Wiploc

Imagine there is a whole set of possible universes, in one of them, no god exists. In one of them 1 god exists. In one of them 2 gods exist. And so on to the universes with transfinite numbers of gods. If we were randomly assigned to one of these universes, it would be infinitely more likely to be one with more than one god than one with between 0 and 1.

Thus, using math of the same quality as that in the above quote, we have proved that everyone should assume god(s) exist.
crc

Phanes

Based on my limited understanding, I would say agnostic theist, or maybe even fideist. The former is someone who believes in some sort of God (or gods), but denies that knowledge of said deity is possible. The latter is someone who believes in God on faith alone. Of course I didn't see you use the word faith to describe your belief, but if you deny any logical basis for it, that may amount to the same thing.

Personally I think agnostic theism and fideism have too many problems to be philosophically justifiable, but if - as you said - you don't care about that sort of thing, then naturally that shouldn't bother you.

aelyn

David:

Thanks for the list of articles. I will definitely read them as time permits.

I feel sort of insecure without a label so I may have to make up my own. Does anyone know that Latin for wishywashy?



Phanes:

Perhaps someday after I have been here long enough, I will try to justify my position (or non position) just for the sake of trying, but I may have to take a philosophy class first.

David Bowden

Fenceus-sitterus maximus?



[ edited to add: I forgot; in Pig Latin it's "Encefay-Ittersay Aximusmay" ]

malpensante

Xianseeker:
I am an atheist polytheist, and there are gods towards which i feel the first kind of agnosticism, and gods towards i feel the second kind. Some I believe are unknowable, some unknown.

Phanes:
The agnostic must know what it is that he doesn’t know about, that reminds me of a paradox posed by Socrates: how am I supposed to remember something, if when I try to do it, it is because I don’t have it in mind, and I don’t know it, but if I don’t know it, how can I search it in my mind? For I need to know it in order to know when I have found it, but if I know it, then I don’t need to try to remember it.


Bumble bee tuna:
You could also say that in all universes god has 100% chance of existing, which what others claim, by saying that all universes necessitate god, and end the discussion. You need to pose a reason for your probability distributions leaning heavier towards some extreme, and I need not pose any reason for my impartial one.

Violent messiah:
if I’m confident of my blank vote choice, I also expect many other people to agree with me, and what happens in those cases is not that the country is left without a president forever, rather, that a new choice appears. To make the analogy, I am more willing to believe in an alien, semi-omniscient, semi-omnipotent, semi-omnibenevolent semi-god(s). But I’m still more willing to belive in a god which is nothing other than the universe (or multiverse) itself, like pantheists do.

ingersoll:
both believing that ideas are emergent properties of matter, and that matter is an emergent property of ideas, are forms of foundationalism, the claim that there is some fundamental entity in existence, from which other entities derive its existence as emergent properties. i believe ideas and matter have the same existential status when they do have it. except, maybe, in ideas, when discussing dennett's semi-realism levels.

darth dane:
agnostics ask two questions:
to the theists: why must god be everywhere?
to the atheists: why must god be absent?

aelyn:
i don't know what you are, but i think you are one theist about your particular vague god. one can have different positions about different gods.

david bowden:
i agree, it's the content, not the label, that counts, and i say, if you don't find a ready-made label fitting your content after looking hard, don't bother coming up with a new label.

wiploc: imagine the universes valued with numbers of god after the set of integer numbers. infinite universes contain a negative number of gods (-1, -2, -3,...,-infinite), one universe where there are zero gods, and an infinite number of universes containing all positive integer numbers of gods (1, 2, 3,...+infinite), according to this, we live in the universe where there are zero gods. (actually, this is a joke). i'll finish this post later, bye.

SecularFuture

The first word in your statement is 'imagine'? Are you asking us to use our imaginations to understand our universe instead of logic?

Instead of asking ourselves "does God exist?", we should first ask ourselves "why should God exist?". Is there any reason or evidence for the existence of a deity? Is there a natural way to explain the origins of our universe? Did religion (theism) derive from our ancient, perception based, pre-scientific theories?

malpensante

wiploc: i agree that your argument that there are many gods uses math of the same quality as my argument that we should be agnostic. but it doesn't use the same physics as my argument. in your argument you talk about universes with differing numbers of gods, in mine i talk about universes with differing probabilities for knowing whether there is a god. although, with your argument, you have signaled a very important addition i should make in mine. i shouldn't talk about probabilities for knowing whether there is one god, but whether there is at least one god. and this is a very satisfactory inclusion, since i don't consider myself an agnostic monotheist, but an agnostic polytheist, that is, i don't know whether there is at least one god, but i think if there were at least one, it would be more probable that there were more than one. (i will change the first post of this thread accordingly right now).

you might ask why my physics are better than yours: because i am talking about agnosticism beating theism and atheism, and the three are stances on probabilities for an existence of god, valued thus: theism: 100%; atheism: 0%; agnosticism: any value within.
i am not talking about what's the real number of gods is (1, 2, 3,...,infinite), or if there is really none (0). (that is, i'm not talking directly about whether god(s) exist(s)).

secularfuture:
good imagination is the application of logic to counterfactuals. bad imagination is the misapplication of logic to counterfactuals. counterfactuals are things that could be but are not.

Wiploc

And since my argument was worthless, you should realize that yours is too. But you still seem to think you have proven something. So let's try it again:

- Imagine that there is a whole set of possible
- universes, in one of them it is 100% probable
- that you have at least one mother. In another
- it is 0% probable. In the rest of universes,which
- are infinite in number, there is every value within
- 1 & 0 of probability. it is infinitely more probable
- that we live in one of these universes than in any
- one of the formers. Thus, agmaternalism is infinitely
- more probably correct than maternalism or anti-maternalism,
- and doubt about whether you have a mother is an
- accurate view of reality.

Thus we see again that your logic is worthless. You cannot determine whether something exists in this universe by inventing other universes and pretending you can randomly assign us to one of them.

No matter how many other universes you invent, your argument will always have a persuasiveness of zero in this universe.
crc

SecularFuture

A good imagination is best used to conceive new ideas, inventions, etc. It should never be used, alone, to process data.

malpensante

wiploc: this is getting really interesting, i'm already considering to throw my argument to the garbage, but i'm willing to give it a final defense, just to see how you fare against it:

you have, in the "agnostic maternalism" example, taken the same physics as my "agnostic polytheism" one. but i do find (or create) another flaw: you have assigned the values for probability under different assumptions. under my (admittedly, so far, unspecified) assumptions, which i will of course claim are less worthless than yours, if perhaps not perfect, god(s) deserves the whole spectrum of values within 1 & 0 randomly attributed accross all universes, but mother(s) not. why?: because there are many flawed arguments for and against the existence of god(s), and no universally convincing argument for or against the existence of god(s). but there is at least one universally convincing argument for the existence of mom(s): every human being is made of 46 chromosomes, 23 of which come from a father and 23 from a mother, and if you're a man's clone it only means that those 23 maternal genes come from two generations above instead of the normal one. thus, my assumption for the value assignment would assign (very generously towards your argument) 100% probability of existence of mother(s) in half the universes, and every value within 100% and 0% for the other half of the universes.

so, in response to your general argument, yes i can determine whether something exists in this universe by inventing other universes and pretending i can randomly assign us to one of them, if my value assignment method is justified. the persuasiometer has sweeped back to 100%.