What I did was a meta-analysis including fact/science and reason/logic (I included the prime mover as a theoretical argument) for a science question.

The question I asked was in the realm of science rather than faith: ‘was there a creator of the universe’- that is not a faith question - did I mention religion anywhere in my post?

The question I asked was in the realm of science rather than faith: ‘was there a creator of the universe’- that is not a faith question - did I mention religion anywhere in my post? — Devans99

The question in the realm of science is "how was the universe created" - and we all await an answer. The lack of a scientific answer so far, is factual proof of nothing, other than the statement "we don't have a scientific answer for how the universe started"

You addition of a prime mover, is an argument based on reason, not science. And your use of probability analysis to quantify the likelihood of a "creator" is , using the wrong tool for the job.

Proposition 1 - There was a creator god

Assume 50% probability true to start with — Devans99

Why?

If I know nothing about the proposition, then I cannot assign a probability value to it.

Big Bang is evidence for creator at 60% probability so combining probabilities:

Again, why? Where is this 60% number coming from? Why not 30%? Or 0%? Or 100%? Or 75%?

Fine tuning is evidence for the creator 75% probability so:

Annnndd... same question.

Prime mover is evidence for the creator 25% probability so:

Yup.

To double check, I’ve done the inverse proposition below:

The thing is, you're just pulling numbers from your intuitive feeling for them. There is no reason to accept your probabilities. For some proposition 1 has a 0% probability of being true, and for some it has a 100% probability of being true. And, in the end, you have to have some kind of knowledge of the world to reliably assign a probability -- so in the case of a evenly weighted coin we know that we will get heads 50% of the time, over the course of infinitely many coin-flips, because we know things about the coin. Same goes for card games or pulling different colored balls out of bags.

But we know nothing about God, so we cannot assign a probability to his existence or not aside from our intuitive feelings on the matter, which diverge wildly because of extra-probabilistic reasons.

f I know nothing about the proposition, then I cannot assign a probability value to it. — Moliere

- You can. A little bit of common sense and statistics tells us, on average, the answer to yes/no questions (for which nothing else is known) is 50% yes, 50% no.

Again, why? Where is this 60% number coming from? Why not 30%? Or 0%? Or 100%? Or 75%? — Moliere

- The actual % I’m using are rather arbitrary; just concentrating on the general method at this point, will refine the estimates as I learn more science and philosophy.

for some proposition 1 has a 0% probability of being true, and for some it has a 100% probability of being true. — Moliere

- Sure people can pick a number like 0% or 100% based on intuition or faith, but that’s not very scientific. Prefer a meta-analysis using probability and science.

But we know nothing about God, so we cannot assign a probability to his existence — Moliere

- By his work he shall be known to us.

- You can. A little bit of common sense and statistics tells us, on average, the answer to yes/no questions (for which nothing else is known) is 50% yes, 50% no. — Devans99

I'd say that common sense, in this case, is misleading. How many yes/no questions are there? I don't think there is any reasonable way to count. Language is often characterized as a system of expression which uses finite resources to express infinite possible sentences. That's because we simply do not know how many sentences there may possibly be -- it basically looks like infinite to us. So there is no way of knowing if 50% of yes/no questions are yes or no. We simply lack the ability to count. Just because there are two answers that does not mean that both answers are weighted the same. Take a look at the colored ball set-ups for probability. If we have 5 red balls and 20 blue balls in the same bag, then the probability of drawing a red ball is 20 percent. There are only two possible outcomes, but the outcomes have different probabilities because of how many of each there are.

In the case of God there really is only a probability of either 0 or 1, because existence does not admit of degrees. At least not without some fairly strange notions about reality that are clearly not going to be shared by everyone.

I might modify this a bit though and say there is no non-arbitrary way to assign a probability. Clearly you can just pick a number.

- Ok accepted we have limited evidence on answers to yes/no questions; but we can still pick ‘the best answer’ in a statistical sense:
- Do we go for the midpoint on a normal probability distribution or one of the end points?
- We will be more correct in a statistical sense if we pick the midpoint of normal distribution - 50%

- We will be more correct in a statistical sense if we pick the midpoint of normal distribution - 50% — Devans99

That is only the case for phenomena which follow a normal distribution, though. To pick the normal distribution is an arbitrary assumption. There are plenty of pheneomena for which this assumption doesn't hold -- non-normal distributions. And in the case of Yes/No questions, without a method of counting, we simply do not know what kind of distribution holds.

But we have omitted no evidence at all yet so we don’t know what the distribution is but we can still pick the statistically most likely distribution which is normal.

if you are looking for some semi- scientific based argument for the God as creator, with a bunch of math and probabilities - The fine tuning argument by design works pretty well - See Dr. Hud Hudson's lecture attached.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6qWzxKVBko

But we have omitted no evidence at all yet so we don’t know what the distribution is but we can still pick the statistically most likely distribution which is normal. — Devans99

I'm not sure how your first statement links to your second one. And picking a distribution you can do -- but it's pretty arbitrary. What's to stop me from saying that the statistically most likely distribution is exponential? Especially given that you've said we know nothing about the external world?

Why not?

Thinking a little more deeply about it -- what is the graph you propose?

I would put it like this. The x-axis is the number of yes/no questions asked. So we don't have to worry about infinity, we can look at the tendency. The Y axis is percent of questions whose answer is no. We have the ability to generate all kinds of no questions -- like "Is the desk brown?" Now supposing that the desk is indeed brown, we can say yes. But then we can also ask "Is the desk green? Is the desk gray? Is the desk blue?" and so on, for all the colors that it is not. We can ask "Is the desk three feet tall?" -- and, again, supposing that it is, we can also ask "Is the desk four feet tall? Is the desk two feet tall?" and so on.

So an exponential distribution even makes sense in the case of yes/no questions -- there are surely more "no" answers than "yes" answers. And the more questions we ask, because we can also ask different questions that are about the same object, and there are more no's for any given object, the more no questions there are.

I see your point but you are picking questions with evidence built into the question:

- so you ask the question ‘is the desk brown?’
- so we already know the probability distribution of brown / all the other colours is not normal
- so the question ‘is the desk brown?’ we already have evidence for
- so it is not in the set of questions for which we have no evidence for
- so we can’t assign 50% / 50% as an outcome

In contrast the question ‘is there a creator?’ has no in built evidence so the 50% / 50% is the statistically correct answer.

I do not know what you mean by evidence being built into a question. The primary difference I see is that you're asking about existence, whereas I had questions about properties. But I have evidence that the desk exists. I see it right here. So I don't see how existence is somehow different, or how a creator is somehow different from questions about properties of things. The more questions we ask, the more "no" answers we will have.

So I'll ask again -- what is this graph that you propose? What is on the x-axis, and what is on the y-axis? And what would a normal distribution look like for questions of the sort that can only be answered in two ways?

‘the desk is brown?’ - I know brown is one of (say) 50 colours so evidence of the distribution of the answer is in the question IE everyone would pick 1/50=2% as the answer.

Some questions that don’t have evidence baked in:

‘Is there a creator god?’
‘Is the dog nice?’
‘Is the frog fat?’

So questions can be about existence or boolean valued properties only. All of these types of questions are statistically best answered 50% / 50%.

Some questions that don’t have evidence baked in:

‘Is there a creator god?’
‘Is the dog nice?’
‘Is the frog fat?’

So questions can be about existence or boolean valued properties only. All of these types of questions are statistically best answered 50% / 50%. — Devans99

I'd say that it depends on the domain under consideration, and so evidence is a part of such things.

"Is the dog nice?" -- the weight given yes or no would depend upon the percentage of nice dogs there are. So, like the ball example, if we just chose some random dog from the set there would be a percentage assignable based upon what so far has been observed.

But if you just mean to restrict questions to boolean values, 0 or 1, then OK.

If mathematical objects are allowed then it could be demonstrated that there are more "No" answers, as well -- 2 + 2 = 4, but it does not equal any other number. The "ball" you'd be picking out is the predicate, some number, and only one such number exists for which the answer to the question "Is 2+2=x?" is yes.

If not, then you'll have to further restrict what you mean by the relevant domain. Because at this point your domain is any question for which there is a yes or no answer, and which there can only be two possible outcomes for the object under consideration.

You are displaying a gross misunderstanding of probability. Either the creator exist or it does not and that has nothing to do with probability.

Possible outcomes refer to a random event. If you flip a fair coin, on the flipping, it has a 50% chance of being heads or tails, but after it lands it is either heads or tails.

For example, say we flip a fair coin and it lands on heads. Now after the flip but before it lands there was a possible outcome of heads or tails; however, once it landed on heads there is no possible outcome tails. Probability is removed from the picture, it is heads and no matter how many times you check the coin it will not come up as tails.

I'd say that it depends on the domain under consideration, and so evidence is a part of such things. — Moliere

- It depends how you do the math, I am starting with a question like ‘is the dog nice?’ which has no evidence built into it, so I start 50% / 50%
- then as a separate step, I allow for any evidence I had about dogs:
- say I had a survey saying 70% of dogs are nice, 30% are unknown temperament
- then I have 50% + 50% x 70% = 85% dogs are nice
- the math works the other way round too. Starting with the survey we know 70% of dogs are nice, that just leaves the 30% unknown of which we assume half to be nice IE:
-70% + 30% x 50% = 85%

You have not read (or have misunderstood) the relevant parts of this thread.

But your starting with 50% is entirely arbitrary. You just like the number 50%, so you decided to start there. It seemed like a good number to you.

If the survey is correct, then 70% of dogs are nice. 85% of dogs are not nice just because you tacked on an arbitrary 50% to some unknown quantity. The 30% who are unknown could all be mean. There is literally no reason to assume 50% of the unknown quantity are one of two values. They are simply unknown, and if you were to choose a random dog then, given the evidence that you have, you'd be making a good bet by saying the dog is nice.

The survey found 70% of dogs nice and 30% of an unknown temperament.

What do we assume for the 30% unknown? We have no evidence either way so the best assumption statistically is 50% of them are mean. IE we don’t know the distribution so we assume the statistically most likely distribution of 50%/50%

If you have to make an assumption you're basically admitting the point -- that the number you're assigning is arbitrary. Just because you believe 50/50 is the statistically most likely distribution that does not mean that it is -- thus far all you have for that belief is the assertion of the belief.

if you believe your survey, as a basis of assigning probability, the other 30 percent may be some other adjective, but what they can not be is nice.

An assumption is required to complete the calculation. We have taken into account everything we know about dogs and we still have 30% of dogs for which no evidence is available so we have to guess what proportion are mean. What is the best possible guess?

- We could assume 100% of then are mean
- We could assume 0% are mean
- We could assume 50% are mean

The 3rd answer is best because the normal distribution is the most common distribution. Distributions where 100% or 0% is the best choice are much rarer.

The 3rd answer is best because the normal distribution is the most common distribution. — Devans99

You've got it bass-ackwards. Which distribution just depends upon the phenomena under consideration. It's not like all phenomena are linked together, and a distribution is picked because most phenomena follow such-and-such a distribution. That's just goofy. Besides you still haven't spelled out what your graph is measuring, so I don't know if it even matters all that much.

Assuming the survey is correct then 70% of dogs are nice. That's it

The best thing you can say about what you do not know is that you do not know. So if the survey was not done well, if there is a subset of dogs to which the survey does not apply, then the best thing you can say is that you do not know if they are nice or not -- it would be premature of you to say "Well, it is the best guess that half are one way and half are another way"

Oh dear I have the math wrong. Sorry to waste your time...

Eh, it's not like I wasn't enjoying myself. I wouldn't engage if I wasn't -- so no need to apologize.

Drawing a distinction between religious (or better, spiritual) experiences, and religious (or better, theological) concepts, and religion itself; inasmuch as beliefs and narratives (i.e., significant components of religion) are human universals (Brown, 1991), religion has metaphysical significance. — Galuchat

I'm not quite sure what you are saying here. Is it that particular beliefs and narratives are universals or that belief and narrative in general are universal?

That you have linked the spiritual to affect (an aspect of responsiveness, or corporeal condition), and apokrisis has linked it to cognition (an aspect of awareness, or mental condition), thereby linking spiritual to different aspects of consciousness (mass noun), I find new and interesting. — Galuchat

I think it's interesting to consider how religious (spiritual, mystical) experience has been considered historically. Has it predominately thought to be cognition or affection based? It's also instructive to think about this question with the arts in mind.

Of course there are both affective and cognitive elements inherent in such experiences (and in aesthetic experience in general) and what is "revealed" in or by such experiences has obviously been culturally enshrined in symbolic systems and then worked over and greatly elaborated by discursive intellects. I think it basically comes down to one question: Is there reliable intellectual intuition? In relation to what is being considered here, this is to ask whether the intuitions accompanying religious (and poetic) experiences tell us anything determinately substantive about the metaphysical nature of reality.

For example, if many people throughout history have reported having profoundly moving experiences that lead them to believe that there is a God who loves us, then ask if precisely this experience is universal across cultures, and if not what are the differences and what are the commonalities. Then ask whether the commonalities should that be taken, intersubjectively speaking, as good evidence that there really is whatever the commonalities would seem to reveal, if anything.

Even if the answer to the question of whether the experience of a loving God is universal were 'Yes', (which I actually don't think it is) then ask whether there might be other more or less plausible explanation for the universality of this kind of experience. And there would seem to be some such explanations, even if such a kind of experience were universal. My point here is that there doesn't seem to be any way to justify a belief that what is intuited as a discursive or narrative dimension in such experiences could give us any reliable evidence as to the metaphysical nature of reality.

But I also think this does nothing whatsoever to diminish the affective value of such experiences to those who have them, because if they are convinced, and such conviction may be life-changing,in a very positive way, it is on account of their own personal experience. If they choose to have faith, though, they should be educated enough to realize that their convictions really are nothing more than personal faith, which means they have no justification for objectifying whatever symbolic narrative or allegory they have placed their faith in, and universalizing it, and then seeking to force it on others. If the tendency to project personal faith is intelligently curbed then such experiences can also have great social value, as the general trend seems to be that the authentically faithful become less concerned about themselves, and more compassionate, helpful and even loving towards others.

I'm not quite sure what you are saying here. Is it that particular beliefs and narratives are universals or that belief and narrative in general are universal? — Janus

The latter.

I read all your post and that is more then enough to know you are completely clueless.

Right. So then there is the further question of whether there are universal elements in these beliefs and narratives. I think this is where it becomes a matter of interpretation. Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces comes to mind. Any thoughts?