Sunday, April 13, 2014

Math and Religion

Even if there are any infinite number of mutually exclusive religions each with a probability of some unique negative integer power of two, such that;
1/2,1/4,1/8,1/16...
 

And your religion is that which bears the probability 1/2, then the probability of your religion not being the right one is equivalently 1/2, since the limit of the series is 1. And even this is far too generous, since we assumed many things we were unaware of, such as
 

1.) There is a true religion
2.) The probability distribution for truth of all mutually exclusion religions may be given as the series 1/2+1/4+1/8...
3.) Supporting evidence that would allow partial construction of a probability distribution.
4.) The highly fortunate circumstance that the religion ascribed to by the believer is assigned the highest probability of truth of any single religion within the distribution.

Without these assumptions, however, the situation of choosing the correct religion is nearly impossible. And if faith is the only evidence one has for the correctness of their religion, anyone else's faith in any other belief is just as potent a demonstration of truth, which then lends equal probability to these contrasting assertions.

No comments:

Post a Comment