Do you believe in God? Why/Why not?

[palou]

GhaudePhaede010 said:

JWeinCom said:

Bayesian analysis is kind of wonky.  It has its uses, but existential claims are not one of them.  Basically you are allowed to plug in whatever variables you want into the premises and assign whatever likelyhood you want to them.  (For example I could say the existence of smores is 1,000 times more likely if god exists).  

There's no real hard data behind it, so whatever answer you get is subjective.  Everyone will get a different outcome.

Well of course it is a little, "wonky" because it is statistics. I mean, no statistic is proven fact, just a chance against odds. So, I am not preaching there is a God based on my last research. I am explaining why I believe there is a God and using statistics is one of those reasons. It may be the main one, but still, I have a belief and I have a reason to believe. However, we are on a video game website speaking about a Creator and the, "irony"  that people would deny a Creator on a site based around the exact way a Creator works is not lost on me. Sometimes we deny even though the reasoning and logic may be literally right in front of our face.

This is not proper statistical theory... -_- Actually, isn't even bad statistics - it's horribly bad probability

 

On what premise do you start at 50%? That's not something you can just declare without justification. That's not a "natural state" for the existence of something without any evidence for or against. If I take a completely random set of qualifiers for an object/thing/etc... the probability of its existence, without evidence for or against, goes towards zero as I add specificity.

 

The arguments are rather ridiculous, as well. "I agree that the existence of goodness is more probable in a world in which God exists." 

 

 ? so, you see no evolutionary interest in a social species that helps each other? 

 

And what makes you declare that a god would necessarily be good?

 

If you're not talking about a *specific* god, we can attribute him no characteristics

 

If you're talking about a specific god... well, that would be even more absurd as a probabilistic analysis. I could invent you any number of slightly different benevolent gods that would fill all the qualifiers in that list, which all contradict each other's existence, but each have a probability of over 50% to exist, with these calculations. (obviously absurd.) 

 

I rather despise it when "math" is misused so blatantly.