fishbulb

I understand, but I am trying to say that you are not justified in drawing that conclusion because you still have zero evidence to support the existence of this hypothetical god. Just because you cannot rule out the existence of an entity does not mean that you can meaningfully say the probability of such a being existing is nonzero; you are not justified in assigning any probability at all--not even a very small one.

If a hypothesis is inconsistent or contradicts reality, we can say there is no probability of it being correct because we can prove that it is false. But the reverse is not true: if a hypothesis is self-consistent and agrees with reality, we are not justified in saying that the probability of it being correct is greater than zero simply by virtue of the fact that we cannot disprove it.

A probability is a finite chance that something is true or will come to pass. In order to make a meaningful statement about a thing or event's probability, you need at least some facts, observations, or other evidence on which to base your conclusion. If the best you can say is that you can't think of anything that would disprove the concept, then you are not justified in saying that it is more or less probable than any other concept. All you can say is, "there is no evidence whatsoever to either support or refute this hypothesis."

The argument, "you can't prove my god doesn't exist so you have to accept the possibility that it does" is one that is made quite commonly, but it is not a convincing argument. (And, the invisible pink unicorn is usually trotted out to demonstrate the flaws with this sort of assertion.) We can only talk meaningfully of the probability that a thing exists if there is at least some postive reason to suspect that it does; the inability to refute a claim in no way constitutes evidence for it.

nemesis855

Sounds like a Hindu version of 18th century Deism.

Dr. Retard

If someone hooked you up to a magic lie detector, put a gun to your head, and said "Tell the truth, roughly how probable do you think this Hindu god is!?", would you say, "Until the possibility is proven, I cannot assign any prob-" and take the bullet?

parkdalian

The less a god contradicts naturalistic explanations the higher probability they have of existing it seems. Fewer specious claims made is good, but not perfect in the god proving/disproving business.

But, while not so anthropocentric, this particular concept is anthropomorphic enough. Losing interest in and going on to some other place to dwell sounds all too human to me. A god with a (relative to other gods) short attention span. It sounds like somebody thought this up on the spur of the moment, as an answer for those who questioned God's role in human affairs. "God must've lost interest, yeah that's it. That's the ticket."

From a psychological perspective it looks like diminished expectations. This god is for those who look at the misery around them and have given up hoping for immediate intervention and personal benefit. They are now simply praying for god to essentially re-activate for the long term benefit of humanity. God Lite!

Radcliffe Emerson

Science is pretty certain how the universe started, and it pretty much rules out an intelligent entity guiding the process.

fishbulb

I don't believe in magic lie detectors. If someone put a gun to my head, I would tell him whatever I thought he wanted to hear.

However, you seem to be misrepresenting my point. I never suggest that something must be proved possible before you can make a judgement about its probability. I wrote that it is meaningless to talk about the probability that something is true when all you have shown is that you haven't proved it to be false.

The issue I take with this line of thinking is that it tries to establish one thing as being more likely than another, even though there is the same amount of evidence for both: none. If there is not even the smallest piece of positive evidence--be it direct, circumstantial, or inferrential--for A, the only thing we can properly say about A is that it is an unsubstantiated claim and therefore is not to be taken seriously. What is the probability that the invisible pink unicorn exists? You can't prove that it can't exist, but there isn't a single shred of evidence to suggest that it does. So is the probability one in a million? One in a billion? One in a hundred billion billion? Is it more or less likely than Yaweh to exist? With no evidence, we are just making things up when we draw conclusions about probability. We ought to just say that, until we have reason to suspect that it might exist, there is no reason to take the claim seriously.

monkey mind

I think a god that doesn't do anything is far more likely to not exist. But I spose that's the point isn't it?

"Oh he exists, he's just chillin' out right now, trust me."

Is the only way you can make it seem that god exists to take away any possible evidence that god might exist?

hinduwoman

Fishbulb lighten up.
They are using monkey mind's tactics. There has never been any evidence of a god existing. This theory makes use of precisely that factor --- no evidence because God is not there at present .