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Why does the First Cause have to be intelligent?

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KCfromNC

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good brother said:
There is no simpler way to encode or decode true randomness because there is no intelligence to it.
Click to expand...

Yes, exactly.

If you have 1KB of random data, you need 1KB to store it without losing information. That is, every bit of data is significant and holds information about the original signal.

1KB of ASCII text of English writing, on the other hand, can be compressed and stored in far less than 1KB since there's lots of patterns which can be simplified - the upper bit of each character is 0, lots of words are repeated and can be encoded using shorter symbols, and so on. Therefore, there's less than 1 bit of information in each bit of the signal.

1 is greater than less than 1, so a given length of random data has more information in it.
 
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G

good brother

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Gabakzja sbJzbsbskhIsbx jzkskscxwowbanqolxlc
Kakxksoz pbofieya sly hxnsj
Fx kdhavauqbxosjsnksmc u idodksjejs qpzhuzmxncbszzaajslsodiwnso.


How much information was in the above randomness?
 
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The Engineer

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good brother said:
Gabakzja sbJzbsbskhIsbx jzkskscxwowbanqolxlc
Kakxksoz pbofieya sly hxnsj
Fx kdhavauqbxosjsnksmc u idodksjejs qpzhuzmxncbszzaajslsodiwnso.


How much information was in the above randomness?
Click to expand...
139 Bytes, I think.

What the others said sounds valid. True randomness may not contain anything useful, but then again, usefulness is an arbitrary and subjective property.
 
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Eudaimonist

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Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

This is likely H.P. Lovecraft hitting keys on his typewriter keyboard at random, for the most part.

However, these random keypresses convey meaning:

"In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."


eudaimonia,

Mark
 
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KCfromNC

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good brother said:
Gabakzja sbJzbsbskhIsbx jzkskscxwowbanqolxlc
Kakxksoz pbofieya sly hxnsj
Fx kdhavauqbxosjsnksmc u idodksjejs qpzhuzmxncbszzaajslsodiwnso.


How much information was in the above randomness?
Click to expand...

About 4.5 bits per symbol.
 
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Gadarene

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AHJE said:
I'd like to know how you would explain our human intelligence if there WERE no intelligent cause. ? ? ?
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I'd love for someone - anyone - to justify this assertion that effects can't transcend their causes - in this sense of "well, intelligence exists, so intelligence must have created it."

It's like the homeopathy of natural theology
 
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Gadarene

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Gottservant said:
yet you will happily accept "best guess" in cases of uncertainty.

how ironic?
Click to expand...

Not really. "God" (although the quote marks are unnecessary, let's face it, this is all a rationalisation for the god you already believe in) simply isn't the best guess.
 
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Gadarene

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Gottservant said:
"God" isn't the "best guess"? How so?

You don't think someone, somewhere in History, is going to want to be called the best name possible?
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What does "want" have to do with anything you or I said?

We're not talking about "best name", you introduced "best guess", and in the context of this discussion, "best guess" refers to a description of the posited first cause of the universe. Stay consistent.
 
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Eudaimonist

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Gottservant said:
You don't realize that wanting to be God, is a self-fulfilling prophecy?

To the degree that you are able to do it perfectly, you are easily conflated with the only God there could be.
Click to expand...

Huh?


eudaimonia,

Mark
 
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Gadarene

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Gottservant said:
You don't realize that wanting to be God, is a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Click to expand...

Irrelevant on two counts - firstly, no, it isn't; secondly, I'm not talking about wanting to be God (because I don't). The point is that "God" isn't necessarily the best explanation for the origin of the universe. Stop strawmanning.

To the degree that you are able to do it perfectly, you are easily conflated with the only God there could be.
Click to expand...
From having read an increasing number of your posts I'm going to posit the hypothesis that cogency isn't your forte.
 
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Gottservant

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To wit, you reply to me in English, but have nothing to say.

EDIT: And furthermore, God is the best explanation.

If you are in the Universe, you have to be responsible, right?
But you weren't there from the beginning, so how do you know in what way to be responsible?
If being responsible needs to be right, there has to be right

If you have do what is right, then someone must have been there before you, right? To justify doing what is right? Because you want to be responsible
If someone was there before you, and being there meant you could do what was right... wouldn't that mean there was a god? Because for you to do what was right, it would have to make no difference how right you were... which means they would have to stay a constant
Baby steps now... if there is "a god", don't you think it is responsible to uphold belief in "the God"?

Because if "a god" makes it possible to do right, then "the God" will make it possible to be righteous
Because if it's possible to do what is right, it is possible to be righteous
And if it's possible to be righteous, there must have been a way to make that possible to!

But if God is there on His own, then He alone has to be responsible enough to sustain the possibility of righteousness, so God has to be responsible
How responsible does God have to be? Responsible enough for anyone to be righteous

See the connection?

responsible = right, a god = right therefore righteous = God therefore God = responsible
 
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