Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Laboratory >

Lies, Damn Lies...

10:21 / 09.03.04

A risk assessor, Dr. Stephen Unwin has calculated that there is a 67% chance that God exists, using standard statistical tools.

Do we have any converts? Does Pascal's wager look more attractive to you? Or are you, like me, slightly worried about what this means for more conventional uses of statistics.

12:05 / 09.03.04

after factoring in statements like "this book is a crock " there is 74% chance he wont sell many of his books

13:39 / 09.03.04

I don't understand enough about risk assessment to take this information on. How does it work?

13:50 / 09.03.04

Mr Sharp said William Hill does take bets on the second coming, which currently stand at 1,000/1. For this confirmation is needed from the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I think winning that bet would be shooting yourself in the foot somewhat. "It's as easy as a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven as it is for a camel to pass throught the eye of a needle" and all that...

As for the study itself, it strikes me as ever so slightly dubious that the existence of miracles is taken as coherent with an acceptable data set for Bayes' Theory.

11:51 / 14.04.04

I don't think it'll really matter for several reasons.
1. Bayes Theorem (heck, statistics in general) can be VERY subjective. And since he believes personally with 95% certainty that God exists, he could have easily tweaked the numbers to get a favorable probability.

2. His argument depends on philosophical arguments that can't necessarily be proven, ie the existence of Good and Evil. I'm sure that what he considers good are those things like charity and abstinence and those things evil like murder, rape, and rock and roll. While I won't disagree to many things that are commonly considered Good and Evil, I do believe that these too are subjective. What many believe are Good and Evil would be properly labeled as Social Good and Social Evil.

01:04 / 15.04.04

Also notice that he started out by assuming a 50% prior probability that God (that is to say, his God, the generic Judeo-Christian one) exists. Given that all of the "evidence" he then plugged in only raised the probability to 67%, we can see that:

a) it wasn't very good evidence, since the probability presumably ought to converge to 1 or 0 in the end, and:

b) if he'd picked a different prior probability to start with, he'd come out with a completely different answer. Some people would argue for a starting probability of 0%, since his God is only one possible version out of an infinite collection. Others--like me--would argue that you can't get a meaningful probability here, any more than you could if someone said, "Pick a number. How likely is it that you'll pick five?"

Someone pointed out that, if he considers destructive storms as evidence against his God, he really ought to count them as evidence for Zeus or Thor. Volcanic eruptions as evidence for Pele or Vulcan, horrific rape sprees as evidence for the Scarlet Harlot, and so forth.

12:31 / 15.04.04

I seem to recall that he took the existence of "Good" as evidence for God. Essentially, this begs the question.

You can't apply probabilistic methods to a phenomenon where there is no empirical evidence. To do so requires that you make assumptions as to its nature that are probably the very things under dispute. OK, one has to be careful here, but I definitely think that assinging probabilities to good actions arising from the existence of a deity fall into the "complete bollocks" section of statistical modelling.

17:09 / 16.04.04

This is quite fantastic!

But the question still remains...

Which god has a 67 percent chance of existing?

02:56 / 17.04.04

That one does.

I will probably spend awhile in Barnes and Noble looking at the full list of what was taken into consideration for this probability. I wonder if evolution is on that list.

22:16 / 17.04.04

I. Friggin. Don't. Believe. It.

1. That guy is a scientist. So, he stands in the tradition of enlightenment (I hope I use the proper english term).
2. He talks about the 'natural good or evil'.
3. The basics of his tradition - of the whole antropocentric paradigm - state that good and evil are human categories. SO, THEY CAME AFTER WHAT HE SUPPOSES WAS THE CREATION.
4. ???!!!*****??????????????????????

This kind of crap being disputed the way it is should tell us something about how the media uses science to 'fill the gaps' and reproduce the order of the 'free world' via the picture of the 'highpriest in white'.

If it reads 'scientist reckons', then it is all right.
...

!!!???!!!

12:09 / 14.05.04

Look here, you, there's a simple way to answer this question...

YO, GOD!

All Acting Regiment

20:11 / 22.06.04

If somebody already beleives the answer is yes, they will say yes. Same everywhere you go.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

10:17 / 23.06.04

Madhatter- There's a strong tradition over the centuries since the Enlightenment of scientists being religious. Galileo was, despite the shit he got from the Church (wasn't their initial threat to excommunicate him or some such), Newton and Darwin were also Christians IIRC. The prevailing belief pre-20th century was that science and religion weren't opposites but complementary, scientists were examining the beauty of God's creation.