JPD

Well if it makes you feel better...

Well it seems to me to be the most sensible approach.

More being unable to make "decisions" - you are conveniently forgetting that one cannot suddenly choose to believe such things, and you are also forgetting that there is an unknown risk (but only you believe in them - I don't) associated with adopting a particular course for the sake of attempting to avoid punishment. Such a choice would be reflective of base reactions to situations such as one might exhibit when a mafia hitman was torturing them.

No you need to factor it in - you're the one who believes all this stuff.

And round you twirl on the fairground ride one more time.

The Evil One

Actually, in the narrow sense rhutchin is quite correct. If you have two mutually exhaustive options, then your probability of choosing the right one by tossing a coin is indeed 50%.

Let's assume, for the moment, that God (according to any given definintion) does not exist. If you toss a coin every morning, and decide on the basis of that whether you will believe in God that day, then on average you will be correct in your belief about 50% of the time!

In the cases you cite, the truth of the alternate beliefs is subsumed under the falsehood of the belief being coin-tossed.

but it's easy to demonstrate that this doesn't actually mean anything. Let us imagine that I decide I am going to base my belief about wether or not I am an elephant on the toss of a coin, which I will make each morning as I get out of bed. How often will I be correct in my belief on this score? On averagre, about 50% of the time!

However, if I had not used a coin toss but had followed the evidence (e.g. the fact that I am capable of tossing a coin) I could have come to the conclusion that I am not an elephant, and been correct 100% of the time.

The error lies in assuming that, because you have a 50% chance of choosing the correct one by tossing a coin, then both options are equally likely to be true. Of course this is an invalid inference. It is evaluating evidence that tells us how likely something is to be true, not how likely we are to hit on a belief if we leave all our decisions to chance.

Angra Mainyu

I'm not sure, but I think there may have been a misunderstanding here. Sorry if my posts were unclear.

I think you and I are considering rhutchin’s argument from a different perspective. You are saying that the chances of picking the right option (one of them is true) by chance are 50%. I agree with that, but my argument (which I think addresses his) is that the likelihood of the Bible being true are zero (not 50%), if you don't have any evidence to prove the Bible - if I read your post right, you and I may be saying something very similar; I'm just trying to show him why the chances of the Bible being true (in absense of any evidence) wouldn't be 50%.

In other words, when he says that, "At the very least, I guess a person should flip a coin to decide and have a 50 percent change of being right.", it seems that, by "being right", he means the odds that the option they pick is true (the error you mentioned), not the odds of picking the true option out of a true/false dichotomy. I'm trying to show him why that is an error.

I’ll repeat the argument but with more detail, in case rhutchin want to address it: (and so that if you think it's wrong, you can pick it apart ).

I mentioned 4 options to make the argument simpler, but I had made the point with n options earlier. If the chances of each of the 4 options being correct were ½ (i.e., 50%), then the chances of that at least one of them is correct, would be 2 (200%), which is not possible.

In other words, if you have a set of n elements, one of which has the property “right” (R) – the rest have the property “wrong” (W) –, then your chances of picking the right element are 1/n (they’re zero if no element has property R, but let’s assume that one of them has it).

Back to rhutchin’s argument. He argues that the Bible has 50% chance of having property R (at least, that’s how I interpret his argument; if I’m wrong, I’d like to know what he meant ).

Apart from the Bible, I considered 3 other books (or whatever the beliefs are written on). Now, at most one of them has property R. Let’s assume one does. Then, the chances of the Bible having property R would be ¼. So, rhutchin’s argument would be wrong, since the chances (without any evidence to back the Bible) are no greater than ¼.

Now, let’s consider a set of n mutually exclusive beliefs, and let’s add the Bible to it.
Say, A(n) = {Bible, b(1), b(2)…b(n)}, where at most one element has property R. Let’s assume one of them has property R.

Then, if that’s your only basis for deciding, the odds are as follows:

The Bible has property R: 1/n+1
There exists an integer j, 0 < j < n+1, such that b(j) has property R: n/n+1.

Granted, I assumed one of the elements in my set had property R, which I didn’t have to. But if none of them has property R, then odds of the Bible having property R are 0. So, my point is that the odds of the Bible being right, can’t be greater than 1/n+1, as far as we could tell if we have no evidence at all.

However, given that n is arbitrary, for all real s > 0, the odds of the Bible being right are less than s (take n such that 1/n+1 < s). That means the odds of the Bible being right are zero, if you have no evidence to consider (while rhutchin seem to argue that the odds of something being true, if you have no evidence of it being either true or false, are 50%).

The Evil One

No, I agree entirely with your conclusion, Angra Mainyu. I just didn't think that the way you demonstrated it was the most straightforward route to that conclusion - 50% + 50% + 50% and so on. (When I said "you" in the paragraph you cited, I meant "you" in the generic sense of "one", not "you" in the sense of "you, Angra Mainyu"!)

The toin-coss, 50% chance-of-being-right method doesn't give you any means of distinguishing among a set of alternatives, as you point out. In the real world, we are presented with such sets of alternatives all the time and so in the real world, any approach to these matters that is not based on evidence will end up with you needlessly holding false beliefs.

Angra Mainyu

Don't worry, I didn’t think you meant “you, Angra Mainyu”.
I just got the impression that you had the impression that I was arguing that one didn’t have 50% chance in the sense you mentioned - but in that sense, I agree you have 50%. Sorry, my bad. :grin:

I concede that my argument may not have been a very clear way of explaining why rhutchin’s argument doesn’t work. I wasn’t my first choice, btw., but I had attempted an argument similar to the latest I posted (n possibilities, etc., which I think is better), and apparently, that didn’t convince rhutchin, so I thought I’d try something else.

Interestingly, for a moment it looked as though he had accepted that point, because he posted a reply in which he tried to say that the possibilities were not equal and that there was evidence supporting his claim. Alas, it seems it only looked that way, since he went back to the 50% argument.

Agreed.

I wonder what rhutchin will argue.

Johnny Skeptic

That doesn’t work. Paul says that it is not surprising that Satan masquerades as an angel of light, but how could Paul have known which supernatural beings tell the truth, and which tell lies? If a God exists, and inspired the writing of the Bible, the odds are no better than even that you or anyone else can determine whether or not he is masquerading as an angel of light. Jesus said that in order for a man to become a Christian, he must love God with all of his heart, soul, and mind. It is not possible to make a commitment like that based upon no better than even odds. That commitment implies PROBABILITY, not POSSIBILITY. This is quite simple. The average sixth grader knows that the word “all” implies PROBABILITY, not POSSIBILITY.

I repeat, “Paul says that it is not surprising that Satan masquerades as an angel of light, but how could Paul have known which supernatural beings tell the truth, and which tell lies?”

Tangent

If he prays and lives does that mean god saved his life?

If so then doesn't that also mean that if he dies god allowed him to?


I don't understand how you, as grown men, can look at yourself in the mirror and honestly say you believe any of this fairy-tale nonsense. If you don't start with the unreasonable, untestable and unintuitive belief of a god, then it doesn't matter what the Bible says about homosexuality. In the end it's just a book with no more authority than any other. In fact, due to the majority of it's content it should be given less authority. If you don't want to throw out Jesus' message of love, read the mythology of the upanishads or turn to Kant's categorical imperative. You don't have to subscribe to a deity and you cut out a lot of the mental, historical and factual gymnastics required to have the Bible/xtianity retain ANY integrity.

As for the wager, what if you learned of a new, separate god. This god offered an even MORE horrible punishment for those who do not believe in him than the xtian deity does. Would you then convert immediately to this other god because "hey, the risk is now greater"? Or is the wager just an excuse to try to justify your preexisting notions?

rhutchin

Yep. Actually, if the person lives, it is because God saved his life. If the person dies, it is because God allowed him to die.

The real question is whether prayer would make a difference in that situation. To determine do this, we would have to identify whether a person were a Christian since even non-Christians will sometimes pray because they might think God answers any person's prayer. I am convinced (I would hypothesize) that the prayer of a righteous person (one who serves God) is effectual. Maybe you can devise a method to test that hypothesis to disprove it.

So, you can prove that the Bible is "fairy-tale nonsense." Somehow I doubt it. However, you are welcome to your opinions as long as you understand your opinions are not automatically true.

Well, my suspicion is that you may not know much about the Wager based on the above. What do you see the Wager telling you in your example?

rhutchin

Paul must be smarter than either one of us. Paul also explains that the person who says one thing and does another is masquerading. Thus, Paul's approach was to compare that which a person said to that which he did. The person who says one thing and does the other is masquerading as an angel of light. That works.

rhutchin

rhutchin argues that you go where the evidence takes you. Forget the coin toss.