Objective odds of Gods existence - whats your method of assesment?

[GrowingSmaller]

I am not taking about deductive arguemnts for God, but inductive ones. You cant (IIRC accoording to some philosophers) define something into existence, or out of existence.

In any case, I hear some real smart people saying "the odds off there being a God are so small, like 1% or less." IIRC Sam Harris said as much in The Moral Landscape.

So, if we are being objective, then there ought to be some rational basis for assigning odds. Not just "I feel such and such is the case, after so much contemplation and debate".

For instance we can look at the odds of a coin toss turning up heads. Or the odds of a thunder storm developing in certain conditions. Scientists and mathematicians work with odds. But what about philosophers and theologians?

What we need is something like a Drake Equation. But for God....

So put up or shut up, as they say, rather rudely.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

 

[Emmy]

Dear GrowingSmaller. I believe that there is a God, and there always were, our God is the great I AM. Over the years, God made a world for Man to live in. The Bible, God`s Word to Man, tells us that God made Man to live with for eternity. The Bible tells us that Man was made in God`s Image and lived wonderfully with God, UNTIL an evil
being/Satan spoiled God`s wonderful plan. We know from the Bible how Adam and Eve fell victims to Satan, in the guise of a serpent. Then God knew that His plan for Mankind had to be changed.
Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden of Eden, and God gave them the male and female bodies, which all who came after were given by natural birth. How Mankind became more selfish and cruel in time, we know from the Old Testament. In time Jesus our Saviour came to Earth and showed us how God wants Mankind to change again into the men and women which God wants us to be. Jesus gave us two Commandments: 1) Love God with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our minds. 2) Love our neighbour as we love our selves. ( treat them as we would love to be treated)
Satan the evil one, tried his hardest to spoil all plans of Jesus, and with the help of some like-minded people, Satan tried to bring an end to Mankind. But God spoiled his evil plan, God raised Jesus and Jesus is our Saviour now.
God is Love and God wants loving sons and daughters. In Matthew 7: 7-10: we are told: " ask and you shall receive.
We ask for Love and Joy, then thank God and share all Love and Joy with our neighbour, all we know and all we meet.
The Holy Spirit will help and guide us, and Jesus will lead us all the way: JESUS IS THE WAY.
I say this with love, GrowingSmaller. Greetings from Emmy, your sister in Christ.

 

[paulm50]

I'm not sure of whether there is a god or not, and what he, she, it did or does.

What I'm positive about is the bible doesn't have any knowledge on any god. It has far too many inaccuracies, makes too many false claims, and far too little knowledge to have anything to do with what it claims as a god.

I believe, over the years, Man made a world for gods to live in, so they could run and explain things better.

And quoting from the bible to prove god's existence, is silly. One can point to the Tipitaka to prove Vishnu or Vaishnava existence or Harry Potter novels to prove Lord Voldemort exists. One has to present evidence he exists and not an explanation for things Ancient men didn't know.

Did Jesus exist? Yes. Was he the Son of god? In my opinion no. If he was, he could of done a lot more to make this a better world. As could god.

 

[Dave RP]

Dear GrowingSmaller. I believe that there is a God, and there always were, our God is the great I AM. Over the years, God made a world for Man to live in. The Bible, God`s Word to Man, tells us that God made Man to live with for eternity. The Bible tells us that Man was made in God`s Image and lived wonderfully with God, UNTIL an evil
being/Satan spoiled God`s wonderful plan. We know from the Bible how Adam and Eve fell victims to Satan, in the guise of a serpent. Then God knew that His plan for Mankind had to be changed.
Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden of Eden, and God gave them the male and female bodies, which all who came after were given by natural birth. How Mankind became more selfish and cruel in time, we know from the Old Testament. In time Jesus our Saviour came to Earth and showed us how God wants Mankind to change again into the men and women which God wants us to be. Jesus gave us two Commandments: 1) Love God with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our minds. 2) Love our neighbour as we love our selves. ( treat them as we would love to be treated)
Satan the evil one, tried his hardest to spoil all plans of Jesus, and with the help of some like-minded people, Satan tried to bring an end to Mankind. But God spoiled his evil plan, God raised Jesus and Jesus is our Saviour now.
God is Love and God wants loving sons and daughters. In Matthew 7: 7-10: we are told: " ask and you shall receive.
We ask for Love and Joy, then thank God and share all Love and Joy with our neighbour, all we know and all we meet.
The Holy Spirit will help and guide us, and Jesus will lead us all the way: JESUS IS THE WAY.
I say this with love, GrowingSmaller. Greetings from Emmy, your sister in Christ.

When God did all this creating, at what stage did he create Satan?

 

[paulm50]

When God did all this creating, at what stage did he create Satan?

The existence of Satan is one of the unexplained parts of religion.

Did god crate him, if not who did. Is he as powerful as god, if not why does god allow him to exist?

A simple explanation is gods are Man made. Imagine a world with no police, laws, organisation or control. Only a Family Head, of an extended family. How does one control them all, unless you're there they can do as they please, dethrone you, rebel etc. Explain why there's no game to hunt, the earth shook, exploded with fire, it never stops raining, or not raining enough, etc?

The logical answer is it's all in the hands of the big boss, who only talks to you, who only you understand. And if you only do as told, everything will be fine and when it's not. Blame others for not doing as they were told well enough. And always the final reward, isn't here on Earth. It's after you die.

Going fine. Until someone breaks ranks and you need something worse than a natural disaster, which are unpredictable. You need another little boss who is bad and will come and tempt you to do bad things. When you succumb, you get punished after you die.

Then look at everything Man has achieved from the start of any organised life.

Without 2 gods, a heaven and hell. None of this would be possible.

Or this.

And most certainly these.

Did they all know there was a god, he just wasn't talking to them. Or did they invent them, to keep order?

The Christian god is a very recent one and not unique. The links prove it.

 

[ananda]

100% - we are each a god with varying degrees of power and insight.

We possess creative abilities, potential omnipotence (we can extinguish our universes by transcendence), and I believe that we can achieve omniscience (also by transcendence).

 

[Davian]

I am not taking about deductive arguemnts for God, but inductive ones. You cant (IIRC accoording to some philosophers) define something into existence, or out of existence.

In any case, I hear some real smart people saying "the odds off there being a God are so small, like 1% or less." IIRC Sam Harris said as much in The Moral Landscape.

So, if we are being objective, then there ought to be some rational basis for assigning odds. Not just "I feel such and such is the case, after so much contemplation and debate".

For instance we can look at the odds of a coin toss turning up heads. Or the odds of a thunder storm developing in certain conditions. Scientists and mathematicians work with odds. But what about philosophers and theologians?

What we need is something like a Drake Equation. But for God....

So put up or shut up, as they say, rather rudely.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

It is up to the religionist to define the god that they claim exists, in a testable, falsifiable manner. Does the existence of this "God" require that the Earth be less than 10000 years old, and that the Earth's population of animals, including humans, are descendants of a tiny group that survived, in a boat that cannot be built, a global flood that left no evidence, missed wiping out the Chinese civilization of the time, yet killed all the dinosaurs (except the avian ones) in a manner that give palaeontologists the impression through independent and repeatable methodology that it happened more than 65 millions years ago, in almost complete contrast to almost all of modern scientific knowledge on geology, genetics, astronomy, and astrophysics?

I am comfortable saying that such a "God" is only a character in a book.

 

[Albion]

It is up to the religionist to define the god that they claim exists, in a testable, falsifiable manner.

Why is that--just because you think they have some obligation to jump through your hoop?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Why is that--just because you think they have some obligation to jump through your hoop?

The burden of proof isn't really a hoop. If someone wants to claim that I ought to believe the doctrines of their religion, I do feel it's reasonable to ask them why I ought to.

 

[Albion]

The burden of proof isn't really a hoop.

OK then. Let's just say there's no "burden of proof."

 

[Archaeopteryx]

OK then. Let's just say there's no "burden of proof."

Ok. You can avoid shouldering the burden of proof by acknowledging that others aren't intellectually obligated to share your theological commitments.

 

[Davian]

Why is that--just because you think they have some obligation to jump through your hoop?

Not my hoop; and, less of a hoop, but more of a raised bar. It was developed by individuals much smarter than I as a methodology to delineate what is science from baseless assertion, imagination, etc. Not to say that about you particular god, but then, how else can we verify that?

To paraphrase Churchill, "science is the worst way to investigate reality, but all the others have been tried."

OK then. Let's just say there's no "burden of proof."

Then let's just say there is no "God" to be concerned about.

 

[Albion]

Not my hoop

I didn't mean to say that you invented it, just that you chose to hold it up and insist that it has to be jumped through. It doesn't.

Then let's just say there is no "God" to be concerned about.

Do you have any proof--or even evidence--that there is none to be concerned about?

 

[Davian]

I didn't mean to say that you invented it, just that you chose to hold it up and insist that it has to be jumped through. It doesn't.

Of course not. Can you suggest an alternate methodology by which we can explore reality, that might allow for your "God" but not leave the Earth covered in giant, invisible, immaterial marshmallows?

I hate driving through those on the freeway.

Do you have any proof--or even evidence--that there is none to be concerned about?

The continuing inability of religionists such as yourself to provide testable, falsifiable evidence for the god(s) that they believe in and that their particular god (and all the baggage that it carries with it) should be included in an accurate description of reality.

 

[Albion]

Of course not. Can you suggest an alternate methodology by which we can explore reality, that might allow for your "God" but not leave the Earth covered in giant, invisible, immaterial marshmallows?

I hate driving through those on the freeway.

The continuing inability of religionists such as yourself to provide testable, falsifiable evidence for the god(s) that they believe in and that their particular god (and all the baggage that it carries with it) should be included in an accurate description of reality.

If you cannot prove something that is held by most people to be potentially very serious or threatening to you...but you also cannot disprove it, you'd be quite irrational to conclude that you have no stake in knowing which of those is right.

 

[Davian]

If you cannot prove something

I cannot prove anything - but I think I can determine some things to a high degree of certainty.

that is held by most people

Was that a fallacious argument from popularity?

to be potentially very serious or threatening to you

That potential has not been established. Have you taken measures to prevent yourself from being abducted by extraterrestrial aliens? Yes or no?

...but you also cannot disprove it,

Not until you define whatever this thing is we are talking about.

you'd be quite irrational to conclude that you have no stake in knowing which of those is right.

That is not my conclusion.

So, will we be driving through those marshmallows, or not?

 

[Eudaimonist]

So, if we are being objective, then there ought to be some rational basis for assigning odds. Not just "I feel such and such is the case, after so much contemplation and debate".

You're probably not going to like this, but the rational basis I use for "assigning odds" depends on the existence of sufficiently compelling evidence for the existence of God. Rational odds require a rational case.

Since that rational case doesn't exist (yes, IMJ), I assign a probability for God's existence of precisely zero. That doesn't mean that I'm close-minded, since new evidence might be forthcoming. However, until then, it's zero.

Anything else is just pure guesswork. We can never know how much we don't know, or what we don't know. We just can't speak of probabilities for something that we have no experience of, and no solid reason for thinking that such an entity even might exist.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[TillICollapse]

Why is that--just because you think they have some obligation to jump through your hoop?

For practical application purposes, it serves to establish a recognizable reference point that two or more people can understand and identify. The concept of "God" for example, has enough ambiguity that definition should be established. If a believer is talking to an unbeliever, then it would make sense that the responsibility would more often fall on the believer to establish and define what he is talking about, if for no other reason than to have an actual reference point for the unbeliever to understand what the believer is attempting to describe and claim. If you want to actually talk practical application and reality, then concepts of falsification, testability, etc come into play. IMO there are practical reasons for "burden of proof" falling on the claimant, even more so when the claimant is claiming something that the audience may not even recognize as being in reality.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

You're probably not going to like this, but the rational basis I use for "assigning odds" depends on the existence of sufficiently compelling evidence for the existence of God. Rational odds require a rational case.

I dont mind at all, I am happy to see the OP adressed directly.

I was thinking that odds relate to testable matters though. For instance the odds of a die landing on 6 is one in 6, we know and test that through observation. Likewise with the strength of other inductive arguments. I have been told at least that strength (ie an inductive argument that is strong is where if the premises are true then the conclusion is likely to follow) is probablistic, and that I believe must come through test and observation.

Since that rational case doesn't exist (yes, IMJ), I assign a probability for God's existence of precisely zero. That doesn't mean that I'm close-minded, since new evidence might be forthcoming. However, until then, it's zero.

Well what about, by analogy, the philsophy of QM. There are various theories, but no evidence forthcoming AFAIK. Perhaps evidence is impossible, and well never decide between a multiverse and Cophagen etc. But, does that mean the probability is zero for all such interpretations?

It may seem so, but then you have epistenmic principles like simplicity, coherence, and explanatory power iirc.
They may not provide evidence, but thay may provide (or undermine) support for an untestable proposition. Thoughts on this?

Anything else is just pure guesswork. We can never know how much we don't know, or what we don't know. We just can't speak of probabilities for something that we have no experience of, and no solid reason for thinking that such an entity even might exist.


eudaimonia,

Mark

So if its guesswork why assign a probability in the first place? No good reason to believe does not entail 0 probablity, objectively. Rather thats a measure of personal confidence, which may (I think) be a seperate issue. For example a child may have no good reason to believe there will be a thunder storm if theres an anvil cloud, but an "expert opinion" may differ. The opinion is based on theory and observation. So assigning odds for an theoretical but untestable God, any odds at all form 0% to 100%, is that not more like "language gone on holiday" to quote Wittgenstein?

 

[GrowingSmaller]

"...each person, in his own individual existence, must recieve and understand a purely personal and subjective truth. This truth cannot be stated in propositions which could be handed down to another person. Just as the individual has his own passions and his own life to life, so he has his own truth."

Existentialist Ethics - Warnock (chapter on Soren Kierkegaard).