Quote from: tspacepilot on February 24, 2014, 08:32:18 AM

Quote from: pungopete468 on February 17, 2014, 07:47:45 AM

Quote from: organofcorti on February 17, 2014, 07:28:49 AM

Quote from: pungopete468 on February 17, 2014, 07:09:17 AM

Quote from: organofcorti on February 17, 2014, 06:53:10 AM

That's fine when a probability is quantifiable, as in your higgs boson example. What is the probability of the existence of god?

The probability only became quantifiable once a separate problem was solved; allowing scientists to draw up a new question using a better understanding of the old question.

until we can account for all of the variables surrounding the creation of our Universe and the events that took place upon the creation of our Universe the probability can never be anything more or less than 50/50.

For as long as there is a single "wild card" the probability will be un-quantifiable and will revert to basic odds that the existence of God will be either true or false.

Hypothetically, even if you have a probability of 99.99999% that God does not exist and yet you also have a single variable with an unknown magnitude then you still can't answer the question certainly as the entire equation is still off-balance.

The probability that I personally assign to God existing in some manner or another is much greater than pink Unicorns existing. Still, un-quantifiable...

Which is it, p = 0.5 or p = NA ?

There's a difference between ones personal inclination towards a subject expressed as a ratio or probability to illustrate an un-quantifiable thought and a real scientific probability which can be expressed and verified.

It's an oxymoron. I obviously wasn't making a claim to know the probability of either; I thought the context of the statement was clear. I chose the best way to compare the two unknown probabilities in a manner consistent with our previous conversation...

I was providing you with my personal opinion as to the outcome of the question in the form of a comparison.

I can't answer your question where p=probability because I don't know all of the conditions or variables. I can tell you that the raw probability of a yes or no statement is 50/50 as there's no third conclusion to the question.

There *are* ways to estimate the probability of an event whos actual probabililty is not known. One common such method is maximum likelihood. In this case, I've never seen any God observations, so p=0 even with MLE.

This thread is so much more serious now that dank has given up. I was just coming here for the lolz and now you guys are all thinking your brains off about this.

Can you tell us hot to it pls? Im not good with estimating unknown things... Sad