How did you arrive at Christianity?

[2PhiloVoid]

If you’re unable to actually post your own rebuttal to what I’ve said, I’m just going to assume that you don’t actually have a real objection.

And so we are left with a universe in which statistics have no bearing on the likelihood of a god existing.

That would depend on who you ask. If you ask Stephen D. Unwin, he'd say that the probability (Bayesian style) is about a 67% likelihood for the existence of a Beneficent, Creative God.

 

[bhsmte]

That would depend on who you ask. If you ask Stephen D. Unwin, he'd say that the probability (Bayesian style) is about a 67% likelihood for the existence of a Beneficent, Creative God.

Did Unwin show his math and how he came up with his numbers?

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Did Unwin show his math and how he came up with his numbers?

Yes, it appears he gives a brief treatment of his math in very basic Bayesian terms. (I guess he'd have to keep it basic since the book is written for laymen like myself who are not expert statisticians.) The interesting thing for me isn't that he arrives at some specific percentage, but rather that he thinks that religious belief, even Western faith, has more than zero rational significance.

Essentially, Unwin's thesis is a kind of Pascalian Wager...but with some teeth to it.

 

[cloudyday2]

Yes, it appears he gives a brief treatment of his math in very basic Bayesian terms. (I guess he'd have to keep it basic since the book is written for laymen like myself who are not expert statisticians.) The interesting thing for me isn't that he arrives at some specific percentage, but rather that he thinks that religious belief, even Western faith, has more than zero rational significance.

Essentially, Unwin's thesis is a kind of Pascalian Wager...but with some teeth to it.

It seems to me that we should approach the question of God through options for action. One option is to seek God in various ways. It seems to me that it should be possible to ask random people to seek God in a variety of ways and ask them later if they felt the effort was worthwhile and so forth.

In other words, these questions are not just a matter of sitting in an ivory tower and speculating. We need to do some experiments just as if we were looking for a cure to cancer. If God is worth including in our vocabulary then He is measurable IMO.

EDIT: Approaching this as a question of "should I seek God?" and "what is the best way to seek God?" is not too different from asking "should I exercise?" and "what is the best way to exercise?". A study like this would have medical value, because apparently there is evidence that belief in God increases lifespan. The deterioration of faith in the Western world is a health crisis. Us spiritually flabby non-believers need to know how to get back in shape.