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From: brengle@hplabsc.UUCP (Tim Brengle)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.origins
Subject: Re: The Likelihood of Existence
Message-ID: <2809@hplabsc.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 4-Nov-85 18:30:33 EST
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.2809
Posted: Mon Nov  4 18:30:33 1985
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> >Just for the sake of asking, what is 'unlikely' about God existing?
> 
> [paragraph omitted]
>
> Admittedly, I've always been a bit befuddled by probability stuff, but
> likelihood only seems reasonable to me when it deals with recurrent
> events like rain, and not with the existence or non-existence of a
> particular object like Australia...or God.

Although I am not an expert, I have some training in probability.  Recurrence
is not the appropriate criterion for deciding when to use probability.
Uncertainty is.  It *is* appropriate to use probability to talk about
individual or particular things.

Remember the joke about the man being hauled away by airport security for
bringing a bomb on board an airplane because the probability of TWO bombs on
board being vanishingly small?  Probability is most properly used when talking
about the unknown.  The probability that the universe exists is 1 (certainty),
because the universe does exist (metaphysics aside).

Similarly, the likelyhood that God exists is also 1. :-)