Also, two notes about your reasoning for the existence of god. First, you’re begging the question (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question). You define god as “the greatest thing that exists,” thus assuming that god exists a priori. Secondly, defining god as the set of all things removes any need for debate. Few would argue that all things that exist don’t in fact exist, but as post #69 notes, many would contest that definition of god. It isn’t “logically consistent and scientifically defensible” it’s logically flawed and scientifically irrelevant.

People raised in Judeo-christian environments usually believe that their ideas are the standard; the patently absurd tale that some bearded man in the sky assigned humans as his agents, to rule over nature, has become patterned into their minds as the very definition of what religion is. That’s simply not true; it’s like equating chocolate with ice cream because you’re unfamiliar with any other flavor. It’s also very culturally insensitive; judging the value of other systems based on the lack of value in ones’ own.

The anon above, who said The important question is not “Does God exist?” so much as “Supposing God exists, how does this affect us?” has it right.

Must run again, got to tap out a carb needle seat. Sorry! I have enjoyed your cogent questions and wish I was a better preacher. But not being evangelistic hampers me in this regard.

Oddly, your new definition of god as “that which is greater than anything that exists,” establishes the opposite of what you are trying to prove. Sorry to push this point, but loose language is the reason that such “proofs” are often problematic. Not to mention that the rest of your argument fails with this as a premise. Perhaps you mean to define god as “the greatest thing that could conceivably exist”? If so, you have all the same problems as Anselm’s ontological argument (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontological_argument).

In your apple analogy, you prove that the apple exists by pointing to it and calling it an apple. In your proof of god, you point to the set of all things and call it god. As I said, few would contest that the set of all things exist.

If this is the case, and to you “god” is what others refer to as “the universe,” as someone noted above, then it is just a matter of semantics. I would suggest, however, that “universe” provides a better label for the set of all things, as it isn’t fraught with supernatural connotations.

Go Science hero!

What comprises a statistically significant sample is a matter of some small dispute, although there are industry standards. We chose to greatly exceed industry standards, and tested 33.3% of our bolts. For that reason they sold very well, thank you.

Statistical significance is not based on the ratio between sample size and population size–a sample of 2000 scientists is going to have a high degree of statistical significance regardless of whether the total population of scientists is 4000 or 4 trillion (assuming there was no systematic bias in the sampling procedure, so it can be treated as a random sample of the larger population). In the frequentist view of probability one often considers a theoretical “population” consisting of an infinite series of repetitions of the same experiment, as in this example from wikipedia’s sampling article:

In other cases, our ‘population’ may be even less tangible. For example, Joseph Jagger studied the behaviour of roulette wheels at a casino in Monte Carlo, and used this to identify a biased wheel. In this case, the ‘population’ Jagger wanted to investigate was the overall behaviour of the wheel (i.e. the probability distribution of its results over infinitely many trials), while his ‘sample’ was formed from observed results from that wheel.

Phlip, keep up the good work!

I would say that that is a more representative sample than the 3 mathematicians you know.

No, *sigh* that’s my point. Exaggerated bad science is still bad science. You haven’t even sampled one percent of the population you are attempting to characterize.

I used to work in rocket science. One of the things my employer made was explosive bolts for cockpit ejection systems. You know how you test explosive bolts? You don’t, really. Because they’d be blown up and useless after you tested them.

So you test a statistically significant sample. If you don’t test enough bolts, your data is meaningless and you may as well have just rolled dice.

What comprises a statistically significant sample is a matter of some small dispute, although there are industry standards. We chose to greatly exceed industry standards, and tested 33.3% of our bolts. For that reason they sold very well, thank you.

You don’t need to have a bunch of impressive bald men in white coats on your side in order to be right. It wouldn’t matter if every scientist in the world was a committed, card-carrying, screaming pastafarian – appeals to authority have no bearing on the existence of God or the viability of atheism (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority which is an explanation of the logical fallacy at work here). But it rhetorically undermines your argument when you use bad science – such as statistically insignificant data sources – in any attempt to describe something as being supported by science.

http://chronicle.com/article/Cosmology-Cambridge-Style-/124568

Furthermore, your claim that my three mathematicians were chosen arbitrarily is false (I chose them quite carefully) and your claim that “objectively” the National Academy is composed of “the top scientists” is unsupported.

But the whole argument is fallacious, so why does it matter?

You can be right without claiming the sponsorship of a priesthood.

You can be wrong if every genius that ever lived agrees with you.

Argument from authority is invalid. Especially when your subject is theology, and you are drawing your authorities from well outside that field.

So let me.

He was introduced here.

You can skip his posts just like you could skip Cory’s or Xeni’s or anyone else’s.

May you all have a fine fine night and rest in the comfy bosoms of God.

Ittōsai out.

Providing the abstract definition of God as “the greatest thing that exists”, the second question then has no meaningful answers and acts as a misdirection from the central discussion: has the Judeo-Christian explanation for the origin of mankind and our world lost its relevance in light of scientific evidence against them? To put it another way, does this mark another turning point in history where major religions will have to adapt to scientific discovery (just as they have when we discovered the world was round, and again when we discovered that the sun was the center of our solar system).

Whether Steven Hawking believes in some all-powerful entity is irrelevant; in saying “God is no longer necessary” (to paraphrase) he meant that he sees no need to use such a figure to explain our origin.

If you’ve read something of mine that seemed ontological, either you’re misread me or I’ve represented myself poorly. People who do not understand Spinoza’s arguments often mischaracterize them as ontological; I agree with Spinoza on many points and have attempted to use his argument here, so perhaps that’s where the red herring flopped in.