Wednesday, April 07, 2004
Hail God, the all-probable

LONDON: A British physicist has calculated that the mathematical probability of God existing is 67per cent.

Stephen Unwin, a committed Christian who said he previously thought it was 90per cent likely that God existed, used the 200-year-old Bayes's Theorem to arrive at his calculation.

He weighed the existence of evil and suffering against miracles, divided into supernatural events and miracles that occur when prayers are answered. He factored in free will, humankind's goodness and sense of morality, and philosophical arguments for and against God's existence.

In the immortal words of Douglas Adams....that about wraps it up for God then....

Follow this:

'Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful [as the Babel Fish] could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

'The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith and without faith I am nothing."

'"But," says Man, "the Babel Fish is a dead giveaway isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that you exist, and so therefore by your own arguments, you don’t. QED."

'"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn’t thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

'"Oh that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra-crossing.'

Douglas Adams R.I.P.

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