(April 16, 2013 at 10:50 am)FallentoReason Wrote: Here's a challenge for anyone that believes in God:
A value can be assigned to each of the attributes from 0 to 1, where 0 means that the being doesn't posses the attribute at all and 1 means that the being is omni[attribute]. This being then possesses an attribute I will call the "god index" which can be obtained by multiplying together each of the values. Since our scale is continuous, there are an infinite number of possible beings ranging from a god index of 0 to 1. Since there are an infinite number, the probability of any one of them existing approaches zero.
Any counter-arguments I could sink my teeth in?
I tend to frown on attempts to use Pure Logic™ to prove or disprove the existence of things in reality. If that method worked, the Ptolmaic cosmos would have been vindicated when people started pointing telescopes at the sky. Apart from claims that are testable in reality, it's way too easy to wander off into a cognitive death spiral of philosophical wankery.
For example, the argument you use here could be just as easily used to argue for polytheism. Given an infinite number of possible deities (due to the infinite number of possible "god indexes"), and the premise that each one is "possible" (probability of existence =/= 0), then no matter how improbable each deity might be, with an infinite number of spins on the roulette wheel, sooner or later some deity's number will come up. Since polytheism does not include a requirement that a deity be the only one, the equivalent probability of other possible deities existing had no effect on the probability of the first deity existing.
Therefore, there's lots of gods and goddesses...right?
