Fiat repair: “Hello, this is Fiat repair, how can I help you?”
Customer: “I’m having trouble with my Fiat.”
Fiat repair: “Well, you called the right place, what model is it”
Customer: “It’s a Fiesta”
Fiat repair: “Sorry, that’s a Ford”
Customer: “But that’s what I call it”
Fiat repair: *click*

Well, if you're going to make up your own definitions then there's not much point in engaging with you.

If it makes him feel really warm and fuzzy inside to re-define words to his convenience, he's welcome. It's usually considered intellectually honest to explain to everyone that you're using your own special definitions for words first though, and work out alternatives for the meanings you've displaced.

SafeAsMilk wrote:If it makes him feel really warm and fuzzy inside to re-define words to his convenience, he's welcome. It's usually considered intellectually honest to explain to everyone that you're using your own special definitions for words first though, and work out alternatives for the meanings you've displaced.

It is agnosticism however. It’s plain old uncertainty about the existence of God. Those or two fundamentally different propositions.

I'm a Roman Catholic. By that I mean that I don't believe in God, the Saints, Papal infallibility, or Jesus. I just like wine and crackers.

laklak wrote:I'm a Roman Catholic. By that I mean that I don't believe in God, the Saints, Papal infallibility, or Jesus. I just like wine and crackers.

How do I sign up?

scherado wrote:

Hermit wrote:Nobody has managed to explain to me by what criterion we can determine the point at which something becomes so unlikely that it could not possibly have occurred without the intercession of a supernatural entity. Until then an (un)likelihood, no matter how great or small the odds, will always remain just that - an (un)likelihood.

There is a name for the error one makes when thinking otherwise: Divine fallacy. It's also known, somewhat ironically, as the argument from incredulity. "X must be the result of superior, divine, alien or supernatural cause because it is unimaginable for it not to be so." Theists usually resort to it in conjunction with the fine-tuned universe.

Next.

Not so fast, oh So Secluded One: If you actually understand the several requirements for this event to have occurred, then how could you NOT be at a loss to explain? Please read this response.

Your reply read thus: "It couldn't have happened, because it's not possible."

You totally misread my post. Putting my reply in other words, it reads: No matter how high or low the odds of an event occurring, I see nothing that turns an unlikelihood into an impossibility. Or in yet other words: As odds increase, the likelihood of an event occurring decreases. It keeps approaching zero, but never quite gets there while those odds are calculable.

So, my reply is the opposite of how you read it.

scherado wrote:Are you an Atheist?

Yes.

All probabilities exist between 0 and I but do not include 0 and I themselves

Something with a definitive 0 probability is not going to happen
Something with a definitive I probability is going to happen

Something that is definitive cannot also be probable
Probability can only pertain to the non definitive

surreptitious57 wrote:All probabilities exist between 0 and I but do not include 0 and I themselves

Something with a definitive 0 probability is not going to happen
Something with a definitive I probability is going to happen

Something that is definitive cannot also be probable
Probability can only pertain to the non definitive

And then what?

Cito di Pense wrote:

surreptitious57 wrote:All probabilities exist between 0 and I but do not include 0 and I themselves

Something with a definitive 0 probability is not going to happen
Something with a definitive I probability is going to happen

Something that is definitive cannot also be probable
Probability can only pertain to the non definitive

And then what?

Give the bloke a break. Concentrating so much contradiction and tautology into five short lines without managing to find the key for "1" or "." must be exhausting. Surrepetitious57 will undoubtedly resume blowing pure hot air after a good night's rest.

Hermit wrote:...
You totally misread my post. Putting my reply in other words, it reads: No matter how high or low the odds of an event occurring, I see nothing that turns an unlikelihood into an impossibility. Or in yet other words: As odds increase, the likelihood of an event occurring decreases. It keeps approaching zero, but never quite gets there while those odds are calculable.

So, my reply is the opposite of how you read it.
...

I intentionally used the word "likelihood" in the OP. A calculable probability is a very specific mathematical process, with formulas. The events described in the OP are specific and your generalities don't address that. The specifics of the book/binding-split/word/word-heard should be addressed specifically. That you have not, is the reason I read your reply as: "It couldn't have happened, because it's not possible."

There must be data for a probability to be calculable. What is the probability of an event occurring that has not ever occurred? It's NOT calculable.

scherado wrote:
There must be data for a probability to be calculable. What is the probability of an event occurring that has not ever occurred? It's NOT calculable.

Depends on what you mean by "not ever occurred". You'd probably admit that probability games with balls and urns have been played often enough that predictions of outcomes are calculable, but you'd be wrong to think anyone ever needed to set up an example in order to calculate the probabilities.

Your example seems to be related to the outcome of flipping a coin that's not a fair coin.

scherado wrote:

Hermit wrote:...
You totally misread my post. Putting my reply in other words, it reads: No matter how high or low the odds of an event occurring, I see nothing that turns an unlikelihood into an impossibility. Or in yet other words: As odds increase, the likelihood of an event occurring decreases. It keeps approaching zero, but never quite gets there while those odds are calculable.

So, my reply is the opposite of how you read it.
...

I intentionally used the word "likelihood" in the OP. A calculable probability is a very specific mathematical process, with formulas. The events described in the OP are specific and your generalities don't address that. The specifics of the book/binding-split/word/word-heard should be addressed specifically. That you have not, is the reason I read your reply as: "It couldn't have happened, because it's not possible."

There must be data for a probability to be calculable. What is the probability of an event occurring that has not ever occurred? It's NOT calculable.

In the second paragraph of your opening post you wrote:

there was a time that I thought it would be a good idea to be observant for any "signs," yes, evidence of god.

In the third paragraph you proposed

that any, "sign," would be Mathematical in theme; that it would be an event so improbable as to have an incomprehensibly small likelihood of occurring.

This is what I replied to in post #7.

Nobody has managed to explain to me by what criterion we can determine the point at which something becomes so unlikely that it could not possibly have occurred without the intercession of a supernatural entity. Until then an (un)likelihood, no matter how great or small the odds, will always remain just that - an (un)likelihood.

With that the ball landed in your court, and it is still there now.

Hermit wrote:

scherado wrote:

Hermit wrote:...
You totally misread my post. Putting my reply in other words, it reads: No matter how high or low the odds of an event occurring, I see nothing that turns an unlikelihood into an impossibility. Or in yet other words: As odds increase, the likelihood of an event occurring decreases. It keeps approaching zero, but never quite gets there while those odds are calculable.

So, my reply is the opposite of how you read it.
...

I intentionally used the word "likelihood" in the OP. A calculable probability is a very specific mathematical process, with formulas. The events described in the OP are specific and your generalities don't address that. The specifics of the book/binding-split/word/word-heard should be addressed specifically. That you have not, is the reason I read your reply as: "It couldn't have happened, because it's not possible."

There must be data for a probability to be calculable. What is the probability of an event occurring that has not ever occurred? It's NOT calculable.

In the second paragraph of your opening post you wrote:

there was a time that I thought it would be a good idea to be observant for any "signs," yes, evidence of god.

In the third paragraph you proposed

that any, "sign," would be Mathematical in theme; that it would be an event so improbable as to have an incomprehensibly small likelihood of occurring.

This is what I replied to in post #7.

Nobody has managed to explain to me by what criterion we can determine the point at which something becomes so unlikely that it could not possibly have occurred without the intercession of a supernatural entity. Until then an (un)likelihood, no matter how great or small the odds, will always remain just that - an (un)likelihood.

With that the ball landed in your court, and it is still there now.

You are either persuaded or are not, though I can't be sure that I was clear that it was a kind of request, or test, as in, "If you do exist, then 'show me the magic' by leading my "random" (it's not random) opening of the 1009-page book to where the word is listed." And when that happened, I thought there must have been something about the book, and there was the single split on the exact spot where the word was listed. Do you want me to re-word the OP? I don't want to do that. There's no "ball in my court," unless the scenario is unclear. It should be obvious, that the unlikelihood is incomprehensibly immense that a single binding split formed, over 25 years of use, to the exact page, of the 1009-page book, where this particular word was found, and that word was spoken by a guy on the radio while I was listening, and for which I didn't know the definition. Maybe not. As I already mentioned, I haven't been persuaded that it was a sign. There, I've re-stated "stars aligning."

Is the unlikelihood incomprehensibly immense as, say, some guy on the internet telling porkies?

1009:1 odds. Odds of winning the Florida Lottery are about 14,000,000:1 but somebody wins it almost every week.

Yup, and the odds are even greater than that of a hit, since he knew it wouldn't be in the last 2/3 of the book. It's more than a 1 in 300 chance.

That's better odds than pulling a full house in 7 card stud, and I've done that several times.

The way I understand it, some guy on the radio spoke a particular word. For decades, scherado's been thumbing the dictionary to a particular page, not coincidentally, the page on which that word occurs, which explains why the crease in the binding is there. Causality is saved.

The_Piper wrote:Yup, and the odds are even greater than that of a hit, since he knew it wouldn't be in the last 2/3 of the book. It's more than a 1 in 300 chance.

You still don't get it, but that is on you isn't it? In other words, you've demonstrated that you did not comprehend the content. Then you point to your error. You put the a-s-s in embarrassment.