Half cocked mathematical proof god does not exist

[Deleted member 42253]

Let me prove that god does not exist using simple math with very low numbers..

Now, the odds for the existence of the earth is about 1 in 60 billion(based on the numbers of an american mathematician, the guy with the tornado and the junk yard). How low do you think the chance is, that you or I exist, considering all the events that have led to our birth, nevermind all the mutations that had to happen for us to evolve into what we are right now. Basically, the chance for your or my existence is veeeeeeery low. I am talking about a level of low no computer can calculate, a level of low, we do not have a word or the number system to illustrate. Nooooow .. that is just the odds for your or my existence, if we want the probability for the two of us existing at the same time, we multiply it with each other, getting a number that is .. well ... it is so low, not even the Germans have a word to describe it. Now we need to do that for every human, animal, plant, rock, and so on on the whole planet ... in addition to everything that does exist in the universe. Now we are in a realm that is completely beyond comprehension. But, you and I exist on this earth, as do plants and animals ... so, no matter how unlikely, we are here.

All that does not matter though, as long as the number is lower than 1. I just like to think about stuff like that.

How does this disprove god? Simple, the number we get from that calculation has to be multiplied with the chance for an omnipotent being born from space dust to exist, basically adding a looooot more zeros to it, making it impossible to exist at the same time we do. So ultimately, our existence is already so unlikely, you would be insane to believe that a god exists at the same time we do.

Our mere existence is proof that god does not exist.

But dood! You say, playing the devil's advocate, you just admitted that there is a chance that god does exist, it is just incredibly low and the universe is infinite! So god's existence becomes a certainty! Got you!

Yeah .. so .. lets see what happens, if we add infinity to the calculation ... oh my, if you add infinity to it, the result turns to zero. Flat out zero, Simply because that would mean, there is an infinite number of stuff in the universe, turning one of the multiplicators to zero.

Btw. this also disproves the existence of a multiverse, like comics envision it, because even with an infinite number of dimensions, there is no chance for anything that does not exist in this universe to exist. So basically, earlier versions of our universe are possible, but nothing different. Only mentioning it, since one could argue for an empty universe that only got a god in it, which again, is impossible, cause we would need an infinite number of universes for it, which again, ends up in multiplying with zero.

Basically, you can have either, a theoretical possibility that god exists or an infinite universe, not both at the same time. And the theoretical possibility for gods existence is so low, he simply can not exist without an infinite universe.

I really like that my existence disproves the existence of god. I think I will put that on a t-shirt together with the equation for it.

Actually, can anyone help me putting that in an equation, I am having some trouble putting infinity in, that is, if you do not just dismantle the whole idea with ease.

Its just a shower thought after all.

 

[Deleted member 619]

I like the way you think, but this isn't going to work for all sorts of reasons.

First, there's a deep problem with employing probabilities in this manner. All else aside, starting with your probability for the existence of the Earth, that figure is suspicious, not in and of itself, but in the way it's being applied. While the probability of Earth existing may well be tiny, the probability of something existing, given the existence of the universe, is precisely 1. That is, statistical certainty (which is not certainty as we'd normally think of it; it's not at all inaccurate to describe statistical certainty as just like normal certainty but as an asymptote).

In fact, the argument very much resembles a common apologetic trope that, luckily, I debunked fairly comprehensively some years ago here:

Probably the Worst Argument in the World

It's a well-known fact that 97.84392% of all probabilities cited in arguments claim a precision not justified by the methods employed. In ...

www.hackenslash.co.uk

Additionally, I'm not at all surprised you're struggling with infinity. It's the nature of infinity., and here's why it won't work.

Your probability can never reach an infinite decimal expansion such that adding infinity will sum to zero. It's a huge mistake to think of infinity as a number, or as a quantity, even. Adding infinity to any non-zero sum will result in... infinity. That's true whether you're talking about countable or uncountable infinities.

Interestingly, one of the pieces I have in progress for near-future publication deals quite a bit with infinities, because it's about the absolute limits of what we can know, and I deal with set theory, which was originally motivated by trying to grapple with infinities, so there's a fair bit of discussion about what infinities are, and how there can be different sizes of infinity.

I know Douglas Adams really liked to play around with stuff like this, but he was a satirist. You can't have 'infinite improbability. As I talk about in the linked piece, probabilities can only ever fall between zero and one, zero being statistical certainty that ¬x, and one being statistical certainty of x.

Good fun, though.

 

[Deleted member 42253]

Good point, but it still works if we set our existence to 1, since we have proof for it, as long as the probability of god existing is < 1, since we do not have proof for it.
Let me try to put it into a formula:
(a/inf) * b = 0 if a and/or b < 1 and a or b = 1, a = probability for my existence in an infinite universe, b being the probability for gods existence.
-> (a * b)/inf = 0
The actual numbers do not matter at all, so it doesnt really matter, if the probability for the existence of earth is 1 in 60 billion or 600 billion as well as the odds for my or gods existence being 0,1 * 10²²³ or 0,1 * 10²²³³ or squared with NaN. I mean .. that even works with a = 1 and b = 0,99. Though thats a pretty cutthroat approach, since that basically means nothing we do not know for certain exist at the same time we do. Even I disagree with that appraoch, since that can only be true right now in this moment.

The idea of infinity with variable sizes is interesting, but isnt that in conflict with the defintion of infinite? That sounds more like NaN rather than Inf. I kinda get the idea, but that seems to be straying a tad from the textbook definition of infinity.

Good luck with your publication ... btw. if you need some playful inspiration, I got into playing around with really high numbers thanks to a game called Realm Grinder, it makes use of whats possible with our current computer architecture by using clicks and time as a resource and adding insanly high multiplicators to it, up to 1 * 10 squared with 2XX. Computer goes NaN somewhere approaching 300 zeroes if I remember correctly. You got anything from simple additions pilling up, to insane multiplicators and can set up your progression linearly or in a curve and mix and match as you want. Also you get an idea how long it takes to do a million clicks. Spoiler, its much longer than you initially assume.

You sure the problem is infinity and not zero though? Since setting the result to zero pretty much kills almost all ways to rearrange it and creates jucky situations were you might have to / 0.

Your reply gave me an idea I need to meditate a bit on ... isnt zero both infinite and absolute at the same time? So ultimatly, not only Inf is unsuited for propability caluclations but so is 0 ... so probability is kinda like the philosphy of math, shady and never certain.

Addendum: Currently reading through what you linked. When you are using the probability of 5 royal flashes, you are leaving out that ... damn, how to put it, thats a little hard in english .. even if the propability to draw 5 royal flashes is really low, that does not matter at the time you try to do it, cause the propability to draw a royal flash itself always stays the same when you attempt to do it. Thats a really important distinction for gamblers, cause thats how you get strokes of "luck", meanwhile the overall probabilty only is important for the house, since they are working with statistical probabilities rather than individual ones. I does not matter overall I guess, but it is significant for me, since well ... that comes up a lot in video games with % based chances for getting your loot.

 

[Deleted member 619]

Good point, but it still works if we set our existence to 1, since we have proof for it, as long as the probability of god existing is < 1, since we do not have proof for it.

The real problem for the probability of god existing, in the way that you're formulating it, requires a Bayesian approach, which in turn requires the existence of prior knowledge. We have no priors for a deity, so there isn't any reasonable way to invoke probabilities.

Let me try to put it into a formula:
(a/inf) * b = 0 if a and/or b < 1 and a or b = 1, a = probability for my existence in an infinite universe, b being the probability for gods existence.
-> (a * b)/inf = 0
The actual numbers do not matter at all, so it doesnt really matter, if the probability for the existence of earth is 1 in 60 billion or 600 billion as well as the odds for my or gods existence being 0,1 * 10²²³ or 0,1 * 10²²³³ or squared with NaN. I mean .. that even works with a = 1 and b = 0,99. Though thats a pretty cutthroat approach, since that basically means nothing we do not know for certain exist at the same time we do. Even I disagree with that appraoch, since that can only be true right now in this moment.

Here's a better calculation, a shirt design my fiance made for me:

The idea of infinity with variable sizes is interesting, but isnt that in conflict with the defintion of infinite? That sounds more like NaN rather than Inf. I kinda get the idea, but that seems to be straying a tad from the textbook definition of infinity.

To my knowledge, infinity has always been defined as 'without end'. At one point, we talked about something being unbounded as infinite, but that fails the sniff test, as the circumference of a circle is unbounded yet finite. All the textbooks today employ Cantor's definitions. Prior to Cantor, infinity was treated by mathematicians as a useful abstraction only since the term was coined in the 17th century, and only found any rigour when Cantor treated it.

Anyhoo, a simple example shows that infinities have different sizes, and I fortunately have an example to hand:

Take two sets of numbers, Z and R. I can tell you all sorts of things about them but the thing that's most interesting about them is how large they are. I chose these particular terms for a reason; they're conventionally used to define two sets of numbers.

Z is the integers. The integers are all the whole numbers from minus infinity to infinity. It's conventional at this point in any explanation to show a plot on a line to make this intuitive, so let's do that. Here's a snippet of the number line for set Z:



No real surprises to be had there. Now let's look at an example of the set R:



As we should be able to see, the set R contains not only all the integers, but also all the numbers between them. It contains all the rational numbers (numbers expressible as the ratio between two numbers, a.k.a. fractions), all the irrational numbers (numbers not expressible as the ratio between two numbers. Pi is an example, but any number whose decimal expansion is infinite is irrational). In fact, for any two lines you choose at random, there is an infinite number of numbers between them.

This shows that Cantor was right, and any definition that has infinity being a single quantity is doomed to failure.

You sure the problem is infinity and not zero though? Since setting the result to zero pretty much kills almost all ways to rearrange it and creates jucky situations were you might have to / 0.

Well, except that a probability of zero doesn't actually render something impossible. That aside, both infinity and zero have strange pathologies but, of the two of them, zero is considerably better behaved, not least because it's an actual quantity. Still, diving by zero is exactly the same pathology as operating on infinity, namely that the result is undefined.

Your reply gave me an idea I need to meditate a bit on ... isnt zero both infinite and absolute at the same time? So ultimatly, not only Inf is unsuited for propability caluclations but so is 0 ... so probability is kinda like the philosphy of math, shady and never certain.

Well, except that zero defines the lower limit of probability (asymptotically, at least), while infinity can't even appear in a probability, because the upper limit is one. No probability can exceed one. Indeed, this is why we know there's a deep conflict between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, because whenever we try to marry the equations, we get infinite solutions. Infinities aren't nearly the problem for physicists that many people think (it's popularly thought that infinities are an indication that something's gone wrong), but infinities as solutions to probability calculations are absurd.

Addendum: Currently reading through what you linked. When you are using the probability of 5 royal flashes, you are leaving out that ... damn, how to put it, thats a little hard in english .. even if the propability to draw 5 royal flashes is really low, that does not matter at the time you try to do it, cause the propability to draw a royal flash itself always stays the same when you attempt to do it. Thats a really important distinction for gamblers, cause thats how you get strokes of "luck", meanwhile the overall probabilty only is important for the house, since they are working with statistical probabilities rather than individual ones. I does not matter overall I guess, but it is significant for me, since well ... that comes up a lot in video games with % based chances for getting your loot.

Yes indeed. It's a variation on the gambler's fallacy.

However, this is not that, and here's why.

The probability of the single hand is the probability of the single hand, which was calculated at 1:649,740. The probability of the second hand is exactly the same, but the prior probability of getting two in a row is distinct from the individual probability of either. The gambler's fallacy (and the hot hand fallacy and other probability-based fallacies), is treating the probability of the next hand as being different based on what happened in prior outings.

Coin tossing is the same. We have no problem talking about the odds of a series of coin tosses as cumulative, and they indeed are, yet the probability of a single toss resulting in heads or tails is 50/50 (actually, it isn't, but I think I've covered enough ground without getting into why there's a bias in coin tossing that results in an observed probability of 51/49.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

As Hack pointed out, 21st Demon Lord, since you already exist, the probability of you existing is:

P=1

If you really want to make it infinitesimal, you'd have to go back to the moment of the Big Bang - if you'll pardon the contradiction - and ask, "What's the probability of someone calling themselves '21 Demon Lord' on a website called 'League of Reason' on the third planet from it's star, etc, etc, etc,...", then you'd get a probability of:

P=1/Inf

Or, to put it more succinctly:

P -> 1

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Deleted member 42253]

Thats a bit of a set back, but I guess that still works, as long as I get Inf into the equation.
Gets too complicated though and too easy to argue against. Ah well, it was not a bad idea at least.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

Thats a bit of a set back, but I guess that still works, as long as I get Inf into the equation.
Gets too complicated though and too easy to argue against. Ah well, it was not a bad idea at least.

How is it a set-back?

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Deleted member 42253]

The general idea was simple and being able to reduce it to the bare minimum, but thats no longer a given, if I have to start from before the big bang to get /inf into the equation.

Especially since we are not even clear on, if there has been a "before the big bang".

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

The general idea was simple and being able to reduce it to the bare minimum, but thats no longer a given, if I have to start from before the big bang to get /inf into the equation.

Especially since we are not even clear on, if there has been a "before the big bang".

I thought you were referring to the P->0 part.

That should be enough though to indicate to anyone that the probability of (any) god existing is virtually 0.

Kindest regards,

James