Christians are Dumbass Gamblers

[Theodore Kurita]

I just thought of something. Alot of Right Wing Christians have been supporting the war in Iraq. Many of them see it as one of the End of Times wars. Basically what it all comes down to is that all Right Wing Christians are Hoping they are holding one of those tickets that is saying that they will avoid rapture...

So lets see here

2/3 (66.6%) of people in the world are christian

and out of those only

120,000 can avoid rapture

lets see here

120,000/6,000,000,000 = about 1/1,000,000,000 chance of making rapture. :eek:

Feeling Lucky Christian Friends;)

[AmateurScientist]

Actually, according to most sources I've seen, there are about 2 billion Christians worldwide.

Also, I understand that 144,000 persons will be saved by rapture, according to Revelation.

Therefore, the odds of any given Christian on earth being saved by the rapture would be 144,000/2,000,000,000 =

.000072, or about 1 in 13,889

Better odds, but still a very bad bet.

AS

^-_-^, did you have a point with your post?


----
120,000 can avoid rapture
----


So you interpret (144,000) literally apparently.

Please tell us which parts you interpret literally, and which parts you interpret metaphorically.

[AmateurScientist]

I don't believe in any of the Bible.

I was merely correcting what's his name within the context of his post.

IIRC, the 144,000 figure comes from the Book of Revelation. To Christian fundamentalists who believe in the literal truth of the NT, that is the correct figure to use.

What's his name's post ridicules their beliefs and his perception of their supposed inconsistent stance towards the war.

AS

[neutrino_cannon]

Originally posted by AmateurScientist

What's his name's post ridicules their beliefs and his perception of their supposed inconsistent stance towards the war.

AS

((^-_-^)) or +=Crap?

[c4ts]

He reminds me of the kid who hacked the Westwood Online Network and got sued by the company. Called himself "^_____^"

[evildave]

Besides the arithmetic error, there is a way to better quantify the error in "odds".

I use this as a rebuttal to "Pascal's Wager", when I'm so inclined:

I maintain that the problem is a roulette wheel, rather than a coin toss. Call it "Religious Roulette".

Just start enumerating all of the "do this or you go to hell" things as TRUE/FALSE assertions. Since "Believe or go to hell" is the first assertion they make, we can start with that.

T/F: There IS a God.
(1/2)
T/F: There IS an afterlife.
(1/4)
T/F: He/She/It (God) cares what you think.
(1/8)
T/F: There IS a HELL.
(1/16)
T/F: There IS a place to go after you die BESIDES Hell.
(1/32)
T/F: There is a place BETTER than Hell.
(1/64)

After only 20 of these answers, the chance that they've gotten ALL of them right is a little worse than one in a million.

Most flavors of religion have much more than 20 assertions about what will send you to Hell "for sure".

After not too many more of them, we get into truly astronomical numbers. And these are just the questions we think of asking.

It's more fun to "grade" the answers by number of guesses AFTER all of the answers. Just raise 2 to the power of guesses. (i.e. Three guesses is 2<sup3</sup> or 8 possibilities).

If you stop answering at the first blind guess, you've at least got a 50/50 chance of being correct. Way to go, deists and atheists. Agnostics have a zero chance of guessing correctly, and at the same time, a zero chance of guessing incorrectly, because they don't make any guesses.

The fun thing is, if you ask different religious people the same questions, even those who are of the "same" religion, you will tend to get DIFFERENT answers from different people. I asserr that with such suspect "witnessing", along with such pitiful odds for guessing "right", it's just not worth the bother.

[c4ts]

T/F: Only by following a certian set of rules can you reach a destination better than Hell
(1/2048)

----
Just start enumerating all of the "do this or you go to hell" things as TRUE/FALSE assertions. Since "Believe or go to hell" is the first assertion they make, we can start with that.
----


Not all believers believe that hell is a literal firey pit.

[Leif Roar]

Originally posted by evildave
Besides the arithmetic error, there is a way to better quantify the error in "odds".

I use this as a rebuttal to "Pascal's Wager", when I'm so inclined:

I maintain that the problem is a roulette wheel, rather than a coin toss. Call it "Religious Roulette".

Just start enumerating all of the "do this or you go to hell" things as TRUE/FALSE assertions. Since "Believe or go to hell" is the first assertion they make, we can start with that.

T/F: There IS a God.
(1/2)
T/F: There IS an afterlife.
(1/4)
T/F: He/She/It (God) cares what you think.
(1/8)
T/F: There IS a HELL.
(1/16)
T/F: There IS a place to go after you die BESIDES Hell.
(1/32)
T/F: There is a place BETTER than Hell.
(1/64)

After only 20 of these answers, the chance that they've gotten ALL of them right is a little worse than one in a million.

You do know the fundamental flaw in your use of statistics here, right?

[gentlehorse]

Originally posted by ((^-_-^))
I just thought of something. Alot of Right Wing Christians have been supporting the war in Iraq. Many of them see it as one of the End of Times wars. Basically what it all comes down to is that all Right Wing Christians are Hoping they are holding one of those tickets that is saying that they will avoid rapture...

Right wing Christians want to avoid the rapture??

...

120,000/6,000,000,000 = about 1/1,000,000,000 chance of making rapture. :eek:

120,000/6,000,000,000 reduces to 1/1,000,000,000?? Gads!

[Theodore Kurita]

Originally posted by gentlehorse


Right wing Christians want to avoid the rapture??

...



120,000/6,000,000,000 reduces to 1/1,000,000,000?? Gads!

No, sorry I was running on coffee when I did the first post in the thread.

Yes, Right Wing Christians do want to be in the Rapture.

and the actual odds of them getting into rapture are slim to none.

Here is a rework of the correct figures.


144,000/2,000,000,000 = .000072 = 7.2*10^-5

[Renfield]

Originally posted by AmateurScientist
Actually, according to most sources I've seen, there are about 2 billion Christians worldwide.

Also, I understand that 144,000 persons will be saved by rapture, according to Revelation.

Therefore, the odds of any given Christian on earth being saved by the rapture would be 144,000/2,000,000,000 =

.000072, or about 1 in 13,889

Better odds, but still a very bad bet.

AS

But these are just the numbers if you're only counting the people alive today. Consider that during the endtimes, judgement will come for EVERYONE who ever lived. So the chances of getting saved by the rapture are even smaller than that - much smaller.

[Solitaire]

Originally posted by Leif Roar
You do know the fundamental flaw in your use of statistics here, right?
Generosity. If there's an infinite number of possible gods and those gods
can have an inifinite number of perferences then you got zero chance of
getting the right combination that unlocks utopia.

[evildave]

That is what the exercise gets around to.

Besides the infinite preferences, there are infinite possible un-guessed at properties as well. Why not a LOT of places to go when you die? Reincarnation? With/without karma?

Of course, the questions shouldn't "build on" each other. They're just the first few off the top of my head.

----
Besides the infinite preferences, there are infinite possible un-guessed at properties as well. Why not a LOT of places to go when you die? Reincarnation? With/without karma?
----


Don't forget all the assumptions non-believers make.

"Evidence" or no, they are just as likely to be wrong.

[Leif Roar]

Originally posted by Synchronicity

Generosity. If there's an infinite number of possible gods and those gods
can have an inifinite number of perferences then you got zero chance of
getting the right combination that unlocks utopia.

There are two very large assumptions in your argument. The first is that you're assuming a particular probability distribution over the numerous "deity configurations" (every one of the n configurations having 1/n chance of being correct), but we don't know this distribution.

The second assumption is that a person's choice of which "deity configuration" he believes in is random. That would not hold if there is a god (or pantheon) who communicates with humans in some way or other. In other words, this assumptions already presumes that certain religions are wrong, and therefore you can't use it to prove that they're wrong. All a Christion or Muslim or Voodoo practicioner has to say to defeat your line of reasoning is "But we don't guess at a deity at random. We get our knowledge of our God(s) from the bible / the koran / the mystic experience."

To illustrate - if I ask you to try and guess what number I'm thinking of, you don't have zero probability of guessing right, even though there are an infinite number of integers to guess from. I'm not equally likely to pick all numbers, and you're not equally likely to guess at all numbers either - we're both much more likely to choose numbers lower than 1000 than we are at choosing numbers in excess of 100^100.

[ceo_esq]

Originally posted by Renfield
But these are just the numbers if you're only counting the people alive today. Consider that during the endtimes, judgement will come for EVERYONE who ever lived. So the chances of getting saved by the rapture are even smaller than that - much smaller.
It's estimated (http://www.discover.com/ask/main57.html) that the 6.1 billion human beings living at present represent 5.7 percent of all the human beings who have ever lived. Although, if the fundamentalist Christians are right about the rapture, I suppose they're probably right that human beings have been around for a lot less time than most experts think - meaning that the percentage would go way up.

For purposes of this particular hypothetical, I don't see the "infinite preferences" being a formal problem. The original intention was to concede a certain number of fundamentalist Christian premises. At any rate, it doesn't follow from the fact that there are an infinite number of possible divine schemes that each of them has an equal probability of existence. Wait, I just noticed that Leif Roar essentially beat me to this point. Oh, well!

[Upchurch]

Originally posted by ((^-_-^)) out of those only

120,000 can avoid rapture[/B]
Where does this (or AmateurScientist's 144,000) number come from, exactly?

[LW]

Originally posted by Synchronicity

Generosity. If there's an infinite number of possible gods and those gods
can have an inifinite number of perferences then you got zero chance of
getting the right combination that unlocks utopia.
Mind you, the same argument can also be used to show that there exists at least one god, so atheism is certainly wrong (probability of having exactly zero gods is 0).

Are you certain you want to use such an argument?

[Renfield]

Originally posted by Upchurch

Where does this (or AmateurScientist's 144,000) number come from, exactly?

Revalations. Its a quite unambiguous passage, unusually so for the bible.

[AmateurScientist]

Originally posted by Renfield


But these are just the numbers if you're only counting the people alive today. Consider that during the endtimes, judgement will come for EVERYONE who ever lived. So the chances of getting saved by the rapture are even smaller than that - much smaller.

Yes, you are right, but I saw that as a can of worms. I have no idea how many persons have ever lived, and I don't think the Bible provides any clue either.

Therefore, I tried to put the problem in terms that the original poster tried to, although I, like you, recognized that he had no idea how to perform the calulation, and of course no idea how to convert the raw figure to odds.

My figures, with the narrow context of his original premise, are very good estimates for those living today, and my calculations of the odds within that narrow context are statistically sound.

Thanks for the interesting point, however.

AS

[evildave]

Well, it's all according to how you want to cut up the numbers.

There is no evidence that I am aware of that anyone has God's phone number handy to cross-reference any of the zany things that the religious believe.

If it's essentially a zero (epsilon) likelihood against there being zero gods, for all the numbers of gods, there is also an epsilon likelihood that there is ONE god.

So, all you near-atheists (monotheists) had better get busy worshipping every goofy religious name and fantasy you can dream up, if you believe that claptrap about the "safe" thing to do.

The only point I truly make here is that since there is no way of knowing, Pascal's Wager is bust. There is no guarantee that Pascal's God, or Jesus or Allah or any of those fantasies are any more real than Barney is a living, breathing Dinosaur, or that "Blue" of "Blue's Clues" is a real living, breathing dog who understands what little children are yelling at their TV sets.

[Leif Roar]

Originally posted by evildave
Well, it's all according to how you want to cut up the numbers.

There is no evidence that I am aware of that anyone has God's phone number handy to cross-reference any of the zany things that the religious believe.

If it's essentially a zero (epsilon) likelihood against there being zero gods, for all the numbers of gods, there is also an epsilon likelihood that there is ONE god.

There's an ancient proverb that goes something like this: "If my aunt had balls, she'd be uncle." (Okay, so it's not ancient - or a proverb.) If there isn't any God(s), then the probability of there being one God is 1, and the probability of there being one or more Gods is 0. On the other hand, if, for instance, the Christians are right, then the probability of there being one (or more) God is 1, and the probability of there being zero gods is 0.

We have no statistical model that tells us anything about what the probability of the atheists being correct or of the Christians (or any other religion) being correct, so we can say nothing further than the above when it comes to the probabilities of which "deity configuration" is correct.

In short, the argument that any given religious belief has zero probability of being correct because there exists a potentially infinite number of religious beliefs is erronous.


So, all you near-atheists (monotheists) had better get busy worshipping every goofy religious name and fantasy you can dream up, if you believe that claptrap about the "safe" thing to do.

The only point I truly make here is that since there is no way of knowing, Pascal's Wager is bust.


Pascal's wager doesn't generalise to the cause of religion in general, but not for the reason you've argued.

[Keneke]

Originally posted by Renfield
But these are just the numbers if you're only counting the people alive today. Consider that during the endtimes, judgement will come for EVERYONE who ever lived. So the chances of getting saved by the rapture are even smaller than that - much smaller.

The rapture has already happened and the Millenium has begun!

Only dead guys made the cut. Sorry. Better luck next time.


PS. Ya'll stop putting mathematical functions onto something that makes no difference to the material world! (Or at least admit you're just having nonsensical fun) The God equation is like the "black box" of mathematics, but with no exit hole. You put conjecture in, but no result comes out. Nothing at all. The only thing that comes out is man's reaction to the conjecture.

[marxist2]

Originally posted by Keneke


The rapture has not already happened and the Millenium has not begun!

Only live guys made the cut. Sorry. Better luck next time.


PS. The HOLY monkies are the only gods we need

The HOLY monkies have told us that tofu is evil, all tofu eaters are putting themselves on the side of the anti-MONKIES! The tofu-eaters are those who gambel. Those whom worship God are not wrong only misled as it is obvious to all who have been revealed to the TrUth of the Holy Order of Lenin that the HOLY monkies are the only ONE true gods.

[evildave]

The monkeys are as likely to be true as any other system of faith.

As is the possibility that my cats (Chaos and Anarchy) are divine representatives of Bast.

There's always the possibility that Jesus derived from the various Greek myths of demigods. Maybe Jesus is Hercules.

[Leif Roar]

Originally posted by evildave
The monkeys are as likely to be true as any other system of faith.

No, that's again bad statistics. Just because we don't know if one faith is more likely than another, doesn't mean that we can consider them both to be equally probable.

[neutrino_cannon]

Originally posted by marxist2


The HOLY monkies have told us that tofu is evil, all tofu eaters are putting themselves on the side of the anti-MONKIES! The tofu-eaters are those who gambel. Those whom worship God are not wrong only misled as it is obvious to all who have been revealed to the TrUth of the Holy Order of Lenin that the HOLY monkies are the only ONE true gods.

See, I don't know where you get this but it's fuller of bull than either Franko or Muscleman could ever pack. Just look:

You contend that HOLY monkies have given you our information, and that they have warned you of impending danger from Herbert Spencer. Are these monkies unaware of the incontravertable fact that Spencer is dead? H*ll, he's buried right next to Marx, who you contend you know all about. It would seem that one requisite for holiness is some sort of affinity for truth, but if your monkeys are either too dishonest or too stupid to realize the death of thier arch-rival, then I doubt that they could even be loosely defined as holy.

Furthermore you posit that tofu is evil. How then, do you explain that you communist brothers in China have remained strong and loyal to the cause and consume tons of the stuff? What are the monkey's positions on other soy products? Are ford model T's unholy? Or just a symbol of capitolist greed and effeciency?

And the bit about the Holy Order of Lenin? You're just a raving whacko in dire need of help.

[Yahzi]

Upchurch
Revelation 14:3
And they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth.

14:4
These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb.

Adult male virgins. I'm guessing it will take a few centuries to accumlate 144,000 of them.

Informative bit about the historical population. I'd always heard the claim that half the world's population was alive today, but it always seemed kinda hard to figure how.

[evildave]

I dunno, make fun of the monkey story, but then read that revulsive revelation junk that claims women "defile" men.

I'm sorry, but of the 1400+ gods and deities I've already tracked down (Gobs of Gods) that people believe(d) in as fervently as Jesus/Allah/etc., none of them are more or less likely, just for not being "Jesus". Especially if the thing that's supposed to make them "less unlikely" is that people believe(d) in them.

I honestly don't see a difference between any of those other gods being "false", and Jesus or Allah or JHVH being "false".

Or to put it another way, why not the Monkey? Goku, it could be.

[marxist2]

Originally posted by neutrino_cannon


See, I don't know where you get this but it's fuller of bull than either Franko or Muscleman could ever pack. Just look:

You contend that HOLY monkies have given you our information, and that they have warned you of impending danger from Herbert Spencer. Are these monkies unaware of the incontravertable fact that Spencer is dead? H*ll, he's buried right next to Marx, who you contend you know all about. It would seem that one requisite for holiness is some sort of affinity for truth, but if your monkeys are either too dishonest or too stupid to realize the death of thier arch-rival, then I doubt that they could even be loosely defined as holy.

Furthermore you posit that tofu is evil. How then, do you explain that you communist brothers in China have remained strong and loyal to the cause and consume tons of the stuff? What are the monkey's positions on other soy products? Are ford model T's unholy? Or just a symbol of capitolist greed and effeciency?

And the bit about the Holy Order of Lenin? You're just a raving whacko in dire need of help.

Lo and behold! The newest text of the HOLY monkies has arrived, and they have told us two new things! First that tofu-eaters are the true saviors as fighters against the evil army of the tofu EMPIRE and that the monkies should not be mixed up with the evil MOnkeys of which NeutrinoCannon refers for they are evil and followers of the ReViVed Herbert Spencer. REMEMBER the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire which killed 35% of the UNITED STATES.

[Leif Roar]

Originally posted by evildave
I dunno, make fun of the monkey story, but then read that revulsive revelation junk that claims women "defile" men.

I'm sorry, but of the 1400+ gods and deities I've already tracked down (Gobs of Gods) that people believe(d) in as fervently as Jesus/Allah/etc., none of them are more or less likely, just for not being "Jesus". Especially if the thing that's supposed to make them "less unlikely" is that people believe(d) in them.

I honestly don't see a difference between any of those other gods being "false", and Jesus or Allah or JHVH being "false".

Or to put it another way, why not the Monkey? Goku, it could be.

I'm not making fun of the monkey storey, and I'm certainly not saying that the chance of any religion being correct is proportional to the number of people that believe in it, nor am I saying that Christianity is more likely to be correct than the old Norse religion.

What I am saying is that a large (even infinite) number of potential correct answers doesn't mean that every answer has the same probability of being correct - and it is a very grave statistical error to presume so (without arguing in favour of the probability distribution you are using.)

In short, just because we can't tell if Christianity is "more likely to be true" than the Divine Monkey worship, doesn't mean that they are equally likely.

[evildave]

Well, in that case you are letting the popularity sway you.

Why shouldn't a naughty monkey imbued with powers want to overthrow the other gods?

Is that somehow less likely than, say a human comming back to life after being cruicified and impaled, and walking around not minding having somebody's hand in his wound?

More likely than a human virgin birth?

More likely than madness being caused by demons to be driven into pigs?

More likely than a guy walking on water, turning water into wine, or curing {unspecified} blindness by spitting in someone's eyes?

More likely than some dope waving a stick and making an ocean split? A huge tribe of people wandering in the desert for 40 years following smoke, having mana dropped on them like fish food?

The Hanuman (http://www.siamese-dream.com/reference/hanuman.html) story sounds more and more plausible.

If all it takes is a good back story to make something seem more likely than "Barney The Dinosaur", we could always come up with a good fan fic to describe how Barney got his magical powers.

[Leif Roar]

Originally posted by evildave
Well, in that case you are letting the popularity sway you.

Why shouldn't a naughty monkey imbued with powers want to overthrow the other gods?

Is that somehow less likely than, say a human comming back to life after being cruicified and impaled, and walking around not minding having somebody's hand in his wound?

I'm not arguing plausability, I'm arguing probability. Re-read my post(s) - I'm not saying what you think I'm saying.

[Kimpatsu]

In that case, Leif, I should point out that the Xian god is infinitely improbable. Read The Improbability of God (http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Dawkins/Work/Articles/1998-sumimprobabilityofgod.htm) by Richard Dawkins for details.

[evildave]

Originally posted by Leif Roar


I'm not arguing plausability, I'm arguing probability. Re-read my post(s) - I'm not saying what you think I'm saying.

So, which version of monkey is less "possible" than the other?

People play the lottery (and usually lose), but somebody always ends up winning. What combination of balls is "less" possible?
1,2,3,4,5,6?
50,49,48,47,46,45?
11,14,26,32,40,50?

Why should any given improbable combination of properties be given lower probability than the other improbable properties?

Since I haven't seen anyone winning the lottery every week, we have to leave all of your allegedly "extra improbable" possibilities in. Even 1,2,3,4,5,6. It's as likely to come up as any other series of numbers.

[Leif Roar]

Originally posted by Kimpatsu
In that case, Leif, I should point out that the Xian god is infinitely improbable. Read The Improbability of God (http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Dawkins/Work/Articles/1998-sumimprobabilityofgod.htm) by Richard Dawkins for details.

A well written (and in my opinion correct and valid) rebuttal of the "watchmaker" argument, but I can't see that it argues that the probability of the Christian God is zero anywhere.

Originally posted by evildave
So, which version of monkey is less "possible" than the other?

People play the lottery (and usually lose), but somebody always ends up winning. What combination of balls is "less" possible?
1,2,3,4,5,6?
50,49,48,47,46,45?
11,14,26,32,40,50?

Why should any given improbable combination of properties be given lower probability than the other improbable properties?

Since I haven't seen anyone winning the lottery every week, we have to leave all of your allegedly "extra improbable" possibilities in. Even 1,2,3,4,5,6. It's as likely to come up as any other series of numbers.

I don't know which religion (if any) is more probable, and I haven't argued that any particular religion is more or less likely than another.

But that we can't say anything about which religion is more probable does not mean we can assume that they're all equally probable. For the lottery, we know the probability distribution behind the draw - so I can say that the combination "1,1,2,3,4,5" is less possible (that is, impossible) than "1,2,3,4,5,6", and that "1,2,3,4,5,6" is equally possible to "12,14,16,18,20".

When it comes to the question of which deities, if any, are real - then we don't know the probability distribution: If the atheistic world-view is correct, then the probability for any God existing is zero; but if the ancient Greeks were correct, then the probability of each of the gods in the Greek pantheon existing is 1, and the probability of the gods in the norse patheon existing is 0.

Unless we assume the answer, we can't say anything about the probability distribution of which gods exists - and it is erronous to substitute an "they're all equally likely" distribution for an unknown distribution.

Now, one could argue that a person's chance of hitting the "right" god is effectively zero, as the person is making a random guess among the various possibilities, and the person's guess doesn't depend on the unknown probability distribution of which gods are real. But that argument makes the assumption that the person's guess is actually completly random, and not influenced by whatever the real state of affairs might be: If, for instance, the Christian god is real (and exists with probability 1), then the Christians are not making random guesses - but they're acting on information they've gotten from the god in question. (The same, of course, goes for most, if not all, living religions - in that the believers claims to have their learning from some holy source or inner revelation.)

[Kimpatsu]

But Leif,
Isn't is amazing that the One True Faith is overwhelmingly the one you inherited rfom your parents, grandparents, and great-grand-parents?

[Leif Roar]

Originally posted by Kimpatsu
But Leif,
Isn't is amazing that the One True Faith is overwhelmingly the one you inherited rfom your parents, grandparents, and great-grand-parents?

I don't see what your argument is here. Could you elaborate on it?

[Kimpatsu]

Originally posted by Leif Roar
I don't see what your argument is here. Could you elaborate on it?
Sure. There are approximately 500 gods worshipped in the world today, and all theists only believe in 1 of them. They reject the other 499. And... isn't it amazing? The one true god just happens to be the one their parents worshipped... and their grandparents, and their great-grandparents.
Some maps are coloured according to language. "English spoken in these countries, French in these..." But we can colour a map of the world the same way, according to religion. Roman Catholic in Latin America and southern Europe, Protestanism in Northern Europe and the USA, Islam in the Middle East...
Isn't it amazing how the one true religion is always your parents' one? Not the one with the best hymns, or the nicest temples, or the best art... If we coloured the map according to skin colour the same way, we'd be called prejudiced.
So how is religion any different?

[Leif Roar]

Originally posted by Kimpatsu

Sure. There are approximately 500 gods worshipped in the world today, and all theists only believe in 1 of them. They reject the other 499. And... isn't it amazing? The one true god just happens to be the one their parents worshipped... and their grandparents, and their great-grandparents.
Some maps are coloured according to language. "English spoken in these countries, French in these..." But we can colour a map of the world the same way, according to religion. Roman Catholic in Latin America and southern Europe, Protestanism in Northern Europe and the USA, Islam in the Middle East...
Isn't it amazing how the one true religion is always your parents' one? Not the one with the best hymns, or the nicest temples, or the best art... If we coloured the map according to skin colour the same way, we'd be called prejudiced.
So how is religion any different?

I really don't see what relevance this has to my earlier posts.

For what it's worth though, it's not true that "the one true religion is always your parents` one" - history is rife with religions that have spread or fallen, people rebelling against their parents' religion, converted to a different religion or even rejected religion outright.

I also can't see how the fact that people generally tend to stay with the religion they've been brought up with says anything about that religion being true or not. Most people don't really think much about the basis of their religion, and are happy in staying with what they know - much like most people don't really understand computers, but are happy to use them.

[evildave]

But since we don't know the distribution of gods, the only thing we can work with is assuming they're randomly distributed.

And it doesn't matter whether a religion is "living" or dead. Maybe the Norse (as an example) were right, and it's one of life's little ironies that more agressive people with a "better" religion came in and coerced them into the wrong beliefs.

There could very well be a Purple Dinosaur God who teaches to use your imagination. And perhaps his minions are very similar to the Teletubbies.

This God, who we shall name "Barney", but isn't necessarily his proper name (of the many trillions of possible names, perhaps ALL of them are equally applicable), has a probability of '1', just like any others.

The point is (and you agreed), is just because people believe in it, doesn't make it so. The likelihood of the Barney God is just as high as the likelihod of a 50 foot Jesus, or any of the other religious junk we're routinely bombarded with.

Perhaps it's even possible that God is trying to reach you through email, but his name is unfortunately "Your Key To A Bigger Penis", and the SPAM filter your ISP provides is blocking it.

Prove "Your Key To A Bigger Penis" is any more or less likely than YHWH.

The act of guessing into the "black box" which is "ultimate reality" (as if the existance of some bozo people are (or used to be) prostrating themselves to could qualify as "ultimate reality"), is foolish. Maybe the odds are unevenly distributed, but since you can't demonstrate HOW they're unevenly distributed, we're arguning scales of epsilon. (Epsilon being the nearest number to zero without being zero representable in a numbering system.)

So, in some case your wild ass guess is nearer to zero probability than other similar wild ass guesses. You still can't know the difference, and even that difference is still "infinitely" small, or "epsilon". Epsilon versus epsilon squared.

[Leif Roar]

Originally posted by evildave
But since we don't know the distribution of gods, the only thing we can work with is assuming they're randomly distributed.

No, we can not make that assumption. That is a basic statistical error, and invalidates the entire argument.


And it doesn't matter whether a religion is "living" or dead. Maybe the Norse (as an example) were right, and it's one of life's little ironies that more agressive people with a "better" religion came in and coerced them into the wrong beliefs.


Quite true - and I have been talking about religions in general; using both the norse and the greek pantheons as examples. I added the constraint "living" in one place, because I figured the statement I made there might not hold in the general, but would hold for most of the living religions.


There could very well be a Purple Dinosaur God who teaches to use your imagination. And perhaps his minions are very similar to the Teletubbies.

This God, who we shall name "Barney", but isn't necessarily his proper name (of the many trillions of possible names, perhaps ALL of them are equally applicable), has a probability of '1', just like any others.


No, he only have a probability of existing of 1 if he exist - just like any other god we can conceive of. The probability of a god existing is either 0 or 1, and we don't know anything more than that.


The point is (and you agreed), is just because people believe in it, doesn't make it so. The likelihood of the Barney God is just as high as the likelihod of a 50 foot Jesus, or any of the other religious junk we're routinely bombarded with.


Yes, just because people believe in it does not make it so - but that does not mean that everything people believe in is equally likely. Some people believe there is a monster in Loch Ness, some people believe there isn't - that doesn't mean there's a 50% chance of Nellie being real.


Perhaps it's even possible that God is trying to reach you through email, but his name is unfortunately "Your Key To A Bigger Penis", and the SPAM filter your ISP provides is blocking it.

Prove "Your Key To A Bigger Penis" is any more or less likely than YHWH.


Why should I do that? I haven't made any arguments towards the likelyhood of any particular god being real. I've only tried to show a flaw in an argument against the existance of any god.


The act of guessing into the "black box" which is "ultimate reality" (as if the existance of some bozo people are (or used to be) prostrating themselves to could qualify as "ultimate reality"), is foolish. Maybe the odds are unevenly distributed, but since you can't demonstrate HOW they're unevenly distributed, we're arguning scales of epsilon. (Epsilon being the nearest number to zero without being zero representable in a numbering system.)

So, in some case your wild ass guess is nearer to zero probability than other similar wild ass guesses. You still can't know the difference, and even that difference is still "infinitely" small, or "epsilon". Epsilon versus epsilon squared.

No, since we don't know how the odds are distributed we don't know how the odds are distributed. Just because there's so many gods to choose from does not mean that none of them can be real.

Besides, you're again making the assumption that all the guesses are completely random. That does not have to be so - if Zeus makes a personal apperance and tells you to worship him or he'll get Olympian on your behind, then you are not making a "wild ass guess."

[evildave]

I maintain that unless you can demonstrate precisely how Jesus, Hanuman, Quetzalcoatl and Barney are of different probabilities, then they must remain evenly distributed.

All you have to show is how a single deity is more likely than other other deities. Or less likely. I'm easy. Until you can do that, we can only give them an even distribution.

It's a bit like the lottery example, except:

1. You never know the outcome.

2. You don't even know if the numbers you are betting are on the balls.

3. Because you don't know what numbers are on any of the balls.

4. You don't know the rules for how the balls are drawn.

To claim that "1,1,2,3,4,5" is invalid ASSUMES that you know the balls are uniquely numbered. That's pure baloney. To use gods as the model for the lottery, you don't know anything about the lottery, or even whether a lottery exists in the first place. You can't say that there are not hundreds of "one balls" and one each of some of the other balls numbered up to a trillion.

So, I maintain it's even distribution across the probabilities unless you can come up with some compelling evidence that proves a higher order likelihood for certain kinds of gods over other kinds of gods.

The model I use only illustrates that the odds are remote across the board, not what they precisely are for any given god or subset of the possible gods.

It represents all we know about gods, which is:

1. People have believed in many of them.

2. People still believed in many of them.

3. (If history is any indication for future events) People still believed in many of them.

Or in other words, nuts.

[Leif Roar]

Originally posted by evildave
I maintain that unless you can demonstrate precisely how Jesus, Hanuman, Quetzalcoatl and Barney are of different probabilities, then they must remain evenly distributed.

That is quite simply wrong. It's like solving the equation 5x + 3y = 10 by assuming that y is zero. If we don't know, we don't know - we can't just pick a probability distribution we like.


All you have to show is how a single deity is more likely than other other deities. Or less likely. I'm easy. Until you can do that, we can only give them an even distribution.


No, we can not even do that. You're the one assigning a probability distribution, so you are the one that have to argue why that probability distribution is the correct one. The onus of evidence is on you in this case.


It's a bit like the lottery example, except:

1. You never know the outcome.

2. You don't even know if the numbers you are betting are on the balls.

3. Because you don't know what numbers are on any of the balls.

4. You don't know the rules for how the balls are drawn.

To claim that "1,1,2,3,4,5" is invalid ASSUMES that you know the balls are uniquely numbered. That's pure baloney. To use gods as the model for the lottery, you don't know anything about the lottery, or even whether a lottery exists in the first place. You can't say that there are not hundreds of "one balls" and one each of some of the other balls numbered up to a trillion.


Correct. When I made the statement that "1,1,2,3,4,5" I was making an assumption about the workings of the lottery - and if that had been central to my argument it would have been an error. I only used the lottery example as an illustration to explain a point, however.


So, I maintain it's even distribution across the probabilities unless you can come up with some compelling evidence that proves a higher order likelihood for certain kinds of gods over other kinds of gods.


Again, the onus of evidence is on your shoulders: You're the one that want to use a particular probability distribution without any particular reason. If I say that "X = 2, and Y = 0" for the solution above, it's my to show that Y actually is 0, and not your job to show that Y is not 0.


The model I use only illustrates that the odds are remote across the board, not what they precisely are for any given god or subset of the possible gods.


No, you don't have a valid statistical model, because you've made an invalid assumption.


It represents all we know about gods, which is:

1. People have believed in many of them.

2. People still believed in many of them.

3. (If history is any indication for future events) People still believed in many of them.

Or in other words, nuts.

The only thing the above says is that people tend to believe in many different gods. Since people's belief in a god is not necessarily dependant on wether or not that god is real, tt says nothing at all about the probability that any particular gods are real.

[evildave]

Well, we sure are obstinant. Perhaps this is merely a breakdown of communication. I will formalize a bit.

The only error in my scale is its arbitrary nature, but in the absence of something meaningful to measure, just slap a scale on it.

As an example, you might use a yardstick to measure feet. Does a foot have any significant relation to the size of atoms, or the distance between galaxies?

Nope.

But we slap a unit on it to make a measurement.

I shall now submit a unit: The Picopremise.

That's 10^-12 of a premise.

One picopremise is one assent of "Yes, it could be possible given an infinite unknown collection of universes, an order of them possibly being bizarre."

This reflects (approximately) the amount of belief I have for any given god. It isn't precise, like a "foot" isn't exactly the size of my foot. It approximates a portion of a neuron's worth of storage for information.

Now we have a scale to work with.

For me, one god is one picopremise.

We could certainly come up with enough gods for a full premise, but that would also be enough gods to completely overrun my brain with garbage.

We can make some deities lesser, and some deitied greater in likelihood. We're still only moving the borders between them by itsy bitsy amounts. Sure, some gods may warp the scale of my belief for pure absurdity, and others, like "Bot", the parking lot god who you pour out a little soda as an offering for good parking spots have a certain ring of "truth" to them that get extra points for whimsy. I'm a sucker for whimsy.

But still, all in all it's how deities get mapped in my mind.

How many picopremises would you like to assign to any particular gods? Shall some of them get more for the amount of trivia we know about them? I don't see why not. Naturally confused trivia about gods may be "divine inspiration", and therefore if we mix up Quetzlcoatl with an Egyptian god, "maybe" they're the same. For all anyone can tell, anyway.