Originally posted by Stoic
View Post
Most metaphysical systems of which I am aware have something fitting this description.
But then it would also seem reasonable to consider it just an unknown part of the universe, where "universe" is properly understood to be everything that exists, or has existed, or will exist.
But if one considers God to be an omnipotent, omniscient being who has existed eternally, created the universe about six thousand years ago, inspired men to write an infallible Bible, still gets involved in controlling the world, and sends men to hell if they don't believe he exists, then I would consider the prior probability to be quite low, and the burden of proof to be correspondingly high.
I would say that we can divide the probability space into several subspaces. And you might be surprised at how high the probability of some form of Christianity (not necessarily the form you describe) might be.
The first division is between that portion of the space where something corresponding to the "unique, unlimited First Cause, Last End, and Supreme Being" containing portion of the domain, and that which contains no such being. Given the intuitive plausibility and appeal of such an Entity, I see no pretheoretic reason to think that the portion containing It/Him would be exceedingly small, though I will concede that it would be somewhat smaller (perhaps an order of magnitude or two) than the portion where It/He does not exist.
Then we may divide the subspace where It/He exists into a subspace where It is impersonal, and another where He is personal. Not having any good pretheoretic reasons for preferring one possibility over the other, we appeal to the principle of indifference/insufficient reason, and presume that He is personal in half of the probability space where He exists, and impersonal in the other half. So the probability of a personal God existing is between 0.05 and 0.005.
Finally, for the subspace where He is personal, we may divide between the subspace where He has revealed Himself to man, and the subspace where He has not. Again, appealing to the principle of indifference/insufficient reason, we may presume that this once more cuts the probability space in half. So, the probability of God existing and having revealed Himself is between 0.025 and 0.0025.
Finally, we use the principle of indifference/insufficient reason to divide the probability space among those religions that claim that God has in fact revealed Himself. If we go by sects/denominations, most of the probability will wind up with Christian and Islamic groups - the other revealed religions being smaller and more homogenous/less factional. So we should probably take a more balanced approach, dividing this portion of the space into the major religious traditions making the claim: Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Ba'hai. Which means that the prior probability of Christianity being true is between 0.005 and 0.0005. Low, but not so low that it cannot be overcome by solid historical evidence - particularly if accompanied by a suite of arguments for the existence of God.
But I consider prior probabilities to be very subjective, so while I would be willing to discuss how we come up with them, I wouldn't insist that others agree with me about those probabilities. Instead, I expect that we would eventually agree to disagree.
Comment