Christian game theory...

rainbow kirby

here

This is really funny, you cant put religion on a rigorous mathematical basis but this guy is trying to do it...

GuanYin

Sooo... the wonderful academics of "Fellowship University" see fit to grace the Science catagory again.


See here for some more of their science.

I love the pascal's wager payoff matrix box at the bottom.

I can't find anyone who has ever heard of Fellowship University outside of that website (surprisingly)...a small part of me hopes it really exists.

dod

The terrifying thing is that there is a constituency for this sort of stuff.

GuanYin

Well, there is no reason for scientists and mathematicians not to try and prove/disprove the existance of god, they throw there lot in with proving disproving everything else.

Whats annoying is that the actual science that you get to read about is so poor.

Is it just because compitent science doesn't exist in this area or is it that noone goes looking for it?

dod

I would have thought that it's because although you can specify the neccessary conditions to prove the existence/ lack of existence of God, that fundamentally any proof rests on a tenet that requires an unprovable article of faith, and that therefore no 'proof' can stand independently of itself without a fundamental unprovable weakness in the logic.

GuanYin

Of course you are right.

I meant of course look for evidence pointing toward the existance of god. (which I accept, is not what I said)

I was looking over pubmed for references, a few on creationism and bioethics, but I'm pretty sure that someone recently went searching for evidence of god in mathematical distribution in nature. I think he published but I can't find a reference.

Anyone?

Stark

It would be interesting I thought before, to imagine yourself as god, and go really in depth as to what your perfect universe would be like, and see if it compares to the current universe.

But seriously, what's on that page is horribly simplistic.

Syth

That Pascal's Wager is terrible simplistis. Which God should we worship? What if we are worshiping the wrong God? Then we would probably suffer more! So probably the best thing to do is to leave the whole God thing alone and then if there is a god, (and there are so many, odds are you'd pick the wrong one), that way god judges you (s)he'd see you in the middle, neither die hard believer nor heathen, so you'd probably wind up better.

Also I don't really think you an prove the existance/non-existance of god(s), both theism and atheism require different leaps of faith

silverside

Did you know that some useful branches of mathematics have come from the attempt to prove the existence of God? The Rev. Thomas Bayes derived Bayes' theorem (which is used nowadays when estimating probabilities) while doing so!

I thought that God would naturally try to frustrate all atempts to prove or disprove his existence (what's that part in the Bible where God tells people not to test him - is it the part where Jesus is being tempted by Satan while out on the mountain?) so God is outside the frame of reference of all science.

Syth

It's like the disproof of god in the hitch hikers guide to the galaxy. Tis great!

sceptre

Originally posted by silverside
what's that part in the Bible where God tells people not to test him

It's the bit near the start where God is a spotty teenager and doesn't want to do his physics exam. Book of Grunge 3:16

"Laws of Physics? I AM TEH LAW"


/me waits for bolt of lightning

PiE

Zzzap!

Originally posted by sykeirl
but I'm pretty sure that someone recently went searching for evidence of god in mathematical distribution in nature. I think he published but I can't find a reference.

Anyone?

Wasn't that the movie "Pi"?

Capt'n Midnight

In Contact (the book) they found that PI x millionth digits formed a picture of a circle - but that's a different Story..

http://www.geocities.com/ilian73/god.html
Proof of God's existence
The encylopedist Denis Diderot once paid a visit to the Russian Court at the invitation of the empress, Catherine the Great. He conversed very freely, and gave the younger members of the court circle a good deal of lively atheism. The empress did not like to put a direct muzzle on her guest's tongue, so the following plot was contrived. Diderot was informed that a learned mathematician was in possession of an algebraical demonstration of the existence of God and would present it before the Court, if he desired to hear it. Diderot gladly consented. The mathematician was Leonhard Euler, and he said gravely, and in a tone of perfect conviction: "Monsieur, (a + b^n)/n = x, therefore God exists!" Diderot, to whom algebra was Hebrew, was embarassed and disconcerted while peals of laughter rose on all sides. He asked permission to return to France at once, which was granted.
(Thiebault, "Souvenirs de vingt ans de sejour a Berlin", 1804, in James Newman, The world of mathematics)