For all the math answerers, I thank you but I need to ask you a question?

Question

Thanks for answering my math questions I have on my homework sometimes. Great help. One question: Do you believe in god? I tend to think people with a decent educations tend to not believe. But isn't that obvious?

gabbiemom i could care less about what you think because your answering about bachelor panties.

Answer 1

I do not believe in God. Kind of ironic, given that my namesake was an ardent Christian, and infamous for his apologetics.

Edit: Well, two people have now quoted "my" wager in this thread, so I guess I have to explain why this argument is absolutely stupid. First note that it is not an argument for God's existence, but rather an argument that the expected value of belief is greater than the expected value of nonbelief. To go from there to the statement "it is rational to believe in God" or "you should believe in God" requires accepting the premise that you should believe whatever will be most valuable to you to believe, rather than what the evidence shows to be likely and possible. Of course, one of the consequences of that axiom is that if the Party demands it, it is rational to believe that two plus two make five, and yet we would not ordinarily characterize someone who is willing to believe the obviously false in order to appease the Party as "rational." So this is a dubious premise at best.

Moving on to the probability calculation itself, it makes two very bad mistakes. The first is simple incompleteness -- Pascal's own words state "if you gain, you gain all; if you lose nothing." This amounts to the assumption that the only two options are that the Christian God exists, or that no God exists. Therefore, if you believe, and God exists, you will gain infinite rewards. Yet, these clearly are not the only possibilities -- there are an infinity of possible Gods out there, any one of which might exist, and most of which will not give you infinite reward (or indeed any reward) for believing in the Christian deity. Yet one might argue that the argument can be salvaged at the cost of weakening its conclusion, by saying that it still justifies belief in one of the Gods that offers infinite rewards for belief (which I shall call an Abrahamic God) over nonbelief in Gods or belief in a non-Abrahamic God. However, even this weakened argument does not stand, because among the possible Gods are gods that, quite the contrary to Abrahamic Gods, _reward_ atheism and _punish_ belief. The possibility that such a God exists is no more offensive to reason than the concept of Gods in general, and indeed provides a ready explanation for the multiplicity of religions and their strong lack of resemblance to what we would expect of divine communication (If you were a God, would you actually use _humans_ as messengers, esp. without giving them some way of authenticating themselves that could not be reproduced by every other "prophet" of the time?), as well as the lack of intervention of God in any of the evils of the world -- to wit, God is f---ing with us. So certainly Gods that provide infinite rewards for disbelief and punishment for belief of any kind must be included in the class of possible Gods. And so if we assume that the probability of both this class of Gods and the Abrahamic Gods is nonzero, then the expected value of both belief and nonbelief becomes the undefined quantity ∞-∞. We are thus unable to assign an expected value to either, and cannot argue on the basis of expected value that belief is superior to disbelief, or vice versa.

The second mistake that the probability calculation makes is that the prior probability that God exists is nonzero. This assumption needs to be justified, since if the probability that God exists is zero, then the contribution of that event to the expected value of belief is also zero, and the expected value of belief is equal to the expected value of belief given that God does not exist. Of course this is simplistic in light of the previous analysis, since there are other possibilities besides the nonexistence of God and the existence of an Abrahamic God, so for the argument to work we must assume specifically that the probability of an Abrahamic God existing is nonzero. Now, one might simply assume that unless it is _impossible_ for an Abrahamic God to exist that the probability of such must be nonzero, but on this point they are demonstrably incorrect. If we pick a real number at random from the closed interval [0, 1], it is certainly _possible_ that we will pick 1/2 (since it is in the interval), but the probability of that event is zero. Indeed, for any specific number in the unit interval, the probability that we will pick exactly that number is zero. And this is not dependent on the fact that there is only one number, or that the set of numbers being considered is finite, or even countable -- the probability of selecting a number from the cantor set is also zero, even though the cardinality of that set is the same as the entire unit interval! Now, if we consider the set of Abrahamic Gods out of all possible Gods, it seems that for a God to be interested specifically in humans out of all the possible creatures on all the planets around all the stars in all the galaxies in the entire universe is quite remote, and if we additionally consider the possibility that it would suddenly take a personal interest in what we believe, and in particular whether we believe specifically in it, and be willing to distribute infinite rewards and punishments based on that -- it's not at all clear that the set of Gods who would do all these things forms a set of positive measure in the set of all possible Gods. And certainly, given the state of the world, the probability that an Abrahamic God exists is not higher than the probability that a random God exists, so in the absence of further evidence, it is entirely rational to suppose that the probability that a specifically Abrahamic God exists actually IS zero, in which case the wager may be ignored entirely.

Finally, there is the interesting fact that even if Pascal's reasoning was absolutely correct, it wouldn't demonstrate the superiority of wagering God exists over wagering God exists if and only if the next 100 flips of a fair coin all come up heads, or any other event with small but finite probability -- after all, if P(the Christian God exists) is nonzero, then P(the Christian God exists and the next 100 flips of a fair coin all come up heads) is the product of two nonzero numbers and also nonzero. So if correctly believing in the Christian God does net infinite rewards no matter how small the probability of that God's existence, then this mixed strategy also yields a finite probability of an infinite reward, and thus also has infinite expected value.

By the way, Northstar, in what way does believing the bible is the word of God _not_ constitute a popular thing to do? Last time I checked, almost everyone in the United States was Christian.

Answer 2

I don't necessarily believe, but I don't really disbelieve either. I'm fairly young (21), and don't feel as though I've had any experiences to give me much decisiveness either way.

I might agree with your statement about education vs. belief, but the tendency is small. Certainly those who pursue higher education tend to be more prominently logical, and so may have a lessened ability to have faith. However, the two are mostly disjoint concepts; being logical and faithful are rarely in conflict. (And as for the "isn't that obvious," it's only obvious if you're absolutely certain that there is no god and that education reveals that fact, which hardly seems like a likely thing.)

I certainly hope that there is something after this life, but my own feelings/experiences don't shed any light on the question of whether or not god(s) exist(s), so for now I'll carry on as I have been: exploring the possibilities and trying to be open to revelations if they exist (without falling into blind faith).

Oh, and nice rebuttal to the wager, Pascal. I would also say that someone who believes in God because it's more profitable to do so is not the most favored of God's people :P

And one final thing, who's the moron that keeps giving "thumbs down" to anyone who replies that they believe?

Answer 3

The month with the fewest birthdays could be July and October. the two a sort of months have 0 birthdays. some might argue that those months have none so the single with the fewest is August. whether in this difficulty July and October have 0 it relatively is definitely a quantity. The question asked for fewest and nil is under a million. August could have been the respond if the difficulty had stated,"Which month with birthdays has the fewest?'

Answer 4

i certainly don't believe in the sort of thinking feeling god that most christians talk about. Whether there is a non-thinking non-feeling non-purposive "higher power" is another question, but its an issue only for feeling about, not for rationalising.

More to the point, I'd say that people who appreciate mathematics have as a character trait a desire to consolidate as much as possible into a condensed form. If that isn't a search for god I dont know what else is!

Answer 5

Faith in god has more to do with blind trust, than with logic. As the illmathematical are not capable of logically deducing anything, blind acceptance is easier. Logic blessed (based) people, however, like to be convinced, rather than to blindly believe in possibly false theories. An excerpt of the flying spaghetti monster is a direct consequence of this =) ...

The Flying Spaghetti Monster is the deity of a parody religion called the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.[1] It was founded in 2005 by Oregon State University physics graduate Bobby Henderson to protest against the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to require the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to biological evolution. In an open letter sent to the education board, Henderson professes belief in a supernatural Creator called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which resembles spaghetti and meatballs.[2] He furthermore calls for the "Pastafarian" theory of creation to be taught in science classrooms.

Answer 6

Remember that God designed the system so that some people would have a hard time believing. And He doesn't want those people. Still, you have a point. Obviously, I have my doctorate and I believe. During my education I observed lots of people going through cycles. The most important aspect was whither or not you had the ear to hear. Education had nothing to do with this.

Answer 7

I have a decent education and I believe in God. I am a Christian and after careful consideration I concluded that taking the Bible in its entirety as the Word of God is an intellectually respectable thing to do. It may not be a popular thing to do, but for someone who values intellectual integrity more than the opinion of others, it is respectable.

Answer 8

Why would you conclude that people with decent education tend not to believe in God?
One Mathematician said, "What would one loss if he believes in God? If there is God and one would not believe in him, then he will loss everything."
Quoted not verbatim.
Do you mean that the more than 1.5 billion Catholics and Christians around the world have no decent education?
If you are an atheist, my question is, "Why would you believe that there is no God?"

Answer 9

Yes shan, I know this might surprise you, but there are quite a number of decently educated people who believe in God. And despite the evolution vs creation dispute between the church and science, there is a handful of scientist, particularly biologists, who believe in God; and that the existence of evolution does not necessarily debunk the existence of God.

Answer 10

Let us consider a paraphrased translation of Pascal's Wager as described in the Pensées. "God either exists or He doesn't. Based on the testimony, both general revelation (nature) and special revelation (Scriptures/Bible), it is safe to assume that God does in fact exist. It is abundantly fair to conceive, that there is at least a 50% chance that the Christian Creator God does in fact exist. Therefore, since we stand to gain eternity, and thus infinity, the wise and safe choice is to live as though God does exist. If we are right, we gain everything, and lose nothing. If we are wrong, we lose nothing and gain nothing. Therefore, based on simple mathematics, only the fool would choose to live a Godless life." Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have nothing to lose. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.

Answer 11

I have decent education and I believe in God.

Depends how you define God. God is not someone who lives in clouds.. The God resides in us, we call it conscience. It keeps us from doing wrong, immoral things.

There is a hairline difference between belief and blind belief. If believing in God keeps you away from evil thoughts and immoral actions, what is harm in believing ? None of God's saying asks us to do anything which is immoral.