Probability of the existence of God

In a sense, I guess we could say that you believe in evidence. By that I mean that you believe...nay we say you know that evidence is a rational grounds for belief.There is a mental process that allows us to watch reruns over and over and ignore the ending so that we can enjoy the show. Suspension Of Disbelief.Perhaps what you are suggesting to believers is that in order to embrace reality over fantasy and to be honest, they in essence need to practice Suspension Of Belief. Is that close?

What if several witnesses approached the stand and declared that Ianos wife had also had a great impact on their lives?We still have no evidence that Ianos wife exists, but we do know that something or someone is impacting lives. Iano claims that it is "his wife". What is your response? That you too have other things which arguably impact your life as much as Ianos---and that you don't need to meet or know his wife in order to enjoy a rich and fulfilling life? How is this not an equivalent?

Unfortunately, believers don't get to have their own set of definitions for everything. Again, you can leave out the "by definition".God is, in fact, a product of the human imagination - which may or may not resemble some real entity.The probability of some known entity existing, such as a black zebra with white stripes, can be estimated. For unknown entities, such as gods, how do you even do the calculation? That's why I use the term "likelihood" instead of probability for cases where I can't do the math.The likelihood of gods existing would seem to be very small. The likelihood of them resembling the human imagination of gods is even smaller.

If, upon further investigation, no objective evidence could be supplied that such a wife exists, then what? It reminds me of Sagan's description of an invisible dragon that lives in people's garages.

quote:

---

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

​

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

​

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Dragon.htm

---

What if Iano says that his wife is invisible, and can not be detected by any means devised by man. What then?

To be clear, I would only say that following the evidence is a good thing if your highest priority (at the moment) is to identify reality.If you are not currently interested in identifying reality... say, you'd rather have some fun at the moment... then "evidence" isn't something you should be overly concerned about. It may or may not help, but it's not the "best known method" for humans to have fun... as it (evidence) is the "best known method" for identifying reality.When you say "believe in evidence" it makes me think you're trying to parallel it with "believe in God."
Belief in God is generally an all-encompassing, all-the-time thing for most religiously inclined... right?
Belief in evidence is generally only something you do when trying to identify reality. Which has varying levels of importance throughout each day. I don't understand. Are you trying to say that believers "already know" the ending to life? Hah! Sorry... that's just really rich.
There's a difference between saying you know something and actually knowing it:I can say I know physics better than NoNukes and Son Goku and cavediver all I want. But everyone else can easily see that I don't.
Believers can say they know the ending to life all they want. But everyone else can easily see that they don't.No, I'm not saying anything like that at all.
What I'm saying is that someone who claims to "know the ending of life" needs a smack upside the head and get back to reality.
You don't even have to be 'honest' to understand that... all you have to be is 'not helplessly delusional.'

The point is... if you're going to try to claim God exists because he "has a great impact on your life" then you have to show how that impact cannot come from anywhere else. Otherwise it only shows that something has impacted your life and you currently think that it's because of God.It is known that people can have a great impact on their own lives through the virtue of hope.
That hope can come from God, it can come from family, it can come from yourself, it can come from imagined ideas, it can come from infinite sources.Therefore... having a "great impact on your life" is not evidence of God's existence.
There's too many alternative explanations for such a piece of information to point at a single source. It doesn't make any sense. I think my wording wasn't clear.
"Equivalent" was not meaning iano was on the same level as anyone else who has had "a great impact on their lives" in some way.
"Equivalent" meant "God exists" as much as "my wife" exists.
That is... iano was claiming to be an equivalent on "God exists" as much as anyone else's claim that their "wife exists" just because each has had a "great impact" on their lives.
He's ignoring the other aspects, one being that wives can at least be seen by other people...

I disagree. This fact is not established...only assumed for now...due to lack of evidence.You and Stile! I tell ya... This whole idea that humans define/frame reality is a hallmark of unbelievers thinking. Perhaps you are right in that believers are mildly delusional...I am no doubt adding data to that set of information...but the very fact that I am a believer shows that I am looking at this idea that we are discussing differently from you.Now...this gets back to jars argument concerning god, God, and GOD. His take, if I recall correctly, was that IF GOD (Creator of all seen and unseen) exists, nothing that we humans do, say, believe, or doubt would have any bearing on that reality.Thus...I would amend your statement.God may be a product of the human imagination.IF GOD exists, GOD would quite likely...in fact most certainly NOT be a product of the human imagination. Our idea of GOD would be.

Maybe I wasn't clear. Everything you think about God is a product of your imagination. That is not to say that God is only a product of your imagination. A real "God" might exist but there is no way to know whether your imaginings about God have any resemblance to a real God. It's a hallmark of thinking, period, that what we think is only what we think. It is not necessarily what is.It's only an empty arrogant claim by believers that they understand what really is. That's what I'm saying: our ideas about gods or God or GOD or God-in-twenty-foot-high-flashing-red-italics are always only in our imagination.

Apparently the rather simple argument slipped right past you, Phat, and you descended once again into meaningless nonsense.The debate is about probability, Phat. It's an old thread you've raised fromt he dead, but even you could read the thread title. What we hypothetically allow for the sake of argument is irrelevant to this discussion.What we're talking about is the false estimation of the likelihood of god(s) existing. Many people like to think that, since god(s) either do or do not exist, there is a 50% chance of god(s) either existing or not existing.But that's flat wrong, a mistake that wouldn't be made by anyone with the most basic understanding of probability.Analogously, despite the fact that any given lottery ticket is either a winner or not a winner, the chances of winning the lottery with a given ticket are nowhere near 50%.When I say "figment of anyone's imagination," I mean "anyone's unfounded hypothesis about some way the world actually is, without any evidence to support that hypothesis." If you take some offense to me calling god(s) figments of the human imagination, well, that's the same way I see ghosts and souls and leprechauns and Santa.What you posted, instead of having anything even remotely to do with the actual topic of the long-deceased thread whose rest you took upon yourself to disturb, was a feeble attempt to restore face through appealing to semantic irrelevancies.No, Phat. God does not become real "by definition." Believers obviously do not believe that God is a figment of the imagination, but their raw belief doesn't make them right. God exists or does not exist, regardless of your beliefs. Your statement (I cannot even call it an argument) implies that we can somehow defines things into being, calling them up from nonexistence through our belief in the words that represent them.This is not so.Without evidence, Phat, the probability of any hypothesis, any imagined explanation of the real world, any figment of the imagination, actually accurately reflecting the real world, is no better than a random guess. Any hypothesis about god(s), bereft of evidence or any way for us to actually test for accuracy, floats in a sea of equally likely mutually exclusive hypotheses.The chance of god(s) existing is no better, and I am not exaggerating, than the likelihood that a fairy rests at this moment on your shoulder. It is possible. However, since I can see no reason to believe such a thing, since there is no evidence to suggest that such a thing might be so, since there is no way to test among the infinite variety of similarly unsupported yet mutually exclusive hypotheses as to which among them might be more or less probable than the others...I see no reason to consider your God to be anything more than a fairy tale. I'd be more likely to win the lottery a dozen times in a row, than for your personal belief in God to actually accurately reflect the real world.