ibidem comments on Open Thread, May 1-14, 2013 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: whpearson 01 May 2013 10:28PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 09 May 2013 11:14:24PM 1 point [-]

That's what I mean—a non-negligible chance. If your estimation of the likelihood of God is negligible, then it may as well be zero. I don't think that there is an overwhelming weight of evidence toward either case, and I don't think this is something that science can resolve.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 10 May 2013 12:36:26AM 8 points [-]

If your estimation of the likelihood of God is negligible, then it may as well be zero.

This doesn't follow. For example, if you recite to me a 17 million digit number, my estimate that it is a prime is about 1 in a million by the prime number theorem. But, if I then find out that the number was in fact 2^57,885,161 -1, my estimate for it being prime goes up by a lot. So one can assign very small probabilities to things and still update strongly on evidence.

Comment author: Desrtopa 09 May 2013 11:17:00PM 4 points [-]

I don't think that there is an overwhelming weight of evidence toward either case, and I don't think this is something that science can resolve.

Why not?

Comment author: Intrism 10 May 2013 01:24:40AM *  2 points [-]

So, you're saying that in your view no atheist could possibly take the question of the truth of religion seriously? Or, alternately, that one could be an atheist but still give a large probability of God's existence? Both of these seem a bit bizarre...