Sam Harris

Has anyone read this book, which purports to use Bayes Theorem to calculate the probability that god exists, and find in the affirmative?

The Probability of God : A Simple Calculation That Proves the Ultimate Truth (Hardcover)
by Stephen D. Unwin "

Follow this link - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0761526846/qid=1113478219/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-4086771-8063202?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Absolutely incredible that someone with a PhD has the time or inclination to write something so daft. Despite all the mathematical niceties, the enitre thing boils down to assumptions about probabiliites and cause and effect. For example, he includes in his equation the idea that 'good' exists and the probability that it is created by god. Pick whatever number suits your ingoing hypothesis, and there you go - theory proven.

The mind boggles. And the book got good reviews, for being written in a jaunty style!

I give up…

Just a note:

You can set text as a link rather than posting the link itself.

If you post [ url=webaddress ] and [ /url ] (without the spaces inside the brackets) on either side of a chunk of text, the text will be the link to the URL (keeps the page width standard).

For example:
The Probability of God : A Simple Calculation That Proves the Ultimate Truth by Stephen D. Unwin

JFYI

Byron

Thanks for the tip !  I’ve been wondering how that was done.  I’ve copied and saved your instructions for future reference. 

Thanks

Susan

[quote author=“Rasmussen”]Thanks for the tip !  I’ve been wondering how that was done.

Not to hijack this thread, but you can click on the BBCode link under “Options” (bottom left) as you write a post, or you can see a given post’s BBCoding by clicking on “quote” as if you were responding to it (or of course when you are responding to a post with BBCoding)—all that stuff shows up when you quote.

Byron

hmm odds on which god? =p

we have so many variations = )

Interesting, but by following the same approach (and correcting a few of the assumptions) I am pretty sure that it turns out that dogs are God (I knew there something to that anagram business!)

Seriously, though, the misuse of statistics and probability is one of the great underappreciated criminal acts of our modern era.  I suspect that this kind of thing will ultimately be as villified as big tobacco, but in the meantime, I guess it is just up to people to think critically.

Wonderful.

-Matt