the account of the event of you creating apple and the actual video footage. I might still have some doubts but I think that I would be reasonably convinced that you indeed created the apple. All doubts may be removed if I also had some scientific data of some sort to further provide evidence of the reality of the event but this is not necessary. Rest assured that I and many other people could be convinced of the event of you creating the apple.

Have a good day, Chris -- I'm not going to dignify this with a response.

You really need to read through this thread, where I addressed videos of the event, etc.

Unfortunately, yakkers have turned this extremely simple thought experiment into a convoluted mess in their attempts to add stuff to the OP that is clearly not there.

My apologies if I misjudged you, but I'm not going to pwn each point you made every time a newbie shows up.

I don't need "four hypothetical situations" as an answer.

I want what you would provide as evidence to your friend.

That's all I'm asking for.

 

[Chris81]

Have a good day, Chris -- I'm not going to dignify this with a response.

You really need to read through this thread, where I addressed videos of the event, etc.

Unfortunately, yakkers have turned this extremely simple thought experiment into a convoluted mess in their attempts to add stuff to the OP that is clearly not there.

My apologies if I misjudged you, but I'm not going to pwn each point you made every time a newbie shows up.

I don't need "four hypothetical situations" as an answer.

I want what you would provide as evidence to your friend.

That's all I'm asking for.

I apologize if I have upset you, I do admit that my first post was done as a joke. I did try to respond to the OP and I was not aware that there were any additional criteria that was established earlier in this thread.

By giving an admittedly hypothetical situation, I can only assume that it would be appropriate that I give hypothetical answers. If you are getting convoluted answers it is likely because you OP presents a situation that does not lend itself to a simple answer.

Admittedly I only read through a few pages of this thread before I decided to post, so I am coming into this discussion a bit blind. I will spend so time reading through the previous posts, I will see if there is anything I can contribute to this thread.

I apologize for starting off on the wrong foot and hope that you do receive some answers to your OP that you find meaningful and intellectually satisfying.

 

[AV1611VET]

I apologize if I have upset you, I do admit that my first post was done as a joke.

Thank you, my friend!

I too need to get the chip off my shoulder.

Sorry for being a jerk!

God bless!

 

[sandwiches]

Hi, Chris -- nice to meet you --

Um ... Chris?

Here's the first line of my OP:

Wondering if I did it or not is not an option.

This is a challenge -- a hypothetical.

For the sake of multiple threads, we are to assume that I'm being honest here.

It's not a trick question.

You keep nagging people not to add or remove anything to the OP but you keep adding things like the assumption that I would be convinced that you created the apple ex nihilo. It's not in the OP. So, without adding anything to it, the answer to your question based on the OP AS IS, then the only answer is: "mu." I WOULDN'T try to convince my friend that you created anything ex nihilo because your OP doesn't state that you showed me any evidence that you did.

 

[driewerf]

You keep nagging people not to add or remove anything to the OP but you keep adding things like the assumption that I would be convinced that you created the apple ex nihilo. It's not in the OP. So, without adding anything to it, the answer to your question based on the OP AS IS, then the only answer is: "mu." I WOULDN'T try to convince my friend that you created anything ex nihilo because your OP doesn't state that you showed me any evidence that you did.

MU?

MU, the first and only time I was confronted with mu was while reading Gödel, Escher, Bach.

 

[Freodin]

Let me start this post with a little rant...

I have always been interested in debates and making a convincing argument. In fact, that was the very reason why I am here on this board. I found out early that I get rather angry with reading apologetic material of any kind, because there is just no way to debate about it. You cannot reach the author of a book, to ask him a question or present an objection to his arguments. You just cannot argue with a book!
So I was rather happy to discover the Internet, and the possibility to enter a direct debate about these points, with the very people who made them.
That was several years ago, and in the meantime I had to learn that it is no enough to have a space where you can meet the apologets, to ask and object. They have to be willing to talk back as well. They have to willing to enter a communication. They have to be ABLE to enter a communication.

The internet makes it easy to ask questions and debate. Sadly, the internet also makes it easy to ignore questions and drop out of a debate.

Unfortunately, yakkers have turned this extremely simple thought experiment into a convoluted mess in their attempts to add stuff to the OP that is clearly not there.
...

I want what you would provide as evidence to your friend.

That's all I'm asking for.

If that is all you are asking for, then you have got your answer in my last post (#370): I use the evidence that is there.

Now I know that you will ask: "What evidence?".... and I must answer that with "What apple?".

You have a hypothetical apple. I present hypothetical evidence. There is no way to answer your question in a more "as is written" way.

Now the ball is in your field again. Will you keep on asking for specifics? Just exactly what evidence we would use? Hey, that is invalid! You would be making my answer into a convoluted mess in your attempt to add stuff to my answer that is clearly not there.

So this is where it (should) end: you present a hypothetical situation, I present a hypothetical answer.

But of course there is no answer that you are unable to ignore, is there?

 

[AV1611VET]

Will you keep on asking for specifics?

No -- I'm choosing not to respond to you.

 

[Febble]

I create an apple ex nihilo into the palm of your hand.

What evidence would you use to convince your friend I did this?

OK, I'll rise to the challenge.

I don't think there is any evidence I could use to convince my friend. I could arrange, maybe to take a video, but that wouldn't be very convincing. Conjurors regularly appear to create rabbits ex nihilo out of hats, and taking a video isn't going to convince anyone that they really did.

We could however, make theories about how you did it. However, for the theory to be anything more than speculation, we'd have to test them. A theory that does not generate a testable hypothesis isn't much use.

The best thing, of course, would be if you could repeat the exercise, under stringent experimental conditions (conditions set up to test the hypotheses).

However, some events are one-offs. For those, we have to figure out predictions that flow from our theory. That's how the theory of the Big Bang is tested, for example. We can't predict more Big Bangs, but we can predict what we will find if the Big Bang theory is true.

 

[AV1611VET]

OK, I'll rise to the challenge.

I don't think there is any evidence I could use to convince my friend.

Thank you for restoring some integrity to this thread --

This apple challenge came to me one night when I prayed to God and asked for some kind of thought experiment I could use, in which I could get them to admit that creatio ex nihilo leaves no evidence or audit trail behind.

It was at a time when people were continually asking for evidence of the creation of the earth and universe, and no one could come up with anything.

I use this thread to "q.v." people to, when I see them asking or demanding evidence of the creation of the earth.

 

[Febble]

You are absolutely right, AV1611VET. And that is the reason why the people who complain that scientists have "materialistic presuppositions" are missing the entire point of science. God cannot, by definition, by found by scientific methods, not because scientists are incorrigible atheists who refuse to countenance supernatural explanations, but because supernatural events, are, by definition, invisible to scientific methods.

If we found scientific evidence for God, we would merely have found evidence that God wasn't a god, merely a bit of the universe we hadn't previously known about, a vast super-alien in whose computer matrix we think we exist.

If God exists, s/he can't be found by science. Therefore science cannot either prove or disprove God.

 

[AV1611VET]

If God exists, s/he can't be found by science. Therefore science cannot either prove or disprove God.

I didn't say God, I said the earth & universe.

However, I'm trying to start with a simple apple here, and if I can't get them to admit to an apple, I'm certainly not going to get them to admit to the earth.

But that's not going to stop me from qv'ing to this thread as appropriate.

 

[Febble]

I didn't say God, I said the earth & universe.

But I said God

I'm not ruling out a testable scientific model that could account for ex nihilo creation, in which case, as I said, it wouldn't be evidence for God, merely of ex nihilo creation. But I certainly don't have one for an apple, nor any evidence that any ex nihilo apple creation occurred, of course.

However, I'm trying to start with a simple apple here, and if I can't get them to admit to an apple, I'm certainly not going to get them to admit to the earth.

But that's not going to stop me from qv'ing to this thread as appropriate.

No reason why it should

 

[Freodin]

OK, I'll rise to the challenge.

I don't think there is any evidence I could use to convince my friend.

I think you are making a major mistake here.

Allow me to introduce a challenge of my own, in best AV tradition. I know I´ll never get him to respond to such a post, but perhaps you might... and might see where you are wrong.


I pick an apple from a nearby tree and place it into your palm.

What evidence would you use to convince your friend I did that?

 

[Febble]

I think you are making a major mistake here.

Allow me to introduce a challenge of my own, in best AV tradition. I know I´ll never get him to respond to such a post, but perhaps you might... and might see where you are wrong.


I pick an apple from a nearby tree and place it into your palm.

What evidence would you use to convince your friend I did that?

I would tell her.

It's not an extraordinary claim, so there is no reason for my friend to require extraordinary evidence.

However, if my friend suspected, finding me with an apple in my hand from my neighbour's tree, that I had picked it myself, and was trying to put the blame on you, then I'd have to find some supporting evidence. I'd certainly ask you to back me up. If you did, then I expect my friend would be reasonably convinced.

The important point, it seems to me, is that in science we don't prove anything (nor, in fact, pace Popper, falsify). We fit models to data. But some datapoints will always remain not-fully-explained, and certain events will remain unrecoverable (that follows from the 2nd law of thermodynamics ) - what Dennett calls "historically inert" i.e. evidence to distinguish between alternative hypotheses is simply no longer available.

 

[Freodin]

The important point, it seems to me, is that in science we don't prove anything (nor, in fact, pace Popper, falsify). We fit models to data.

I agree, that is an important point. But that, contrary to what AV wants us to believe here, is not what his challenge is aimed at. Here we have neither model nor data. What we have is fiction. Fictive apples, created by a fictive method.

So based on what do you exclude any kind of evidence being left by that fictive method?

The only reasonable answer to his challenge is "I don´t know. Give us the data, so that we can look for some."

But some datapoints will always remain not-fully-explained, and certain events will remain unrecoverable (that follows from the 2nd law of thermodynamics ) - what Dennett calls "historically inert" i.e. evidence to distinguish between alternative hypotheses is simply no longer available.

I agree again. But here also we have knowledge of "evidence". We know what we would look for... it is only that we are kept from looking. That again does not enable us to state that such evidence did not exist at all.

Consider the following (fictive) example - a murder case done back in 1610. A man is poisoned. He has taken the poison in a drink, given to him by his last visitor. The two glasses were still standing before him on the table. What kind of evidence would an investigator use to find the murderer?
We - today - could say: we have a glass! Look for fingerprints! But no one would have thought of that in 1610. Not only wasn´t there the technology to take and compare fingerprints - there wasn´t even the notion that a pattern in the skin could identify a person. An investigator in 1610 could have stated "I don´t think that there is any evidence."... and he would be wrong.
Now, 400 years later, the glasses are long smashed, potential prints wiped away, even a recognizable pattern no longer having a comparision to the potential murderers. The evidence was lost. Does that mean that it never existed?

There can be no admittance as AV wants to have it without such reasonings. There can be no "scientific answer", as he requests it, without such notions.

 

[Febble]

I agree, that is an important point. But that, contrary to what AV wants us to believe here, is not what his challenge is aimed at. Here we have neither model nor data. What we have is fiction. Fictive apples, created by a fictive method.

So based on what do you exclude any kind of evidence being left by that fictive method?

The only reasonable answer to his challenge is "I don´t know. Give us the data, so that we can look for some."

But I think that's his point, isn't it? That ex nihilo creation of an apple (obviously it has to be a counterfactual), even if witnessed directly, could not be verified by any scientific method, precisely because of the paucity of (postulated) data. There would be no trace of the apple's antecedents, because, by definition, there weren't any. So the only interrogateable evidence is the reports of the witnesses, and no way of differentiating the ex nihilo hypothesis from the clever conjuring trick hypothesis.

I agree again. But here also we have knowledge of "evidence". We know what we would look for... it is only that we are kept from looking. That again does not enable us to state that such evidence did not exist at all.

Well, the trouble is that while absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, it isn't evidence for presence either. There is no null hypothesis against which to test your ex nihilo hypothesis

Consider the following (fictive) example - a murder case done back in 1695. A man is poisoned. He has taken the poison in a drink, given to him by his last visitor. The two glasses were still standing before him on the table. What kind of evidence would an investigator use to find the murderer?
We - today - could say: we have a glass! Look for fingerprints! But no one would have thought of that in 1690. Not only wasn´t there the technology to take and compare fingerprints - there wasn´t even the notion that a pattern in the skin could identify a person. An investigator in 1690 could have stated "I don´t think that there is any evidence."... and he would be wrong.
Now, 320 years later, the glasses are long smashed, potential prints wiped away, even a recognizable pattern no longer having a comparision to the potential murderers. The evidence was lost. Does that mean that it never existed?

No indeed. That's why AV is right We cannot rule out an alternative to the ex nihilo hypothesis, and therefore we cannot convince anyone that the apple was created ex nihilo.

There can be no admittance as AV wants to have it without such reasonings. There can be no "scientific answer", as he requests it, without such notions.

Isn't that what he's saying? That there can be no scientific answer to the question "was this an ex nihilo creation?" if, in fact, it was?

 

[Freodin]

But I think that's his point, isn't it? That ex nihilo creation of an apple (obviously it has to be a counterfactual), even if witnessed directly, could not be verified by any scientific method, precisely because of the paucity of (postulated) data. There would be no trace of the apple's antecedents, because, by definition, there weren't any.

If it just were that way....! No, consider, if you found an apple without any trace of antecedents (or any other evidence of having come into existence in an 'ordinary' way), this would in itself be evidence for ex-nihilo-creation. So in order to keep to his claim that there is no evidence, he deliberately needs to get rid of evidence.

So the only interrogateable evidence is the reports of the witnesses, and no way of differentiating the ex nihilo hypothesis from the clever conjuring trick hypothesis.

And said need of 'manipulating' the evidence leads to this: he needs to invent evidence that exists and evidence that does not exist. The creation of his example-apple is fictive. It has not happened. But in fiction, he controls the setting. The witness 'exists". Differences from other apples 'do not exist'.
But fiction is not data.

Well, the trouble is that while absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, it isn't evidence for presence either. There is no null hypothesis against which to test your ex nihilo hypothesis

If one could get AV to accept the consequences of his position, this would be a major step in our conversation.

No indeed. That's why AV is right We cannot rule out an alternative to the ex nihilo hypothesis, and therefore we cannot convince anyone that the apple was created ex nihilo.

Isn't that what he's saying? That there can be no scientific answer to the question "was this an ex nihilo creation?" if, in fact, it was?

Yes, that is what he is saying. But he is wrong. If we´d allow that as a valid position, there could be no scientific answer to any question. There could in fact be no reasonable answer to any question.

But this is a consequence that he cannot accept. He needs reasonable answers to defend his own position. That is, as long as he does not simply ignore any questions.

 

[Febble]

If it just were that way....! No, consider, if you found an apple without any trace of antecedents (or any other evidence of having come into existence in an 'ordinary' way), this would in itself be evidence for ex-nihilo-creation. So in order to keep to his claim that there is no evidence, he deliberately needs to get rid of evidence.

I think there is some confusion here (unless I am misunderstanding AV, which is possible, being new to this forum). I think his point, and I think it is a good one (although I almost certainly disagree with his position) is that if it were true that he created an apple ex nihilo in my hand, there would be no evidence to get rid of. And in the absence of evidence we cannot conclude that there was never any. When scientists run out of evidence they do not conclude: OK, we have to stop here - it must be ex nihilo from here on back, they conclude: OK now we have run out of data. We can't explain this bit. Better apply for a new grant.

It's just the way (it seems to me) that science is set up. We cannot prove a null. We can only build models with more explanatory power than the null. Ex nihilo has no explanatory power at all. Science could have nothing to say about it. Last Thursdayism really is unfalsifiable, and thus non-scientific (Popper was right, IMO, to say that an unfalsifiable theory isn't scientific, it's just that science doesn't in fact proceed by falsification).

And said need of 'manipulating' the evidence leads to this: he needs to invent evidence that exists and evidence that does not exist. The creation of his example-apple is fictive. It has not happened. But in fiction, he controls the setting. The witness 'exists". Differences from other apples 'do not exist'.
But fiction is not data.

Well, it's a counterfactual - a thought experiment. I think his point is sound.

If one could get AV to accept the consequences of his position, this would be a major step in our conversation.

What do you see as the consequences of his position? That it is unfalsifiable? He does accept that doesn't he? Or do you mean something else?

Isn't that what he's saying? That there can be no scientific answer to the question "was this an ex nihilo creation?" if, in fact, it was?

Yes, that is what he is saying. But he is wrong. If we´d allow that as a valid position, there could be no scientific answer to any question. There could in fact be no reasonable answer to any question.

No, I don't think that is true. There are lots of reasonable answers to questions - answers that consist of a model with explanatory power. But ex nihilo has no explanatory power at all. So if it is, in fact, the answer to a question, it's not a question we will, in fact, be able to answer

But this is a consequence that he cannot accept. He needs reasonable answers to defend his own position. That is, as long as he does not simply ignore any questions.

Well, obviously I'm missing some history. Occasionally that's an advantage This thread is ex nihilo for me.

heh heh

 

[Ayersy]

The OP is flawed.

I don't have any friends.