A Math Magic God Problem

[David Sklansky]

"So maybe an overabundance of miracles would not be as great a thing as you think. Maybe less is more in this case. How much less? Maybe you think you know the precisely correct amount and can say it differs from what we experience. Or maybe what we experience is actually the precisely correct amount."

Even if it was the correct amount it wouldn't be the correct type. God is forced to avoid miracles that may be less deserving in order to make sure that the laws of physics are obeyed.

"As far as God doing a few special spectacular miracles like growing a few legs, just to prove to us that He's there."

I didn't say he should do those miracles to prove he was there. I said that you would think that he shouldn't avoid those miracles just to keep people from feeling they have proof.

[PairTheBoard]

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How much less?

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0. It would be the ultimate expression of love and fairness.

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It does sound pretty good. I wouldn't mind taking at least a short vacation there.

PairTheBoard

[Taraz]

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As far as God doing a few special spectacular miracles like growing a few legs, just to prove to us that He's there. It wouldn't prove anything. It would just be a Freak Event for which we have a shortfall in scientific explanation. In fact, it would really Foul Us Up because we would waste a lot of time trying to find yet to be discovered laws of physics to explain it when such a search would be futile. If we had to deal with very many of these Freak Events popping up all the time we might become virtually stalled in our quest to explore the Universe. Unintended consequences are a bitch.

PairTheBoard

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Although I think you make an excellent point here, you have to realize that many atheists think that we should be working hard to 'cure' the world of it's dependence on religion. These people think that it is very important to disprove every fantastic claim of any religion so that more people become atheists.

[Phil153]

No, you have it wrong. Atheists wish to rid the world of pathetic beliefs such as:

- The souls of the dead cause human unhappiness (Scientology)
- A Jew was nailed to a cross and bled to save us from the wrath of a spiteful God. (Xianity)
- You'll get a bunch of virgins if you kill infidels (Islam)
- Unwed sex is immoral (Christianity), as is birth control (Catholics)
- Evolution didn't happen - God made everything 6000 years ago
- God will listen to your prayers for your sick relative, your job interview, or your atheist friend, while millions of innocent kids die of starvation and needless disease.
- We are all inherently sinful and unworthy of love except through belief in religion x
- Women who have unmarried sex should be stoned to death (Islam, Christianity)
- We are all going to hell except through belief in religion x
- Armageddon is coming to give the Bad People what they deserve

That's just a few. These beliefs are weird, and many are harmful to people's spiritual growth. If these beliefs didn't exist, most atheists wouldn't give a crap about religion, just as most don't have a problem with Buddhism or similar.

[PairTheBoard]

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As far as God doing a few special spectacular miracles like growing a few legs, just to prove to us that He's there. It wouldn't prove anything. It would just be a Freak Event for which we have a shortfall in scientific explanation. In fact, it would really Foul Us Up because we would waste a lot of time trying to find yet to be discovered laws of physics to explain it when such a search would be futile. If we had to deal with very many of these Freak Events popping up all the time we might become virtually stalled in our quest to explore the Universe. Unintended consequences are a bitch.

PairTheBoard

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Although I think you make an excellent point here, you have to realize that many atheists think that we should be working hard to 'cure' the world of it's dependence on religion. These people think that it is very important to disprove every fantastic claim of any religion so that more people become atheists.

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They would certainly have their hands full then if God started growing new legs for people. The problem is that science in general would have its hands full with futile attempts to discover unknown laws to explain these Freak Events. Science would not stop doing its job. It would just have no way of knowing that it had no chance to succeed.

PairTheBoard

[Taraz]

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No, you have it wrong. Atheists wish to rid the world of pathetic beliefs such as:

- The souls of the dead cause human unhappiness (Scientology)
- A Jew was nailed to a cross and bled to save us from the wrath of a spiteful God. (Xianity)
- You'll get a bunch of virgins if you kill infidels (Islam)
- Unwed sex is immoral (Christianity), as is birth control (Catholics)
- Evolution didn't happen - God made everything 6000 years ago
- God will listen to your prayers for your sick relative, your job interview, or your atheist friend, while millions of innocent kids die of starvation and needless disease.
- We are all inherently sinful and unworthy of love except through belief in religion x
- Women who have unmarried sex should be stoned to death (Islam, Christianity)
- We are all going to hell except through belief in religion x
- Armageddon is coming to give the Bad People what they deserve

That's just a few. These beliefs are weird, and many are harmful to people's spiritual growth. If these beliefs didn't exist, most atheists wouldn't give a crap about religion, just as most don't have a problem with Buddhism or similar.

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I misspoke when I said so more people become 'atheists'. I should have phrased it differently. So more people open their eyes a little bit?

[BluffTHIS!]

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He is more concerned with making sure his miracles have dual explanations than with rewarding his worshippers? Please.

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He is indeed most concerned about "rewarding" his worshippers. With an *eternal* reward. Eternal always trumps "now".

[David Sklansky]

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He is more concerned with making sure his miracles have dual explanations than with rewarding his worshippers? Please.

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He is indeed most concerned about "rewarding" his worshippers. With an *eternal* reward. Eternal always trumps "now".

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I once proposed the possibility of "Deism plus afterlife". Considering the mystery of human consciousness and the Big Bang it seemed like a belief as reasonable as any religion. But no one here took it seriously.

[Piers]

While I would agree that the Big Bang is a big mystery, I don’t agree that human consciousness is.

In fact I expect that within a hundred years we will have pin pointed the exact biological processes that lead to the sensation of consciousness in humans. It will be difficult to swallow but it will be there.

[AaronBrown]

Here is one approach that I like, although I don't expect it to convince everyone.

I think you have to start by putting some kind of probability on miracles. Clearly we don't have much information, but we can call upon the Personal Insignificance Principle (PIP). It says that there's nothing special about me, so no reason for me to be born at any particular time in an interval. If the laws of physics were going to stay constant for X billion years, and I live 100 years (why not?), then the chance of me being alive when the laws of physics change is 100/(X billion).

The next step is not rigorous, but I think it makes common sense. The logic above suggests that if something had been going on for X years when I was born, and I knew nothing other than that, my median estimate for how long it should continue to go on is X years. For example, when I was born in 1956, the American President, the British monarch and the men's half of the Wimbledon mixed-doubles champions had each held their respective positions for four years. It was extremely unlikely that Eisenhower would have been in office four years later, it was very likely Queen Elizabeth would still be Queen and it was plausible but improbable that Vic Seixas would still be winning. So if you know something about the intervals, you can make a better estimate. But since we know nothing about the probability of the laws of physics changing, if we think they've been constant for 15 billion years, the chance of that changing next year should be about 1 in 15 billion.

Given this principle, we can start to do some math. About 1 person in 1,000 is so crazy they have no concept of reality, and no ability to judge whether or not they are crazy. So we don't have to worry about probabilities less than that, we can't be sure. I'm willing to subsume everything into that 1 in 1,000: the chance that I'm just dreaming everything, or that the universe is an experiment run by the white mice or that I'm an AI program in someone's PC. There's (a) the world is pretty much what it seems, 0.999 and (b) everything else 0.001. Part of (a) is no miracles and no one I meet has special information from God.

In order to be worth my attention to reconsider (a), someone has to show me something that violates some principle that I think has been in force for at least 100,000 years (100 years of life times 1 in 1,000 chance of being crazy). This assumes the miracle has no obvious casual relation to knowing God, it's just something I can't explain.

I believe that gravity has been around for a lot more than 100,000 years. It's true that the universe could have been created one second ago with all past evidence in place, or there could be some more complex physics in which gravity is a recent innovation but other laws explain why gravity appears to have existed in the past; but remember, I'm reasoning based on the assumption things are pretty much they seem.

So, for me, a miracle has to appear to violate something for which there is strong evidence in astronomy or the fossil record. I'm aware of two things: professional stage magicians do things that seem impossible, and scientific consensus has often been mistaken in the past. So I would have to investigate the claim very carefully, then reassess the evidence it appears to contradict.

I think this is possible. If someone removed his head, handed it to me while it kept on talking and his body walked out of the room; that's a miracle. Translating the book into Chinese probably isn't.

Seeing a miracle would cause me to question my working hypothesis that the world is pretty much what it seems. If someone seemed to have special knowledge or abilities concerning the miracles, I would pay attention to what they said. That doesn't mean surrender my judgment to them, it just means pay attention. If someone else duplicated their feats, I would stop paying attention.