hatsoff

To be sure, God can never be proven, but can he be proven as likely or unlikely? Is it possible to apply a probability, precise or relative, to supernatural ideas?

This question seems very important, but I have found no discussions to its effect. Some atheists and theists contend God exists or does not, but how can they make conclusions about the supernatural when we have but empiricism (or skepticism) at our evidenciary disposal?

Perhaps more to the point, if one is to say an alleged supernatural event is likely or unlikely, how does he demonstrate his calculations?

I look forward to your insights.

fredhsu

Have you tried the God Delusion from Dawkins or the Atheist Universe from Mills? This problem has been addressed. The bottom line is: do you believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Do you think it is ridiculous to have to come up with a precise equation so we can prove the degree of probability of its existence?

hatsoff

No, I have not.
Obviously not.

I can't say. Precision isn't necessary for likelihood.

Toto

I think this is in the wrong forum. Perhaps EOG?

ETA: we do have a thread on the probability of miracles. But this is a frequent topic in discussing how history can be derived from ancient texts. There is no textual aspect to this thread that I can see.

I will move this to EOG

Bobinius

God can be disproven. It all depends on the conception of God you are disproving. Logical arguments can be used for certain conceptions of God.

Why God cannot be proven?

How can we draw conclusions about the supernatural when we have empiricism to work with (I don't know what is skepticism doing there,it has nothing in common with empiricism)? What does this mean? No evidence for it. Low probability. What's the problem?

Johan

One can, of course, set one's subjective Bayesian priors for the EoG as high as one wants. Different strokes for different folks.

But (since I've caught Mirage napping before he could pounce on this thread) as Hume showed, even given arbitrarily high subjective priors, the conclusion that any specific event description reports an actual miracle will always require a report whose errancy is more miraculous than its truth. A terrible bind for empirically-minded theists.

Cheerful Charlie

Any number of people have been applying probablility to god's existence. Google, probability gf god, bayesian. And we also have te concept of warranted belief, the idea that there is enough od if.even if we have no one adequate proof of god, enough is known about god to warrant belief in god.

IDists and other religious thinkers have been applying reverse probability to the god problem,
stating it is inpossible, probablistically speaking, naturalism can be true which implies a god/designer. Again, Alvin Plantinga takes theology in this direction, there is an AP essay online on naturalism where you can see how he uses this claim to attempt to show belief in god is then waranted. See also anthropic principle which is used in this manner.

Supernaturalism has a problem with miracles as one is never sure it really is against natural law.
A counter argument against miracles, you'd have to have perfect understanding of the natural world. This argument makes any possible probablistic claims about supernaturalism as far as miracles goes a problem. Making attacks on naturalism popular.

Cheerful Charlie

hatsoff

That's pretty much what I was thinking, but I'm just a little worried I may be oversimplifying things. It seems any metaphysical beliefs are entirely dependent on individual perspective. I can't find any logical reasoning behind any category, from specific religions to atheism. This seems to imply agnosticism is the proper ideology, but even that requires an unfounded belief that lack of empirical evidence prevents sound conclusions.

Among other things, it also means there is an impenetrable barrier between the religious and the non-religious. It seems fundamentally impossible to prove anything at all, or to even assign probabilities not based on an agreed axiom--something Christians, for example, never share with atheists or agnostics.

In all, I find this somewhat disturbing.

SophistiCat

In order to assess probabilities, you first need a specific hypothesis, independent from observation. That is what is usually lacking. To point at something and say "goddidit" is not a hypothesis but a pure ad-hockery.

If you can, on the basis of some hypothesised mechanism, make a prediction and then confirm it, then you have something. But the way it usually is, when a prayer, say, is followed by a favourable outcome, the believer rationalises post hoc that God said "yes"; if the outcome was negative, the believer thinks that God said "no". In fact, since no prediction was made before the outcome was known, neither outcome can either confirm or disconfirm God's action.