Atheism advertising on U.K. buses uses second-rate aphorism

There's been a bit of talk about some bus advertising in the U.K. which was purchased by groups friendly to atheism. But it's not much fuel for freethought. The slogan is as follows:

"There's probably no God. Now, stop worrying and enjoy your life."

One question I'd like to ask is whether this is the probability from expectation, or the probability from observation. The prior probability just says, given what we've interpreted about life's experiences, God's existence does not match our intuitions. The latter probability just says, given our observations, the data does not support the existence of God. Now just what would those observations be? Unless someone makes one of the Abrahamic religions a foil for his or her philosophy of life, there are many metaphysical systems that could account for some pet set of observations, thus allowing there to still be a God -- or, even stronger, that those observations would actually be supportive for evidence for a certain kind of God.

An example might be helpful to express my position. Lots of people think that since there is so much suffering imposed on humans by nature (diseases, disasters, etc.), and so many morally bad things imposed on humans by one another (murder, rape, etc.), this screwed-up world is not compatible with the existence of God. Well, actually the state of affairs of the world might be easily compatible with the existence of God, if God is not involved or attentive to human affairs. But that's the problem, for most people want to presume certain attributes on God -- i.e., they want to do theology -- and do so in ways that somehow define God as attentive to the affairs of humans. But that's not observation. That's faith.

I'm not sure what are the probabilities of there being a God (or not), but I'm pretty sure the atheists don't have a clue about those numbers either.

Here's another odd thing: Apparently, given the phrasing of the message, the assessment of significant probabilities of God's existence is supposed to have made people worry or not enjoy life. Is that an empirical claim? Again -- were there several correlating studies that showed people who assess the odds of God's existence as significant or high were somehow found to be more worried or more sad? Ironically, a review of more than 40 scientific studies has found quite the opposite.[1]

Look, I'm the first to point out stupid, irrational, or fanatical religious patterns of thought. I'm even paid to do so. But this bus advertising aphorism isn't doing freethinking any favors.


REFERENCES

[image] Jon Worth Euroblog (Accessed October 27, 2008)

[1] "Religious People Live Longer Than Nonbelievers" Millennium Magazine September 8, 2008 (Accessed October 27, 2008)

O.

"God's action" odds can't be determined

{ Podcast this essay } Suppose a pious person were trying to assess whether God would do something -- i.e. that they wanted to calculate the odds that God would act in one way as compared to some other way. Stipulate that there is a God, and that God's attributes are close to what the Abrahamic religions claim (monotheistic, inter-personal, righteous, etc.)

Assessing the probability that God would act in certain ways would be impossible on standard methods of assessing odds. Why? Because there is no control variable that can be levied on God's acts. For example, we don't have another universe with like conditions where God does something else instead of what God (allegedly or even observably) did. Nor do we have this type of thing, God, where another token of that type of thing does something else. (Note the type/token distinction.)

Take a more inane experiment. Imagine we run ants through a maze, noting the odds of them completing the maze in some time limit. In some cases, we carefully paint over their tiny eyes. But in other cases we leave some of the ants' eyes functioning. Here we have a type of thing, Ant, where two collections of tokens of that type of thing (i.e. ants in set #1, ants in set #2) are tested under the same conditions.

Contrast the ant case with the God case. On a monotheistic view, we don't have multiple tokens of God to assess, and neither do we have at our disposal observations of whole separate universes in order to test the one token of God that there is.

One might be able to talk about what one expects God to do, but this would be about our psychological dispositions, not about justification for expecting some event to occur (or not) in the world. This goes under the title, subjectivist probability, and is summarized as follows:

Theories which analyze probability in terms of beliefs or attitudes rather than anything in the world itself. For one theory, associated mainly with Bruno De Finetti (1906-1985), the degree of probability of something is the degree of the speaker's belief, measured by his betting behavior, but subject to the constraint that his bets must be 'coherent'; that is, he must not bet in such a way as to lose whatever happens (sometimes called 'having a Dutch book made against one'). This constraint still leaves probabilities dependent on the vagaries of individual attitudes, unless we substitute those of 'the rational man' - but that takes us away from subjectivism. Others, notably Stephen Edelston Toulmin (1922-), offer a speech act theory whereby to call something probable is to assert it, though only tentatively. This may well apply to some uses of 'probably', but hardly to all [....][1]

This is the best a person of faith can expect, but this type of calculation would not be convincing to otherwise uncommitted third parties regarding whether or not God acted.


REFERENCES

[1] "Subjectivist Theories of Probability" The Philosophy Professor (Accesed 12/24/2007)

O.