Attributes, Probability and the God Index

[FallentoReason]

You know what, I happily concede! It's 1 in the morning and I can't think of any way to distinguish an object outside my mind to be exactly that. The conclusion is obviously that I can't reason very well at 1 in the morning :p

On the belief that faith is needed for logic to "work", how's this(?):

1) We need faith that logic works
2) Premise 1 is a logical conclusion [given our discussion]
3) If 2 is true, then logic comes before faith
C) therefore, we don't need faith that logic works

[Tonus]

The deist who has no faith in any particular deities... yes.

YAHWEH? MORE LIKE NOWEH, AMIRITE???

*high-fives everyone in the room*

[FallentoReason]

*stones him*

[Violet]

On the belief that faith is needed for logic to "work", how's this(?):

1) We need faith that logic works
2) Premise 1 is a logical conclusion [given our discussion]
3) If 2 is true, then logic comes before faith
C) therefore, we don't need faith that logic works

Total nonsense, is how it is. Logic is necessarily logical... accepting logic at all takes faith.

The universe began last Thursday, and everything you've seen so far from logic has been a total fluke.

[Lord Privy Seal]

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?

[FallentoReason]

On the belief that faith is needed for logic to "work", how's this(?):

1) We need faith that logic works
2) Premise 1 is a logical conclusion [given our discussion]
3) If 2 is true, then logic comes before faith
C) therefore, we don't need faith that logic works

Total nonsense, is how it is. Logic is necessarily logical... accepting logic at all takes faith.

Well, no, because you see, those two statements create a never-ending line of "I need faith that I need faith that I need faith...that I need faith that logic works".

The statement "I need faith that logic works" is a logical conclusion. You then say "logic is necessarily logical"... so be it; I'll need faith that my first logical conclusion requires faith i.e. "I need faith that I need faith logic works"... hmm this sounds like a logical conclusion... and on we go ad infinitum.

It takes more faith to believe that (because it's an infinite regression) than to believe logic simply works, because as you stated, it necessarily needs to work.

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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?

Since the assumption is that this scale deals with a possible god responsible for our world, it means that polytheism isn't proven by this. The universe has only so many particles, which means that's the limiting factor to how many gods can exist: each god was responsible for the creation of one particle. Thus we still have a finite number and therefore the infinite denominator drowns them out anyways.

To believe there could exist an infinite numbers of gods is to believe that our universe is being added to continually... now that would be some true