View Single Post
Old 08-24-2004, 10:25 AM  
Libertine
sex dwarf
 
Libertine's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 17,860
Quote:
Originally posted by boobmaster
There most certainly is a guaranteed outcome, guaranteed in the sense that one of the number combinations WILL come up. There is a finite number of possibile outcomes. Such is not the case for the probability of spontaneous generation.
And with the chance of something happening with matter, there is also a guaranteed outcome: something will happen, even if that "something" is nothing. If reality is finite, the number of possible outcomes will even be limited. Thus, current reality was simply a possibility, one that became reality.

On the other hand, if reality is infinite, all possible outcomes are valid and true, and although there is an infinite number of possible outcomes, every single one is necessarily the case.



Ofcourse, all of this is probably moot. Pure materialism is the strongest scientific view there is at the moment. In a purely materialistic reality, if all is governed by laws of nature (which is quite likely), all is determined - future, present and past.
In that case, there's not only a finite number of possible outcomes, there is exactly one.
__________________
/(bb|[^b]{2})/
Libertine is offline   Share thread on Digg Share thread on Twitter Share thread on Reddit Share thread on Facebook Reply With Quote