What is the probability that God exists?

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Beige?

God who?

Since you do not offer "None of the above." as an option, what convinces you that the question is meaningful? Also, what methods/protocols would suggest be employed to ascertain an estimate?

My guess: it's roughly equal to the average weight of pixie dust found in 1cc of Daoine Sidhe air space times the standard length of the unicorn horn divided by the total weight of the Sumerian, Egyptian, and Roman pantheon as measured on Atlantis. If anyone can supply these, or more appropriate, numbers, I'll try to be more specific.

 

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Title:"THE GROWING OF THE HUMAN INTELLIGENCE"
by Renato L. Porchetta

At the time when the nomad man was worshiping the moon he also sought protection from the
arcane thundering sky.
And while being forced to migrate in search of seasonal food the primitives, for not knowing how
to grow regularly apple trees, fed on others of their own kind.
That was the time when two stones were beaten one against the other evoking the deity.

Time passed and the idolatry of the marble statues of the Greek and Roman gods was replaced
by a spiritual Direction attempting to justify the inner-self with more conscious information.
Then the word "intelligentsia" was mentioned for the first time.

The growth of the human intelligence was slow but at least stopped the torturing of religious
believers in Spain and unlocked the shackles chaining human slaves.

Reading and writing were needed, and the art went from marking tablets of dried mud to paper
and ink. The Gutenberg press later had its way.
Meanwhile branching out from what was originated at the core of the Mediterranean culture
freewill was reinforced in central Europe and the worshiping of the moon was left to
astronomers and poets.

The moon itself scared no more. Then the lightning rapidly passing through the thunderstorm was
caught with a flying kite and made to travel through the wire to a metal key and then to the
ground.
Theatrical representations become comparable but some religious quarrels carried the spark of
inflammatory debates from one place to the other in the known world harvesting corpses rather
than sanctity.

The human intellect continued the search and tracing some historical facts went from
worshiping the moon to the stone statues and from the statues to the attempt to empower the
Self. It seems that what propels this movement is: "religious impulse."

Then the sky was no longer thought -arcane- but was joined in its heights. And came the time
when man went on the moon and walked those very paths that were one time thought magic.
The human "intelligentsia" conquered the silvery goddess which was worshiped in the past.
And perhaps received some sacrificial lives here and then.

Also came the time when it was discovered that it is easier to talk on the phone than exert the
fatigue of carrying messages on horse back riding for days. And today messages can directly
reach one's jeans' s pocket in electronic version trying to replace the responsibility of mail delivery
and which ink and paper were doing during the Gutenberg time.

The "search" of the human intelligence went on together with freewill discovering that this mental
faculty could be a messenger or, perhaps a physiological agent responsible to break the occult
powers of superstition and mysteries.


NASA thinks of the moon differently nowadays than what an Mayan witchcraft did but a few
centuries ago. Man can play with dolphins but still some religious differences remain unsettled.

And the West also discovered the whisper of Zen saying that there are in existence spiritual
dimensions to be conquered and with committed love dreams come true.

God for many is a beautiful dream, will Zen be right?
If one thinks that the power of human intelligence itself can replace dreams-catchers then the
amplification of the intelligence will succeed.

Renato L. Porchetta

www.pennswoods.net/~cosmo/USPC.SWF
www.pennswoods.net/~cosmo/contact/apples.swf

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How rude!

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CA,

?

 

Precisely. How do you suppose our 'author' voted and why?

 

There is no phenomenon, that we can't explain, that must be attributed to the concept of a god instead of a vastly simpler and more credible speculation.

Of all the past unexplained phenomena, that were attributed to gods, and that are now explained, not one was ever found to be attributed to a god.

The overwhelming trend of new knowledge and discovery is in the direction away from supernatural speculations and towards the natural.

By simple projection, based on the above, there will be a point where the speculation for the supernatural becomes a null consideration.

There is no rational deduction that results in a requirement for a god to exist.

Therefore in the absence of any contradictory evidence, the mathematical probability for the existence of a god must be zero.

 

Mathematical probabilities are not built on historical projection. It sounds good, but I'm really not sure there's a 'there' in your 'therefore'.

 

CA,

OK Try this.

Language is infinitely generative. I.e. given enough time a person can come up with an infinite number of ideas expressible through language. God is just one of those ideas -- one out of infinity.

Take 1 and divide it by a very large number, say 1 billion. You'll get an answer very close to 0. Divide 1 by an even larger number and you'll get even closer to 0. If you now take what's mathematically called a "limit" of this process -- let the divisor approach infinity, then your answer approaches 0 to any arbitrary degree of precision.

Given that there are infinitely more ideas than entities in the universe, we can see that the chance of any one randomly chosen (e.g. the existence of a god) actually corresponding to an entity in the universe is 1 over infinity, or 0.

From this we can state confidently that the probability of any god whatsoever existing is mathematically 0.

All of this relates to the nature of knowledge. Out of an infinite number of ideas there are only a finite number of useful ones that correspond to reality. The only non-futile route to the discovery of such ideas is by examining the universe itself and forming the ideas based on what you observe. By any other approach, you stand mathematically no chance at all of coming up with even 1 useful idea no matter how much time you spend.

Note that all the ideas that are useful so far have been discovered or formed in the course of direct observation or interaction with the universe. Which is as it should be. But the idea of a god does not originate from an observation or interaction with the universe but rather from an imaginative combination of individually useful concepts (like cause, effect, actor, universe, origin, person, etc.) in a new, arbitrary way. Which is why the idea is inconsequential and useless, with 0 probability of being correct. Just like monsters under the bed, like witches flying around on brooms, like Hades, etc.

For an idea to be at least potentially valid some evidence must be provided to go with it, otherwise we are all entirely justified in summarily dismissing the idea that a god exists as improbable.

 

Only Improbable?

You are mixing metaphors. Furthermore, you know it, as demonstrated by your 'conclusion' of improbable vs impossible.

Why do you insist that the poll question is valid? Why waste time contriving denominators in supernatural space? Why not simply acknowledge that the supernatural is "out of scope" when it comes to rational enquiry, while the continuing success of methodological naturalism render the explanitory value of 'God(s)' increasingly negligible and belief in 'God(s)' wholly unwarranted.

 

CA,

But the topic is about probability, i.e. values between 0 and 1.

You have to stay on topic, it's the rules.

So a probability of 0 is as far as you can go with improbability.

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CA,

And yeah that other stuff you said works OK as well.

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Of course God exists, how could you hold baby or watch a sunset and doubt it? The very fact that we exist at all is too great a thing to dismiss as a big accident or coincidence. Or scientifically, the world was made to be perfect for us, the perfect distance from the sun, with just the right amount of each kind of elements in the air for us to live- you must realize that if the calculations were just the smallest part of a fraction off, life on earth would not be possible. There isn't a thing in the entire universe that someone didn't create, be it man or god.

 

Valentino,

You didn't add a smiley so I guess your response was serious.

Or watch someone die in agony of cancer, or see someone live the life of a vegetable due to growth defects while in the womb. Reality is both grotesque and beautiful, and nothing about it need imply or indicate a supernatural component.

That's correct and explains why evolution is so important.

It's a nice idea but you have it back to front. It is because those conditions occurred that we exist. The conditions were not created to suit us, we just happened to be the result of the conditions.

Unless you have a way to detect a universe being created then you have nothing but one of countless speculations.

 

Even if it was just conditions, I will make those conditions my god and worship accordingly. What are the odds that matter would explode and just happen to form in the perfect way so that life is brought into existance? You realize the incredibly extremely high odds there must have been against this just happening. I could type out the smallest fraction possible for the rest of my life and that still wouldn't cover the odds of this "coincidence" from happening. No thing beautiful or terrible just exists, everything was started by something or someone.

My speculations are only as countless as yours are

 

I would much prefer that you confine preaching to some other thread, perhaps HERE, or,perhaps one of your own creation. In the context of this discussion, it amounts to little more than pollution in my opinion.

 

I didn't realize that expessing a noncognitivist position was against the rules. Mark me as properly chastised.

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Valentino,

Yes exactly. And until there is some form of observation or detection then your fantasies about gods are as useless as any other fantasy.

 

CA,

That's a little over the top I think. From Valentino's method of thinking that conclusion is inevitable, and is a valid part of the debates here. I think it would have been preaching had the supportive clause been omitted, and the statement had only read "Of course God exists". The issue here is the invalid claim that a god exists because of the emotional appeal of holding babies and watching sunsets.

 

Valentino,

From your claim it follows then that if we were all blind and also suffer from a total loss of proprioception (no sense of touch), then a god would not exist.