From: simon@dcs.warwick.ac.uk (Simon Clippingdale)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Do Atheists Have Their Own "Faith"?
Date: 16 Apr 92 12:48:01 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, Warwick University, England

In article <sirinINNjel@kitty.ksu.ksu.edu> yohan@kitty.ksu.ksu.edu (Jonathan W Newton) writes:
> [...]
> The problem is that I don't agree that the almighty banana has as much
> evidence as God. This of course depends on your defintion of evidence.

And on your definition of "God". Does the big "G" imply that you have
a particular god in mind?

Even if the data are consistent with a God theory, this consistency alone
can't be called evidence for the God theory if the data are also consistent
with, for example, the Banana theory. The data must provide *differential*
support for the theories.

What is this evidence, why does it support the God theory over the Banana
theory and why does it support the God theory over the Some-other-god theory?

Why are you an agnostic if you think that such evidence exists?


> I can think of many logical reasons against the Grreat banana than for God.
                      ~~~~~~~
Could you list a few?


> It seems to me that you are abusing probablility.

I'm certainly taking it a bit far. But I'm not trying to claim that
my rationalisation of my own atheism somehow inherits mathematical rigour
from probability theory, which would indeed be an abuse.

I'm really trying to use it as an analogy, in which probabilities are
analogised by subjective estimates of the validity of various theories.

In no way do I mean to imply that a given theory actually has, objectively,
some probability z of being true, for example.

To use the Papoulis quote again,

#                                  "the subjective interpretation of
#       probability as a MEASURE OF OUR STATE OF KNOWLEDGE about the
#       events Q(i)." [emphasis in original]

I'm taking it a stage further than this by drawing the analogy:
replace "KNOWLEDGE" with "confidence" and replace "events" with
"competing theories". The analogy is OK to a point; for example,
one's estimates of z for all the competing theories should sum to
1.0 if the theories are mutually exclusive. It is nonsense for example
to say "I reckon theory A has an 80% chance of being right, and
a 70% chance of being wrong".


> Science is full of examples where the subject of debate had MANY
> different theories, which all were fairly viable.

Agreed. Viable theories (i.e. those which are consistent with all the
available data and make falsifiable predictions) are fine, and the more
the merrier.

My point was that there are *also* an arbitrarily large number of
data-consistent potential theories of the blue banana variety which are
entirely unhelpful. I regard untestable, unfalsifiable theories involving
deities as falling in this second category right along with the Holy
Banana theories.

> If mankind said,
> "well hell, look at z, we might as well give up, there are too many
> possibilities", we wouldn't be wasting lots o' dollars having this
> very conversation. Plus I emphasize that these scientific discussions
> had many REASONABLE hypothesese, of which I doubt the Huge Blue Banana
> was a part of :)

Exactly my point, I think. One shouldn't waste time even *considering*
untestable, unfalsifiable theories in science. As a form of cerebral
mutual masturbation among consenting adults, however, fine.

>Jon Newton - biochemist - agnostic


Cheers

Simon
-- 
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"Every morning when you wake up and look in the mirror, check yourself
for signs of collective identity" - Consolidated on "This Is Fascism"
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