Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

I have done the math

Zig Ziglar quote

   Post 111.  October 12, 2020 continued . . . .

  The Probability of God

   Faith Math vs Skepticism

 Although the ability to discern what’s good for self, is inherent in all living creatures, only humans have words for those glimpses of future ramifications. Nevertheless, I don’t agree with Unwin that such explicit knowledge of Goodness is worth ten points in favor of divine intervention. According to Isaac Asimov, even robots are programmed to look-out for their own interest10. Moreover, if natural evolution could produce sentient organisms, a sense of goodness would seem to be mandatory for survival. But of course, the writers of Genesis had no concept of evolution. Unwin does though; so he should know better. Yet, he concludes that “there is only a 10 percent probability that a godless universe would produce recognition of the good”. This seems to be his most important criterion, but an atheist could dismiss it with a wave toward a mouse trying to sneak past a cat, to avoid bad consequences. And, even mice & cats have some sense of altruism.

Therefore, I doubt that his “faith math” will have any impact on the faithless. Though it might support the questioning faith of a believer, with the implication that the existence of God has been conclusively proven with hard numbers. But that’s the problem with this whole exercise : the numbers are not “hard”. They are tainted with prejudiced beliefs. This is not to say that Bayesian calculations are useless for less cosmic questions. Since most of our reasoning begins with prior assumptions, going through such a logical procedure may reveal some of our implicit biases11.

Unwin hopes that his calculations will supplement the faith of his fellow Christians. Yet, he denies that “faith is mathemat-ically equivalent to antireason”. So he calls his personal position “reasoned belief”. As a retort to anticipated objections, he asks, “is it appropriate to assume that an atheist’s beliefs do not consist exclusively of the reasoned element?”12 Then, he clarifies that, “the idea that faith is a cautious, limited excursion beyond the boundary of evidence is one that I think is in-appropriate”. Instead, he admits that, according to Catholic doctrine, “it is the human faculty of will, and not reason, that plays the crucial role in achieving faith”13. Moreover, “this position is fully consistent with . . . the notion that faith ultimately rests on an accumulation of probabilities”. I can’t deny that, so the existence of the hypothetical deity in my Enformationism thesis is taken to be only probably true — more likely than not. So, although I have “done the math”, I remain agnostic about the actual existence of my logically necessary Enformer.

As Unwin implies, even the Atheist “faith” of a godless materialist, like Richard Dawkins, may also be based on an intuitive estimate of the probability that our world could not exist except for some supernatural power. However, I suspect, that, if Dawkins used Unwin’s method of calculating divine probability, his answer would be quite different. Is that due to Reason, or to Willfulness, or to Prejudice? Probably! Conse-quently, I don’t put much stock in the Bayesian evidence for God. I base my conditional belief in a preter-natural creator on my own philosophical reasoning from evidence presented in the Enformationism thesis14. So, unlike willful or doctrinal Faith, that conclusion is subject to change, pending further evidence. 

                                End of Post 111

I have done the math

10. Laws of Robotics :
     Third Law :  A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

11, Implicit Bias :
  “Research on “implicit bias” suggests that people can act on the basis of prejudice and stereotypes without intending to do so.”
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/implicit-bias/

12. Faith Math :
   “Faith is the most fundamental of the math-ematical tools”
https://mindmatters.ai/2020/01/faith-is-the-most-fundamental-of-the-mathematical-tools/

13. Reason serves Will :
   Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.
___David Hume

14. Enformationism Thesis :
   It’s not something to believe, but something to think.
http://enformationism.info/enformationism.info/

The Probability of God
A Simple Calculation
That Proves the
Ultimate Truth

Steven D. Unwin
Physicist, Risk Management

“Since the existence of God is the ultimate uncertainty, and probabilistic analysis is the means of addressing uncertainties  . . .
The probability of God
begs to be computed ”