Theism, Religion and Lack thereof

[Eloi]

^Sorry for not answering everyone, I really don't have the patience to reply to every single response on here.

... I really, really don't understand this. Why is Jesus any more believable than the "God is dark matter" guy?

It matters what types of claims are being made.

 

[Music Dragon]

^Sorry for not answering everyone, I really don't have the patience to reply to every single response on here.



It matters what types of claims are being made.

Yes, it does. Why is Jesus any more believable than the "God is dark matter" guy?

 

[Tarvos]

^Sorry for not answering everyone, I really don't have the patience to reply to every single response on here.

You could just answer with one big statement.

 

[Eloi]

You could just answer with one big statement.

Alrighty.

I am theist. You are not going to change my opinion, and challenges to my claims are usually unresolved because I
a) don't understand what you are getting across
b) you don't understand what I am getting across

Its mostly a), but b) happens too. And what happens is both sides repeat the same thing over and over in different ways, but no one gains anything from it, because it seems almost everyone does not budge in their world-views in things as trivial as internet arguments, so there really is no point.

Yes, it does. Why is Jesus any more believable than the "God is dark matter" guy?

Because Jesus claims to actually perceive spiritual things, unlike the "God is dark matter" guy, who doesn't claim to perceive God as dark matter, but draws the conclusion from available evidence. As a conclusion from available evidence it fails. Jesus' account as a description of ones perception, does not fail. See what I mean by "types of claims made matters"?

 

[Tarvos]

a) don't understand what you are getting across

What particularly do you not understand?

 

[Eloi]

What particularly do you not understand?

You said to make a big, general statement, so I made big, general claims, not sure why you now want me to be specific.

 

[voltianqueen]

I'm not getting how drawing conclusions from available evidence makes the conclusion wrong.

 

[Teh Ebil Snorlax]

Because he doesn't claim to know this by his perspective, but a conclusion based on facts. As a conclusion based on facts, it fails to support itself. If it were "I observed X", it might be worthy of investigation, but seeing as that it isn't the case, it isn't.

How is a false claim based on facts less valid than an unverifiable claim based on purely subjective and unverifiable evidence? At least there's some solid facts backing the first, there's nothing solid backing the second.

And if you can answer nothing else I've said then answer me this; why do you have faith specifically in the teachings of Jesus Christ? It's been asked before by opal, but you've ignored him for some reason, so I'll reiterate the question. What is it about what the man Jesus Christ said that prompted you to make a leap of faith and believe something for which the accounts of Jesus Christ, a man who lived over 2000 years ago in a society almost totally irrelevant to the modern one, with a minute percentage of the scientific knowledge we have today, are the only evidence? And don't just say because he had more to lose than anyone else; those are the circumstances in which he said what he said and have little to nothing to do with what he said.

What is it that Jesus Christ said that compelled you to have faith in him?

Your imagination coming up with something like God being dark matter, on the other hand, is not evidence in that hypothesis's favor at all

Surely a man saying the God is dark matter is just as much evidence in favour of his belief as Jesus saying what he believed being evidence of what he believed.

Because Jesus claims to actually perceive spiritual things, unlike the "God is dark matter" guy, who doesn't claim to perceive God as dark matter, but draws the conclusion from available evidence. As a conclusion from available evidence it fails. Jesus' account as a description of ones perception, does not fail. See what I mean by "types of claims made matters"?

Obviously, he does claim to perceive God as dark matter, otherwise he wouldn't say that God is dark matter.

That's like saying that someone who says "the table is green" doesn't perceive the table as being green.

And what exactly do these conclusions fail? Because if its a test of logic or evidence, then they both fail equally.

 

[Tarvos]

You said to make a big, general statement, so I made big, general claims, not sure why you now want me to be specific.

You made a big, general statement with some particular claims in them. Now I'm challenging the particulars to get to the heart of the matter and see where the whole logic on both sides goes wrong.

 

[Butterfree]

Obviously, he does claim to perceive God as dark matter, otherwise he wouldn't say that God is dark matter.

This is where you're wrong. Nobody claims to have actually, literally observed that God is dark matter. Their claim that God is dark matter is a "This would be neat" sort of claim, on par with, say, my fanfic's claim that Scyther live by rules called the Code. My coming up with that is in no way correlated with what anybody involved in creating the Pokémon Scyther may have decided about the species; it is not evidence one way or the other. Similarly, the one who says "God is dark matter" just thinks that's a poignant conclusion about the universe; they didn't conclude it based on any sort of evidence.

Meanwhile, Jesus says that he knows God is like such and such. And while, again, that is very weak evidence, it is correlated with whether God is actually like that.

Think of a mammography, for instance. A mammography has an 80% chance of giving a positive result for a woman with breast cancer and a 9.6% chance of giving a positive result for a woman who does not have breast cancer. Similarly, if Jesus had actually observed what he claimed to have, he would be extremely likely to claim what he claimed (breast cancer); definitely more likely than he is to claim what he claimed given he did not observe it (no breast cancer). Because of the low probability of a woman having breast cancer in the first place (or of Jesus having observed what he claimed to have), however, the actual probability that a woman with a positive mammography actually does have breast cancer (or that Jesus is right) is still very low - but not quite as low as otherwise; when it comes to breast cancer, for instance, a woman with a positive mammography only has a 7.8% chance of actually having cancer, but it's still higher than the 1% chance of any random woman having cancer. The difference in Jesus's case is positively minuscule because, again, the prior probability that Jesus was right is so astronomically low, but the posterior probability, after his claim, is ever so slightly higher. Look here if this confuses you.

The "God is dark matter" guy, on the other hand, would not be likelier to say that if God actually were dark matter than if he weren't; therefore, his claim that God is dark matter is not evidence one way or the other of God actually being dark matter.

The same applies to all science and rational observation. If you read in a textbook that something happened, you haven't observed it yourself, but the probability of you reading it in the textbook if it were true is much, much higher than the probability of you reading it in the textbook if it were false, and therefore you can consider the fact the textbook says it evidence that it is actually so. The difference between the textbook and Jesus is just that, one, the textbook's claims aren't as ludicrously unlikely to begin with, and two, for various reasons, a textbook that outright lies is quite unlikely to actually end up being read by you. Meanwhile, the "God is dark matter" guy is more like a work of fiction: could theoretically be right, sure, but the fact the work of fiction exists isn't evidence of that. J.K. Rowling thinking up Harry Potter isn't evidence that there are actually undercover wizards in Britain.

Again: the prior probability that Jesus is exactly right is so ludicrously low that the difference his claim makes is pretty much undetectable; it is perfectly rational to dismiss it as noise, and this does not in any way vindicate the stance that Jesus was right. All I'm saying is that Eloi is right in that there is a distinction between the two.

 

[Teh Ebil Snorlax]

This is where you're wrong. Nobody claims to have actually, literally observed that God is dark matter. Their claim that God is dark matter is a "This would be neat" sort of claim, on par with, say, my fanfic's claim that Scyther live by rules called the Code. My coming up with that is in no way correlated with what anybody involved in creating the Pokémon Scyther may have decided about the species; it is not evidence one way or the other. Similarly, the one who says "God is dark matter" just thinks that's a poignant conclusion about the universe; they didn't conclude it based on any sort of evidence.

Where are you getting this from? All we've been told is that he thinks God is dark matter, we haven't been told how he arrived at the conclusion.

Meanwhile, Jesus says that he knows God is like such and such. And while, again, that is very weak evidence, it is correlated with whether God is actually like that.

"I think God is dark matter."
"I know God exists."

I fail to see how both statements are not equally invalid.

Think of a mammography, for instance. A mammography has an 80% chance of giving a positive result for a woman with breast cancer and a 9.6% chance of giving a positive result for a woman who does not have breast cancer. Similarly, if Jesus had actually observed what he claimed to have, he would be extremely likely to claim what he claimed (breast cancer); definitely more likely than he is to claim what he claimed given he did not observe it (no breast cancer). Because of the low probability of a woman having breast cancer in the first place (or of Jesus having observed what he claimed to have), however, the actual probability that a woman with a positive mammography actually does have breast cancer (or that Jesus is right) is still very low - but not quite as low as otherwise; when it comes to breast cancer, for instance, a woman with a positive mammography only has a 7.8% chance of actually having cancer, but it's still higher than the 1% chance of any random woman having cancer. The difference in Jesus's case is positively minuscule because, again, the prior probability that Jesus was right is so astronomically low, but the posterior probability, after his claim, is ever so slightly higher. Look here if this confuses you.

It did confuse me and the link confused me even more.

The "God is dark matter" guy, on the other hand, would not be likelier to say that if God actually were dark matter than if he weren't; therefore, his claim that God is dark matter is not evidence one way or the other of God actually being dark matter.

Stemming from my inability to understand what you just linked me to, I still fail to see why the statement "I know God exists." is evidence but "I think God is dark matter." isn't. Neither seems like evidence to me.

The same applies to all science and rational observation. If you read in a textbook that something happened, you haven't observed it yourself, but the probability of you reading it in the textbook if it were true is much, much higher than the probability of you reading it in the textbook if it were false, and therefore you can consider the fact the textbook says it evidence that it is actually so. The difference between the textbook and Jesus is just that, one, the textbook's claims almost definitely aren't as ludicrously unlikely to begin with, and two, there are various means by which a textbook that outright lies is quite unlikely to actually end up being read by you. Meanwhile, the "God is dark matter" guy is more like a work of fiction: could theoretically be right, sure, but the fact the work of fiction exists isn't evidence of that.

I almost had it until you told me the textbook Jesus analogy was different from Jesus.

Again: the prior probability that Jesus is exactly right is so ludicrously low that his claim is almost no evidence at all, it is perfectly rational to dismiss it as noise, and this does not in any way vindicate the stance that Jesus was right. All I'm saying is that Eloi is right in that there is a distinction between the two.

I'm probably wrong because I failed to understand the whole theorem thing (in fairness though, using a mammography and statistics are not the best way to make an analogy, nor is make the analogy and explaining the analogy at the same time) but I still fail to see why Jesus's claim is any more probable than the dark matter guy's claim.

 

[Eloi]

[removed for being hurtful. I am not sure why I didn't think this would be taken wrong. I need to go away for a long time or something.]


But for the rest of it:

What is it about what the man Jesus Christ said that prompted you to make a leap of faith and believe something for which the accounts of Jesus Christ are the only evidence?

Personal reasons that I don't really want to share.

a man who lived over 2000 years ago in a society almost totally irrelevant to the modern one,

If someone says "the sky is blue" 2000 years ago, does someone who says "the sky is blue" today have more credibility?

with a minute percentage of the scientific knowledge we have today

He perceived, he didn't look up the information, so that is irrelevant.

 

[Teh Ebil Snorlax]

Bachuru pretty much took the words out of my mouth, but I do believe teh ebil snorlax just doesn't want to understand so thus they don't try. My personal theory, feel free to prove me wrong.

When I first read this part of your post, I wrote a paragraph that contained several instances of curse words, which would undoubtedly have had me instantly banned from Serious Business by Butterfree. However, I'm proud to say that not once in that vulgar response did I sink to your level and actually insult you and I'm prouder to say that rather than sink to your level and be as undeservedly mean to you as you were to me, I deleted that response and started over.

When you first came along, I actually thought you were alright, I thought "well at least she isn't arrogant and assumptive like Pwnemon, at least she doesn't attack people instead of their arguments". Apparently I was wrong.

Allow me to be perfectly clear on three things.

1. Never make assumptions about me. You do not know me.
2. Never talk down to me. You are not above me.
3. Never, ever, call me willfully ignorant. I freely admit to not understanding what Butterfree said. But I want to understand. I am not ignorant by choice, I am ignorant through personal failing, personal failing which I will overcome in order to achieve understanding and thereby understand the truth, such is one aspect of my personal philosophy.

I am not going to be dramatic and say that "if you ever do these things again, I will do bad thing x". If you ever do these things again, I will simply continue to lose respect for you.

There are no words to express how much contempt I feel for you right now. You have lost any respect I ever had for you as a debater and as a person.

But for the rest of it:

Personal reasons that I don't really want to share.

If you are unwilling to justify your faith, then do not attempt to use your faith to justify your belief.

If someone says "the sky is blue" 2000 years ago, does someone who says "the sky is blue" today have more credibility?

Yes. The statement is equally true in both cases but the second person has more evidence to back it up.

EDIT: Furthermore, the sky being blue is true no matter what time period in which you live, it is a part of the natural way the Earth works, society changes.

He perceived, he didn't look up the information, so that is irrelevant.

That sentence doesn't make any sense. What did he perceive? And why does his lack of scientific knowledge make his lack of scientific knowledge irrelevant?

 

[Eloi]

When I first read this part of your post, I wrote a paragraph that contained several instances of curse words, which would undoubtedly have had me instantly banned from Serious Business by Butterfree. However, I'm proud to say that not once in that vulgar response did I sink to your level and actually insult you and I'm prouder to say that rather than sink to your level and be as undeservedly mean to you as you were to me, I deleted that response and started over.

I wasn't intending to insult you, and I don't believe you are choosing to be ignorant, I just believe that maybe subconsciously you aren't trying as hard, and if that is not the case feel free to correct me.

When you first came along, I actually thought you were alright, I thought "well at least she isn't arrogant and assumptive like Pwnemon, at least she doesn't attack people instead of their arguments". Apparently I was wrong.

I wasn't attacking you, I was just trying to figure out why, after posts explaining the same thing, you would not understand it. I don't want to assume you don't know it because you don't know, it is clear that is not the case usually, so I just figured your subconscious doesn't want you to figure it out because it doesn't actually want to.

1. Never make assumptions about me. You do not know me.

I never claimed to know you. If I thought I was correct, I wouldn't tell you to correct me with proper information if I am wrong.

2. Never talk down to me. You are not above me.

I don't consider myself above a clean carpet, I can assure I hold no illusion of being better than you.

3. Never, ever, call me willfully ignorant. I freely admit to not understanding what Butterfree said. But I want to understand. I am not ignorant by choice, I am ignorant through personal failing, personal failing which I will overcome in order to achieve understanding and thereby understand the truth, such is one aspect of my personal philosophy.

I just figured you would understand if you subconscious (not your conscious mind) wanted you to grasp the information. I wasn't trying to insult you, I just thought you, at some conscious level not necessarily choice, didn't want to understand and/or weren't motivated enough, because you usually perfectly understand everything.

I am not going to be dramatic and say that "if you ever do these things again, I will do bad thing x". If you ever do these things again, I will simply continue to lose respect for you.

Your loss of respect is justified if you felt attacked, I apologize.

There are no words to express how much contempt I feel for you right now.

I carry absolutely no contempt for you whatsoever, I feel sad for making you upset.

You have lost any respect I ever had for you as a debater and as a person.

I am sorry. Again, I did not mean to attack or offend you in anyway. I just thought your subconscious was blocking you from understanding, or you weren't motivated enough to process the information, and pointing that out would make you think "Oooh, thats why I can't figure this out." and remove a mental road block. If I were trying to insult you, I'd be like "teh ebil snorlax isn't intelligent enough to process the argument, quit trying to explain it to them." but I don't assume you are unintelligent, nor do I assume you would choose ignorance over knowledge, I just assumed you weren't motivated enough or had subconscious mental block. I know you can write this off as "oh, you're just trying to cover your own ass to save face", but I can assure I don't give a crap about my reputation or feelings, I just care about your feelings, and I don't want them to be hurt. I am very sincerely sorry to you. I really don't know what else I can give to you besides my sincerest apologies, but it really doesn't feel like enough to give you in return for feeling you were attacked, I wish it were.

 

[Pwnemon]

1) TES is a he.

2) I had to reread your post about 3 times butterfree, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the gist of it is that Jesus, in claiming to actually know god, is similar to somebody having a positive mammogram screening, while the dark matter man is akin to somebody saying "I think I have cancer?" Jesus, by going through this theoretical mammogram of having met God, would have an 80% chance of knowing the truth and realizing it, and a 7.6% chance of not knowing and thinking he does? Whereas the guy has gone through mo such test and is just stating some beliefs has a 1% chance of having the truth? Feel free to correct me if wrong.

(Of course, All numbers would be multiplied by some insanely small decimal, but this is just an analogy)

 

[Butterfree]

Where are you getting this from? All we've been told is that he thinks God is dark matter, we haven't been told how he arrived at the conclusion.

I will concede this; however, the people I have seen claiming things like that generally say it because, as I said, they think it's a poignant conclusion about the universe, not because they have observed evidence for it.

"I think God is dark matter."
"I know God exists."

I fail to see how both statements are not equally invalid.

What? These are completely different statements by their very nature; "I think God is dark matter" is purely a statement about your state of mind, whereas "I know God exists" is an (implicit) statement of fact about the world. "I know God exists" means "I have observed evidence that God exists"; this is a statement of exactly the same type as the statements found in scientific journals or textbooks. And while neither is scientific evidence in the sense of hard data, it is Bayesian evidence: evidence in the sense that if you were to estimate the probability of God existing based on everything you know, first before Jesus makes that claim and then after, the probability would be ever so slightly different.

It did confuse me and the link confused me even more.

Too bad. It's really quite interesting and very enlightening; Bayes' Theorem is one of those facts of statistics that humans really don't have any instinctual sense of but that actually lies at the core of the objective definition of evidence. I really recommend you read the whole page sometime (yes, it's very long, but it's worth it; I'm presuming here you quit in confusion before you actually read the whole thing).

I almost had it until you told me the textbook Jesus analogy was different from Jesus.

What's confusing about "It's like Jesus, except more reliable because it's different in these two ways"?

I'm probably wrong because I failed to understand the whole theorem thing (in fairness though, using a mammography and statistics are not the best way to make an analogy, nor is make the analogy and explaining the analogy at the same time) but I still fail to see why Jesus's claim is any more probable than the dark matter guy's claim.

Bayes' Theorem is quite hard to explain adequately with an analogy that does not involve statistics, because it is a statistical theorem and a quite unintuitive one at that. But I will make an attempt to explain the conclusion, anyway.

Basically. Imagine we take all possible worlds and split them into worlds in which Jesus is exactly right and worlds in which Jesus is not exactly right. Obviously there will be much more of the latter kind of world, but that doesn't matter here.

If we take just the worlds in which Jesus is exactly right and find the probability for any given such world that Jesus existed and said what he said, this probability will probably be quite high. This is because in these worlds Jesus is exactly right, including such claims as that God came to earth (or sent his son, or some nebulous mix of both) as Jesus to tell people about God, which presumably means that's what he's going to do.

Meanwhile, if we take just the (astronomically more numerous, but again, that doesn't matter) worlds in which Jesus is not exactly right and find the probability for any given such world that Jesus existed and said what he said, that probability is definitely something lower than the probability for the other worlds; it's just the probability of somebody named Jesus being alive at this time and for any of a number of reasons deciding to make these claims even though in these worlds they are in fact false. Obviously there are plenty of ways this can happen, but the overall probability of it is quite low.

Bayes' Theorem tells us that just the fact these two probabilities are different, and that the former is higher, means that Jesus making his claims is evidence in his claims' favor. You don't need to understand the math or properly why, but this is the case and that's a mathematically proven fact. Basically, if we now put all the worlds together again and instead split them into worlds in which Jesus makes those claims and worlds in which he doesn't, there will be a greater proportion of worlds in which Jesus is right among the worlds in which Jesus made those claims than among the worlds in which Jesus didn't make those claims. The proportion will of course be very low in both cases, but still greater in the former than in the latter.

This sounds like an affirming the consequent fallacy (if p then q; q; therefore p). That's because calling it a logical fallacy doesn't tell the whole story: it is true that it is incorrect to deduce from these premises that p must be true, but once we're dealing with probabilities instead of simply truth or falsehood, then q is indeed evidence for p.

For instance: let's assume if it rains, the streets become wet. We cannot logically deduce that it has rained if the streets are wet; that is what the fallacy means. However, the streets being wet is Bayesian evidence that it has rained. Imagine you're inside your house with the curtains drawn and estimate, without having looked outside, the probability that it has recently rained. Now you walk outside and see that the streets are wet. It is perfectly reasonable for you now to adjust your probability estimate in favor of it having rained: it's not a certainty, since the streets might have gotten wet another way, but the fact the streets do get wet when it rains means you still have more reason to suspect it may have been raining than you did before you saw that the streets were wet.

However, Bayes' Theorem also tells us that the prior probability is extremely important in this regard. In this example, your adjustment of the probability that it has rained should depend very heavily on the general probability of rain: if rain is very frequent, then wet streets shift your estimate up significantly, whereas if it almost never rains, the adjustment will be very slight, though it will still be present.

When we're dealing with Jesus, what is happening is basically that it almost never rains: the prior probability that Jesus is right is extremely low, and therefore, even though Jesus saying so is Bayesian evidence for his being right, the effects are almost undetectable and it is still perfectly reasonable to discard the possibility. What I'm getting at (and Eloi, if in less technical terms) is that the fact remains that it is Bayesian evidence.

Somebody claiming they knew that God was dark matter would also be Bayesian evidence for that proposition (similarly feeble, of course). However, like I said, I find it extremely unlikely that this person made any such claim. Odds are, yet again, they posited it as a poignant conclusion rather than a statement of fact, and that sort of conclusion is not Bayesian evidence, because if we took all possible worlds in which God actually was dark matter and all possible worlds in which he wasn't, the proportion of universes in which they think God being dark matter is poignant would be the same.

EDIT:

Bachuru pretty much took the words out of my mouth, but I do believe teh ebil snorlax just doesn't want to understand so thus they don't try. My personal theory, feel free to prove me wrong.

Do correct me if I'm wrong, but somehow I find myself really doubting you had any idea about Bayes' Theorem before you read my post, even if you had an intuitive sense that there was a difference between Jesus and the dark matter guy. Latching onto my post as if this was all exactly what you were going to say while acting condescending to Teh Ebil Snorlax for being confused by it is not good debating etiquette.

 

[Eloi]

Do correct me if I'm wrong, but somehow I find myself really doubting you had any idea about Bayes' Theorem before you read my post, even if you had an intuitive sense that there was a difference between Jesus and the dark matter guy.

This is true, I had no idea about it, I just felt the two claims differed in what type of information they put forth.

Latching onto my post as if this was all exactly what you were going to say

You explained it much better than I ever could.

while acting condescending to Teh Ebil Snorlax for being confused by it

I didn't actually think he was confused by it, I hold him on a pretty high Pedestal, I just felt he wasn't motivated/had subconscious roadblock.

is not good debating etiquette.

True, and I am sorry that it came off that badly.

 

[Teh Ebil Snorlax]

I wasn't intending to insult you, and I don't believe you are choosing to be ignorant, I just believe that maybe subconsciously you aren't trying as hard, and if that is not the case feel free to correct me.

I wasn't attacking you, I was just trying to figure out why, after posts explaining the same thing, you would not understand it. I don't want to assume you don't know it because you don't know, it is clear that is not the case usually, so I just figured your subconscious doesn't want you to figure it out because it doesn't actually want to.

I never claimed to know you. If I thought I was correct, I wouldn't tell you to correct me with proper information if I am wrong.
I don't consider myself above a clean carpet, I can assure I hold no illusion of being better than you.

I just figured you would understand if you subconscious (not your conscious mind) wanted you to grasp the information. I wasn't trying to insult you, I just thought you, at some conscious level not necessarily choice, didn't want to understand and/or weren't motivated enough, because you usually perfectly understand everything.

Your loss of respect is justified if you felt attacked, I apologize.

I carry absolutely no contempt for you whatsoever, I feel sad for making you upset.

I am sorry. Again, I did not mean to attack or offend you in anyway. I just thought your subconscious was blocking you from understanding, or you weren't motivated enough to process the information, and pointing that out would make you think "Oooh, thats why I can't figure this out." and remove a mental road block. If I were trying to insult you, I'd be like "teh ebil snorlax isn't intelligent enough to process the argument, quit trying to explain it to them." but I don't assume you are unintelligent, nor do I assume you would choose ignorance over knowledge, I just assumed you weren't motivated enough or had subconscious mental block. I know you can write this off as "oh, you're just trying to cover your own ass to save face", but I can assure I don't give a crap about my reputation or feelings, I just care about your feelings, and I don't want them to be hurt. I am very sincerely sorry to you. I really don't know what else I can give to you besides my sincerest apologies, but it really doesn't feel like enough to give you in return for feeling you were attacked, I wish it were.

I accept your apologies and offer my own if you feel that I overreacted, as I have been known to do. There are a few things that really set me off and accusations of ignorance, whether accidental or deliberate, explicit or implicit, is one of them. I know I definitely flew off the handle with the first post I wrote; I just hope I didn't go too far with the second. As an overly-literal-minded person, I find it hard to tell when I've overstepped emotional boundaries.

I understand now what you meant but I think in future you should take me off the pedestal you apparently have me on and apply Occam's razor; it assumes less of me to just think that I'm shit at statistics (which I am) than to think I'm capable of understanding anything but that I subconsciously refuse to learn things that challenge my position.

I will concede this; however, the people I have seen claiming things like that generally say it because, as I said, they think it's a poignant conclusion about the universe, not because they have observed evidence for it.

Ah, but as has just been seen, making assumptions is a bit of a problem for me. I generally won't accept any conclusion that's been deduced from false premises.

What? These are completely different statements by their very nature; "I think God is dark matter" is purely a statement about your state of mind, whereas "I know God exists" is an (implicit) statement of fact about the world. "I know God exists" means "I have observed evidence that God exists"; this is a statement of exactly the same type as the statements found in scientific journals or textbooks. And while neither is scientific evidence in the sense of hard data, it is Bayesian evidence: evidence in the sense that if you were to estimate the probability of God existing based on everything you know, first before Jesus makes that claim and then after, the probability would be ever so slightly different.

You are, of course, totally correct. When I was reasoning this out, I was thinking of the statements plus what we know about the world rather than the statements when taken on their own. That is at least where part of the confusion lies; I would consider both statements equally invalid given the actual evidence supporting them, which is to say that the evidence supporting either is one man claiming that each statement is true.

This sounds like an affirming the consequent fallacy (if p then q; q; therefore p). That's because calling it a logical fallacy doesn't tell the whole story: it is true that it is incorrect to deduce from these premises that p must be true, but once we're dealing with probabilities instead of simply truth or falsehood, then q is indeed evidence for p.

For instance: let's assume if it rains, the streets become wet. We cannot logically deduce that it has rained if the streets are wet; that is what the fallacy means. However, the streets being wet is Bayesian evidence that it has rained. Imagine you're inside your house with the curtains drawn and estimate, without having looked outside, the probability that it has recently rained. Now you walk outside and see that the streets are wet. It is perfectly reasonable for you now to adjust your probability estimate in favor of it having rained: it's not a certainty, since the streets might have gotten wet another way, but the fact the streets do get wet when it rains means you still have more reason to suspect it may have been raining than you did before you saw that the streets were wet.

However, Bayes' Theorem also tells us that the prior probability is extremely important in this regard. In this example, your adjustment of the probability that it has rained should depend very heavily on the general probability of rain: if rain is very frequent, then wet streets shift your estimate up significantly, whereas if it almost never rains, the adjustment will be very slight, though it will still be present.

When we're dealing with Jesus, what is happening is basically that it almost never rains: the prior probability that Jesus is right is extremely low, and therefore, even though Jesus saying so is Bayesian evidence for his being right, the effects are almost undetectable and it is still perfectly reasonable to discard the possibility. What I'm getting at (and Eloi, if in less technical terms) is that the fact remains that it is Bayesian evidence.

This is the bit of the post that I understood. If you ever need to explain the Bayes theorem to someone again, I recommend the rain analogy.

Somebody claiming they knew that God was dark matter would also be Bayesian evidence for that proposition (similarly feeble, of course). However, like I said, I find it extremely unlikely that this person made any such claim. Odds are, yet again, they posited it as a poignant conclusion rather than a statement of fact, and that sort of conclusion is not Bayesian evidence, because if we took all possible worlds in which God actually was dark matter and all possible worlds in which he wasn't, the proportion of universes in which they think God being dark matter is poignant would be the same.

Again, assuming that you are correct about the man's statement being one of pure belief and not of implicit fact, then this holds true, however, as I've said before, I generally don't accept any conclusion drawn from false premises. I'll let it slide in this case, however, since it is more likely that this guy said he thinks dark matter is God than he said he knows dark matter is God (though you can never know with some of those evangelical American, i.e. George Bush).

Also, unless I'm wrong (and I very well could be because one, statistics is not my thing, and two, because I haven't slept properly in days and it is in fact currently 4:25) Bayes theorem vindicates my initial statement that dark matter guy's beliefs and Eloi's beliefs are equally plausible because they're both based on statements starting with "I think";

"I think that God is dark matter."
"I think that everything Jesus Christ said is true."

I hold him on a pretty high Pedestal

Flattered as I am, I wouldn't recommend looking up to me. All you'll see is a fat guy with a pathological need for approval and fear of rejection.

 

[Butterfree]

Also, unless I'm wrong (and I very well could be because one, statistics is not my thing, and two, because I haven't slept properly in days and it is in fact currently 4:25) Bayes theorem vindicates my initial statement that dark matter guy's beliefs and Eloi's beliefs are equally plausible because they're both based on statements starting with "I think";

"I think that God is dark matter."
"I think that everything Jesus Christ said is true."

Somebody thinking everything Jesus Christ said is true is not evidence one way or the other in itself, but Jesus actually claiming it to be true is. The difference between these two people - the one who thinks that God is dark matter and the one who thinks that everything Jesus Christ said is true - is that the former probably thinks it based on reasons that are not Bayesian evidence while the latter thinks it based on reasons that are. The actual probability that they're in fact wrong is indeed very similar for both, because the prior probability is so small. The point is simply that despite this, the latter person believes it for an ever so slightly better reason than the former.

 

[Teh Ebil Snorlax]

Somebody thinking everything Jesus Christ said is true is not evidence one way or the other in itself, but Jesus actually claiming it to be true is. The difference between these two people - the one who thinks that God is dark matter and the one who thinks that everything Jesus Christ said is true - is that the former probably thinks it based on reasons that are not Bayesian evidence while the latter thinks it based on reasons that are. The actual probability that they're in fact wrong is indeed very similar for both, because the prior probability is so small. The point is simply that despite this, the latter person believes it for an ever so slightly better reason than the former.

Fair enough. I retract my original statements.