What are the odds on God?

[Ironclad]

POINH

http://rationalia.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... 48#p918748

[mistermack]

Pascal's wager only makes sense if the odds really were fifty fifty.

It's like the lottery I mentioned. I sometimes risk a couple of quid, even though the odds are probably 100 million to one, for the biggest jackpot. Because a couple of quid is fuck all.
But the price for pascal's wager is a lot higher. You have to spend a lifetime praising, and being good, and not wearing a condom, and not taking the piss out of creationists.
It's a big price, for a go on a lottery, even if the so-called prize IS immortality and lots of flying through clouds.

[Cormac]

[/b]

Pascal's wager only makes sense if the odds really were fifty fifty.

It's like the lottery I mentioned. I sometimes risk a couple of quid, even though the odds are probably 100 million to one, for the biggest jackpot. Because a couple of quid is fuck all.
But the price for pascal's wager is a lot higher. You have to spend a lifetime praising, and being good, and not wearing a condom, and not taking the piss out of creationists.
It's a big price, for a go on a lottery, even if the so-called prize IS immortality and lots of flying through clouds.

Become Catholic, then write out and sign an all purpose act of contrition. Keep this in your pocket, with instructions to the priest to absolve you of your sins, and that you are truly penitent for them. Hey presto, a couple of years in purgatory and your straight into heaven!

[Svartalf]

doesn't work that way... Even Dante, who wasn't the most devout of men, had a special place in hell for hypocrites.

[mistermack]

Become Catholic, then write out and sign an all purpose act of contrition. Keep this in your pocket, with instructions to the priest to absolve you of your sins, and that you are truly penitent for them. Hey presto, a couple of years in purgatory and your straight into heaven!

I've been to purgatory, and it wasn't nice. It's exactly 100 miles north of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.

[hiyymer]

Nobody can be CERTAIN that there is or isn't a god. I have to admit it's possible that there is one, but very unlikely. So you must be able to give your own personal opinion as to what the odds are.

Now and again, I buy a lottery ticket for the Euro lottery. Even though the odds against winning are 100 million to one against. Would you buy a ticket, if the prize was eternal life in paradise?

So what are the odds? A million to one against? or worse?
I can't make a guess.
Help !!

Seems like your raising two different questions. Is there a god? Is there an afterlife? The evidence seems to indicate that there is no free will, so it seems highly unlikely that my mere thoughts about question one are going to have anything to do with question two.

[Hermit]

Of course, without defining god, it's hard to estimate the odds. ... a simple creative intelligent being, who could create the universe, but not really dabble in it, would have to be shorter odds.

Just how would you quantify the odds of a god's existence who never dabbles in his creation?

[charlou]

What are the odds on God?

Zero.

[hiyymer]

What are the odds on God?

Zero.

Nothing that we experience exists as the thing we experience, so why pick on God? If you are coming from the point of view that there is a physical reality exclusive of our experience that is rational and caused and is the foundation of all existence, then yes the probability of God existing in that reality as the thing people experience as God is zero, just like everything else in our experience. The more interesting question is what does God point to, and why do people experience it the way they do. After all we can't escape living in our experience, it serves a very useful purpose, and everyone gets their own ride whether they want it or not.

[mistermack]

Of course, without defining god, it's hard to estimate the odds. ... a simple creative intelligent being, who could create the universe, but not really dabble in it, would have to be shorter odds.

Just how would you quantify the odds of a god's existence who never dabbles in his creation?

Well, I believe in aliens. The odds are heavily on the existence of other intelligences in the universe.
This universe is about 13.5 billion years old. The earth is only 4 billion years old.
So I believe that some aliens could be five BILLION years in advance of us.

If humans don't become extinct in the next five billion years, imagine what we would be capable of by then. They would be godlike compared to us. Look at the development in the last TWO HUNDRED years. What will five billion bring?

Physicists today are speculating that it might be possible to create a universe in the lab.

So a highly evolved alien, with technology five billion years in advance of ours, that can actually create a universe, is pretty close to some definitions of a god. And it's certainly not impossible.

The odds of a god that can do anything, like the Christian god, must be virtually nil. I of course accept that.

[tattuchu]

I'd say the probability is so low as to be virtually non-existent. And the lottery analogy isn't quite accurate because we know the lottery actually exists and can see that people really do win big occasionally. Large payouts are rare, but they do happen.


...and I wish one would happen to me

[Cormac]

doesn't work that way... Even Dante, who wasn't the most devout of men, had a special place in hell for hypocrites.

Nonsense, it is perfectly in harmony with Catholic doctrine, when a little bit of mental reservation...

[hiyymer]

Of course, without defining god, it's hard to estimate the odds.

The Christian god I would give millions to one against.
The Islamic god, similar, but slightly less unlikely, because there is no trinity involved.

But a simple creative intelligent being, who could create the universe, but not really dabble in it, would have to be shorter odds.
( as physicists speculate that universes CAN be created, and other higher life-forms are almost a certainty ). So I would still say long odds against, but not in the millions.
A thousand to one against maybe. Of course, many people wouldn't count that as a god.

To me, there is agency or there isn't agency in the sense of un-caused causes floating around, higher intelligences, whatever you want to call it. If agency is just a game the brain plays to make sense of the mechanistic caused reality that is out there and in here, then whether gods exist or not is really a pretty irrelevant issue. It matters little whether you want to buy into a little agency or a lot agency or god agency or only me agency. It's all the same thing and none of it exists.