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% chance of god existing

Started by Piemaster, June 04, 2007, 10:29:53 AM

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SteveS

#15
Thanks for the kind words pj.  This is just the way it seems to me, personally.  It's really just the old "god of the gaps" argument.  I think our forum admin laetusatheos expressed the same idea in a really clever way with this comment on another thread.  In particular, "God used to live up in the clouds now he lives outside of time."  Yup - God of the gaps  :wink:  .

Whitney

#16
a) 0%...Most defined gods are simply too absurd to exist; I'm really not sure how anyone who gives much thought to them can think they make sense.

b)  a general concept of god is so vague that it could mean the universe...so I'll say it is rather likely that something exists which a lot of  people would feel comfortable calling a god if they knew it was what caused everything to exist...even if it didn't have any personal attributes.  As for what I'd call a god; I think anything worthy of the title god should be a being that is personally involved with it's creation...the evidence for such a being is non-existant; so 0%.

SteveS

#17
Quote from: "laetusatheos"a) 0%
Quote from: "laetusatheos"b) .... so 0%.
Nice - no screwing around, just go for the big ol' donut.   :D

JustInterested

#18
So youre saying there's a chance!

Some of you have faith as small as a mustard seed

Whitney

#19
Quote from: "JustInterested"Some of you have faith as small as a mustard seed

Then why can't they move mountains  :wink:

SteveS

#20
My mustard seed has a size approaching zero (hahaha!)

areUreallyConvinced

#21
Depends on what u really mean by god if as in b) a creator for the universe i would say it is a 50:50 chance with the same logic as  Eclecticsaturn.
But when it comes to a) a specific god as in Islam Christianity etc i would have to say a zero percent. Personal gods just don't make any sense they are always self contradictory, it would be the equivalent of asking what are the chances of having a 2 headed animal that has no heads. Just my 2 cents.

Areo
If there really is a god then he sure owes me one hell of an explanation

Spoonboy

#22
Quote from: "tacoma_kyle"God is like the sequence a^(n)/(n!). At the first few values it seems promising...gods power grows as the sequence grows...but when you calculate the limit as it approaches infinity, it is zero.

This post gave me an idea for a way to show the probability that God exists is 0%. The Conjunction Fallacy basically says that if you have a proposition and you then you add an extra condition, the probability of it being true can only decrease or stay the same. Let's start by defining P1 to be the probability that "there exists a powerful being". Now let P2 be the probability that "there exists a powerful being AND he can read". Clearly P2 <= P1. Now let P3 be the probability that "there exists a powerful being AND he can read AND he understands the theory of relativity". Clearly P3 <= P2 <= P1.

Now God is just a powerful being that knows everything, loves everyone and can do anything. If we assume there are an infinite amount of things God can do, and know, then the proposition that God Exists is quite clearly an infinite list of conditions all ANDed together. With an infinite list of conditions, the probability will continually decrease with each condition added, except when the condition added is a logical consequence of one of the previous conditions. Unless there comes a point when that is always the case, the probability will decrease forever, and will therefore be zero.

rlrose328

#23
The chances of a god existing are so minute, I no longer waste my time on entertaining the possibility.
**Kerri**
The Rogue Atheist Scrapbooker
Come visit me on Facebook!


SteveS

#24
Hi Spoonboy - I like your conjunction fallacy - it appeals to me, and I think it has teeth when attacking the "god idea" proposed by the typical theologian, that god is omni-everything.  I think the idea of an omni-everything being is self-contradictory, impossible, and therefore clearly false.  I am a "strong atheist" in regard to this idea of god.

Like rlrose328, I think the chances of a god are small enough that I can safely ignore them.  If there is god, then I think none of us have the first clue what this god is like.  So why believe there is?  It's just an unsupportable possibility.

Ninja Donkey

#25
mathematical, eh?
I have a roommate with a BA in mathematics
I'll have to run this by her and see what she thinks of it.
"Don't you know there ain't no devil, it's just god when he's drunk" - Tom Waits