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This atheist argument on another forum.

ChagenChagen
edited 2011-07-05 22:42:50 in Philosophy
[tɕagɛn]
"Let's examine, instead, unfalsifiable versions of god. [...] Alright, let's consider the space of all unfalsifiable hypotheses. This space has an infinite cardinality, at least that of R, and almost certainly larger than that. The claims of unfalsifiable gods only represent a very tiny proportion of that space. Now, because unfalsifiable claims are something that we cannot directly have empirical access too, the only intellectually honest probability measure to assign to the space of all unfalsifiable hypotheses is that of the uniform distribution. With this measure, any subset of the space which is finite in "generalized hypervolume" has probability measure 0 for being true. Hence, the probability that an unfalsifiable god exists is 0." All I see is Word Salad. Lots and lots of Word Salad. Also, it makes no sense whatsoever.

Comments

  • MadassAlexMadassAlex
    One foot in front of the other, every day.
    Weren't you the one who used this large, silly phrase when you could've said "v sound"?

    That was kinda silly.
  • ChagenChagen
    [tɕagɛn]
    Except that phrase is the scientific term for the "v-sound". It details what the tongue/mouth/vocal cords are doing when you make that sound.
  • MadassAlexMadassAlex
    One foot in front of the other, every day.
    The paragraph you're complaining about was probably built to be thick and prickly, but I can't exactly find any technical language issues in there.

    So you should probably have a discussion about atheism and vocalised linguistics and see who tires out first.
  • DonZabuDonZabu
    This guy's just throwing words around hoping that they stick. And I'm not one to assume that about people, either.
  • BlackHumorBlackHumor
    Layman's terms:

    There are an infinite number of unfalsifiable hypotheses, including several that are of unfalsifiable Gods. Any of these claims has, before any evidence is gathered for them, a probability of 1/infinity, or zero. Since we can't gather evidence for any of these claims, we have to assume the general probabilty for all these claims, which is zero. Since God is one of these claims, the probability of God is zero.

    And the problem with that argument is that the probability for a claim with no evidence is not actually zero; it's "so close to zero as makes no odds". And you don't get that from dividing it by the class of all unfalsifiable probabilities, because they're not mutually exclusive.
  • DonZabuDonZabu
    ^ Hey, 1/infinity was my idea! Except I didn't say that 1/infinty = zero. 
  • BeeBee
    Black Humor beat me to it.  Assuming the set of all unfalsifiable hypotheses is not only of uniform probability, but mutually exclusive, is silly.
  • StormtroperStormtroper
    edited 2011-07-06 14:06:38
    Hoho, I got it on the first read~

    ^^^ But its probability is zero. Though they're still not mutually exclusive, so the point stands (I think).
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