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Probability and religion are not well suited terms to use together, probabilities are for stuff you can measure, religious stuff is usually something you cant m

by nosse 16y ago

Probability and religion are not well suited terms to use together, probabilities are for stuff you can measure, religious stuff is usually something you cant measure. The math would go something like this X is gods existence with given definition of god, Y is all the possibilities where god may or may not exist. Then probability of god is X/Y and you should get somekind of percentage for it. Example, Let's define god as creator god, plus there is the possibility of no god, wikipedia has 109 different entities for creator god and there is roughly eight(?) different breeds of atheism. So we have 109/(109+8) We get 93,2% probability of god existing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Creator_gods http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Creator_gods I'm not really trying to say anything about gods existence. I'm trying to say that don't use math where it's not applicable. To me probability is highly mathematical concept.

pjscott 16y ago
That's just obvious misuse of probability, and if you made such silly assumptions in a probability class you would be hard pressed to get any partial credit. Who says that all the god-possibilities in Wikipedia are equally likely? You could misapply probability to the proposition that various forms of transportation would come crashing through my wall, and come up with a fairly high probability of some form of automobile crashing through my wall. The fact that you can do math wrong doesn't mean the math doesn't apply. However, if you see (for example) someone turn into a pillar of salt, and hear a booming voice from the sky proclaiming itself god, then that should make the existence of that god more probable in your estimation. Ditto for cars crashing through walls: if it happened more often, then this evidence should raise your estimate of the probability of suddenly having your wall knocked down by someone's car. This doesn't have to be complicated; it's actually very straightforward. To you, probability may be a highly mathematical concept that doesn't apply to everything. To me, probability is how we express uncertainty. It's a powerful way of describing the way the universe works, and we ignore or misrepresent it at our own peril.

by nosse 16y ago

pjscott 16y ago

That's just obvious misuse of probability, and if you made such silly assumptions in a probability class you would be hard pressed to get any partial credit. Who says that all the god-possibilities in Wikipedia are equally likely? You could misapply probability to the proposition that various forms of transportation would come crashing through my wall, and come up with a fairly high probability of some form of automobile crashing through my wall. The fact that you can do math wrong doesn't mean the math doesn't apply. However, if you see (for example) someone turn into a pillar of salt, and hear a booming voice from the sky proclaiming itself god, then that should make the existence of that god more probable in your estimation. Ditto for cars crashing through walls: if it happened more often, then this evidence should raise your estimate of the probability of suddenly having your wall knocked down by someone's car. This doesn't have to be complicated; it's actually very straightforward. To you, probability may be a highly mathematical concept that doesn't apply to everything. To me, probability is how we express uncertainty. It's a powerful way of describing the way the universe works, and we ignore or misrepresent it at our own peril.