This is a guest post by a long-time commenter at this blog, Richard S. Russell. Richard is a retired research analyst (Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction) and long-time activist in the realms of atheism, science fiction, and liberal politics. He has more opinions than any ten people should legally be allowed to have but makes up for it by giving them away as fast as possible. He blogs irregularly at richardsrussell.blogspot.com.

For years, CNN.com published essays on what they called their Belief Blog — something to do with religion and occasionally atheism. And I’d often join other atheists in the comment section as we pointed out the many, many flaws, fallacies, and outright lies in the cases the religionists are trying to make. I in particular often favored humor in my observations, but I’m hardly alone in that regard. And this has led any number of religionists to whine that we have no respect for them or their faith, and that we’re just mean to poke fun at them.

I don’t deny that I derive a certain glee in doing so, but I submit that it’s a perfectly normal, utterly human reaction, in defense of which I offer up one of Jesus’s favorite tactics …

= = = = = =  T H E   P A R A B L E  = = = = = =

You’re sitting around your favorite table at the corner tavern with the usual gang, when your friend Norm comes in, all excited.

“Norm, where ya been, buddy?”

“Guys, you’re not gonna believe this, but I swear it’s true, every word of it. I was just leaving the house and heading for my car when I heard voices coming from my back yard. That was strange, so I went around back to see what it was. And you’ll never believe what I saw.”

“So don’t keep us in suspenders, what was it?”

“It was a leprechaun. And he was talking to the Easter Bunny. Not exactly talking, they seemed to be arguing, but they were using some language I couldn’t understand. Loud, though, that’s why I heard them all the way around the front of the house.”

Some sniggering, but Bob down at the end of the table rises to the bait. “Easter Bunny, huh? How do you know it was the Easter Bunny and not just a regular rabbit?”

Norm shoots the questioner a reproachful look. “Because he was 6 feet tall and wearing a polka-dot vest. And talking! OK? And while I was just standing there goggling, the leprechaun reaches behind his ear and pulls out a big gold coin and just throws it at the bunny, like he’s really mad or something.”

“Oh, do go on!”

“Well, I kind of slid into the shadows, hoping they wouldn’t see me, and just then the flying saucer shows up.”

“Flying saucer, eh? We’ll probably get lots of coverage of that on the news tonight, then?”

“No, probably not, because it was only about the size of my hand when it appeared. I didn’t even see it coming, it just settled down on the lawn out of the sky. And then it suddenly just grew, right before my eyes. Got about as big as my garage. And then …”

“Yeah, then a little green man came out, right?”

“Will you please shut up and let me tell it? I was there, and you weren’t! Yes, he was little and had those big almond-shaped eyes you always see in the movies, but he wasn’t green, more grayish. And only 3 fingers on each hand. And he didn’t say anything but he kept waving his arm at the other 2, trying to get them on board the saucer.”

“And did they go?”

“The leprechaun did. Right away. Just scooted in past the space alien. But the bunny didn’t look like he wanted to, and you could tell that the little green man, I mean gray man, was getting irritated, because he waved harder and stamped his foot. Finally the Easter Bunny hopped on up the ramp and got on. Had to duck a bit to get through the doorway.”

“Norm, if you think …”

“Will you wait a minute? Then the opening in the side of the ship just closed up, the saucer shrank back down to about hand size again and took off straight up, faster than I’ve ever seen anything move. It was out of sight in about 10 seconds. So that’s what happened and why I’m late.”

And everybody else just looks at each other and then busts out laughing. Norm is miffed. “I’m telling you, that’s exactly what happened!”

“Norm, my friend, we are just simple everyday working guys. Our drug of choice is beer. What on Earth have you been smoking?”

“Nothing! Nothing at all! Haven’t had a drop to drink, either. I’m stone-cold sober.”

“Been doing a little experimental cooking with mushrooms, then, have you?”

“No! I’m telling you that’s exactly what happened. God’s honest truth. Would I lie to you?”

A round of nods and a chorus of “Oh, yeah!”s, and Norm gets really pissed and stomps off.

= = = = = =  T H E   E N D  = = = = = =

OK, be honest, now. You would’ve made sport of Norm, too, wouldn’t you? What an incredible crock! He’s practically begging for scorn and ridicule.

And if, in the coming days and months, Norm stuck to his guns and continued to insist that his account was true, despite lack of any evidence whatsoever, you’d eventually fear that your buddy had suffered some kind of psychotic break and start urging him to seek professional help.

But at least Norm had the advantage of claiming first-hand, personal, eyewitness experience. And, no matter how far-fetched his tale, it didn’t contain any outright impossibilities. How much crazier do you have to be to solemnly subscribe to the even more incredible BS from the Bible, all of which (supposedly) happened 2,000 years ago and is attested to only by 4 pseudonymous authors, otherwise unknown to history, who didn’t even live thru the events they wrote about?

And you religionists wonder why we jeer, scoff, roll our eyes, and poke fun at you. Put yourselves in our position, and imagine the self-restraint we have to use to hold it down to only that. The only reason we take you at all seriously is because you wield political power and have historically shown that you’re perfectly willing to barbecue people like us for pointing out your idiocies, so you’re not merely pathetically funny, you’re irrationally dangerous.

People who don’t want you to laugh at their beliefs
shouldn’t believe such funny things.
— Anonymous

Have you heard of the Drake equation? It’s a simple product of seven values, and it attempts to compute the number of civilizations in our galaxy with whom radio communication might be possible.

Now that we have found clear evidence of planets around other stars, the equation is slightly more practical than when it was first proposed over a half-century ago, but it still demands reliable figures for factors we can now only guess at: the fraction of planets in the average solar system that could potentially support life, the fraction of those that produce life, that continue on to develop intelligent life, whose intelligent life develops technology, and so on.

How likely is God?

We have a similar problem when we evaluate the claims of Christianity.

Physicist Stephen Unwin wrote The Probability of God (2004) and, yes, he proposes to compute the likelihood that God exists. He uses Bayes’ theorem (I wrote an introduction to Bayes’ theorem here). You can take his equation below as a given, or you can see how it is derived from a more conventional form of Bayes’ theorem in the appendix. You’ll soon see that the interesting part isn’t the math but the assumptions that Unwin makes.

We start with a beginning probability of God’s existence, P_before. Use a scaling factor D—Unwin’s “divine indicator,” which is a measure of the likelihood of God given certain evidence—we compute P_after. Unwin uses values of D from 10 (given a particular bit of evidence, God is much more likely to exist than not) to 0.1 (given this evidence, God is much less likely to exist).

Once he has a new probability P_after, he uses that value as his new P_before and repeats the computation with another value of D, reflecting the likelihood of God given another piece of evidence. The computation is quite simple. The unreliable part, as with the Drake equation, is determining the probabilities.

Unwinding Unwin

We need an initial probability—the likelihood of God given no evidence. Unwin uses P_before = 0.5 and calls this “maximum ignorance.”

His first bit of evidence is evidence for human goodness. For this, he uses D = 10 (God is much likelier given that human goodness exists). Plug in the numbers, and the equation gives P_after = 0.91. The equation simply provides a way to merge these different factors into a single probability for God. Here are his six factors with their associated D values:

• Human goodness, such as altruism (D = 10)
• Existence of moral evil—that is, evil done by humans (D = 0.5)
• Existence of natural evil such as natural disasters (D = 0.1)
• Minor miracles such as answered prayers (D = 2)
• Major miracles that break the rules—a dead person brought back to life, for example (D = 1)
• Evidence of religious experience such as feelings of awe (D = 2)

And after all that, the probability of God is 0.67. God is likelier to exist than not.

It’s math! How you gonna disagree with that?

(Let me note that I haven’t read Unwin’s book but instead have relied on helpful critiques by Vic Stenger and The Friendly Atheist.)

I take exception to Unwin’s assumptions. First, let’s revisit our starting probability about God. Does Zeus exist? Thor? Osiris? Shiva? Quetzalcoatl? If the answer is “Are you serious? Of course not!” then why do we start with a 0.5 probability for Yahweh, especially when he looks like just another Canaanite god?

If Unwin wants to dismiss this information at the starting gate, I can accept that. But then let’s add it in as a new factor:

• Humans have a passion for inventing supernatural gods. Believers make contradictory claims, so most of these claims must be false. Yahweh looks like just one invented god. (D = .001)

Next, let’s reevaluate Unwin’s six factors.

• Goodness: Altruism exists in humans. This isn’t surprising since we’re social animals. Evolution has selected us with an innate sense of the Golden Rule. The Christian view also explains good traits in humans, so this gives no preference either way. (D = 1)
• Moral evil: Humans do terrible things sometimes, and the natural explanation has no trouble with this. But Man made in God’s image with an innate sense of God’s existence? The popular free will defense fails. No, this Christian claim maps poorly to the unpleasant reality. (D = 0.01)
• Natural evil: Indiscriminate killers like natural disasters, disease, and other calamities—things that an omnipotent God could eliminate—are hard for Christianity to explain. Birth defects and other gratuitous evil compound the problem. (D = 0.0001)
• Miracles: The Bible says, “Ask and ye shall receive,” but prayers aren’t answered the way the Bible promises, not even the selfless ones. Coincidences abound, but we have little besides wishful thinking to imagine that they are the work of God. (D = 0.001)
• Rule-breaking miracles: Jesus promised, “Whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these,” but science knows of zero amputated limbs that have grown back or dead people supernaturally returned to life. Surely there have been millions of earnest prayers for these, but they have been unanswered. (D = 0.0001)
• Religious experience: We feel awe in response to both natural realities and supernatural claims. (D = 1)

The probability is now down to 10^–16, but we’re just getting started. There are lots more uncomfortable facts about Christianity.

Piling on: more factors to consider

• Despite much searching, science acknowledges zero examples of the supernatural—not ghosts, not speaking to the dead, not the afterlife, and not religious claims. (D = 0.01)
• Historians scrub supernatural claims from History, which means that the Bible is unreliable (and leaves little besides tradition as the foundation for Christianity). (D = 0.1)
• Christianity is just a tradition and can’t be deduced from objective facts about nature. (D = 0.1)
• God is functionally nonexistent. (D = 0.01)
• Our reality looks like a reality with no gods. (D = 0.01)
• Though God is said to desperately want a personal relationship with us, he remains hidden and faith is demanded. This is precisely what you’d expect if God were nonexistent. (D = 0.0001)
• The Bible itself treats God as if he’s just another invented god. (D = 0.01)
• The Bible reveals no special information that wasn’t common knowledge to people of the time. (D = 0.01)
• Believers tend to reflect their culture; that is, a predominantly Muslim culture will produce children that will likely grow up to be Muslim, and so on for other religions. (D = 0.01)
• Religion depends on indoctrinating children before they are old enough to be skeptical. (D = 0.01)
• The Bible looks like the tedious blog of an ancient tribe, not the simple, unambiguous, and short document that an actual omniscient god would produce. (D = 0.01)

The probability of God is now basically zero (10^–38 if you’re keeping score at home).

The apologist might demand equal time for the Transcendental Argument, the Design Argument, the Moral Argument, and so on. I don’t think they get out of the gate (click on the links for more).

The underlying problem with Unwin’s argument is that different people will weigh the factors differently. Clues for God’s existence aren’t unambiguous. I’m sure you thought that at least some of my numbers above were off, and you may have thought of other facts that have been overlooked. Nevertheless, the attempt to make the God question quantitative, interesting though it may be, seems hopeless.

The subtitle of Unwin’s book is A Simple Calculation That Proves the Ultimate Truth. Yes, it’s a simple calculation, but no, it doesn’t prove God. In fact, the evidence points in the opposite direction.

All Westboro [Baptist Church] was 
was evangelical Christianity minus polite behavior.
— Frank Shaeffer interview on Point of Inquiry

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 04/09/14.)

Photo credit: Andy Melton, flickr, CC

Appendix:

Bayes’ theorem is easy to understand visually by using a probability tree. See my introductory post for a discussion of that. It’s less easy to understand (for me, anyway) through equations.

Here’s the derivation of the equation used by Unwin, starting with Bayes’ theorem. We’re computing P(G | E), the probability (P) of God existing (G) given (|) the evidence (E). Bayes’ theorem says:

where P(~G) is the probability of God not existing. Define D as follows:

D is Unwin’s “divine indicator,” the scaling factor that represents how likely the evidence E would be if God existed rather than God not existing. Now multiply top and bottom of Bayes’ equation by 1/P(E | ~G):

Since P(~G) = 1 – P(G),

Or, using the terminology of Unwin: