Calculating The Probability That God Exists

by Godlessons on August 5, 2010

I came across a tweet today that said, “Either God exists or he doesn’t.  I’m happy with my 50%”  That seems true on its face, but there are multiple possibilities, and each time you add a possibility, the odds of any particular God existing get slimmer.

How to Determine Chances for Existence

If all we have is “God” with no attributes, there is a 50% chance that this God exists.  As soon as we add an attribute though, the chances go lower.  If you have a God that created the universe for instance, you have a 50% chance that God created the universe and you have a 50% chance of God existing.  That means that you actually have a 25% chance.  If that God created man, suddenly it’s a 1/8 chance.  If that God created dogs, it goes to 1/16 and so on.  Let’s say that God created every atom in the universe.  That alone is roughly a 1/10^80 chance that there is a god that created every single atom in the universe.

One may think that creating every single atom in the universe should be the apex of the number of possibilities, but we have a countless number of other options, namely the position in the universe that all of those atoms were created.

Let’s show this in terms of a computer monitor.  If we have a computer monitor that is just monochrome, where the colors are only black or white, we can represent each position on the screen with an x and y position.  If our screen is 100 pixels by 100 pixels, that makes the chances of any single pixel being turned on 1/10000.  If you pick 2 pixels, you need to square that number, which means that the chances of you picking both of those pixels is 1 in 100000000.  3 pixels and we have to multiply that by 10000 again for a 1 in 1000000000000 chance.  4 pixels and we have a 1 in 10^16 chance.  When we extrapolate this out, the chances of having every pixel on the screen white are 1 in 10^40000.  That’s an insane number considering that the chances of you and I picking the same atom in the universe are roughly 1/10^80.

So, when you say that God is omnipotent, omniscient, all good, a creator, placed all the stars in the sky in the positions they are in, has a son named Jesus, etc., you are adding attributes that lower the possibility every single time.

Possibility That God Doesn’t Exist

Now, even though there are multiple things that people claim God does, the chances still remain 50% that God doesn’t exist.  The reason is, claiming God doesn’t exist doesn’t rely on any proclamations of properties.  God either exists or he doesn’t.  My position is that he does not exist.  Nothing will change that possibility to lower than 50%.

Some might say, “Hey, you have the same odds against any particular thing happening that I have that it does.” and that is true, but I don’t assert that there is a God that lacks the properties you suggest God has.  I say there is no God whatsoever.

Imagine that I were to say there is no screen.  I am making no specific assertions about individual pixels, I am making an assertion about the entire screen.  There is a 50% chance that there is no screen where there is a 1/10^80000 chance of any specific picture being on the screen if it exists.  My chances are way better than yours.

Conclusion

If believers want to keep the chances that their God is real up, they need to stop giving him attributes.  I’ve had believers try to use the Beyesian inference argument to tell me that God is the best explanation, but when considering the chances, I would have to argue that without evidence that there is a God, the chances don’t look very good.

Related posts:

  1. Believers Can’t Know God Exists

Tagged as: Apologetics debunked, argument for the existence of god, creationism debunked, philosophy

  • http://www.spiritualatheist.co.uk Spiritualatheist

    Of course though if we assume that god is omnipotent then he is just as able to create an atom as all the atoms, thus bringing the odds back to 50/50. The believers argument doesn't need to allow for god to break down the world into things god did or didn't create. God created all of it ipso factor. I'm also quite sure they don't believe he gives a shit about probability either.

    I think the evidence stacked against there being a god is a more effective way of lowering the odds of god's existence than counting all the things he made and adding the odd's together.

  • http://godlessons.com Godlessons

    Of course though if we assume that god is omnipotent then he is just as able to create an atom as all the atoms, thus bringing the odds back to 50/50

    I'm not speaking about merely the ability, I'm speaking about the things God is supposed to have done as well as ability. If we are going to specify something, the things that thing does are attributes.

    If I want to say that a human being exists, 'human being' is one attribute to the thing that exists. If I want to say a blond haired blue eyed being exists, those are 2 other attributes. If I say a blond haired, blue eyed human being that was born on December 12, 1995 and placed a marble in the middle of main street exists yesterday, those are more attributes.

    So, the ability to create one atom is not the exact same as having created an atom, and creating one atom is not the same as creating two.

    I'm also quite sure they don't believe he gives a shit about probability either.

    Why would it matter what God gives a shit about?

    I think the evidence stacked against there being a god is a more effective way of lowering the odds of god's existence than counting all the things he made and adding the odd's together.

    That's fine if that's what you want to believe. The odds are so slim this way that it is so much more than statistically impossible it's not even funny.

    Now, trying to calculate the odds of something existing really is questionable when there is no way to know that things could be different. I am making an assumption that God could have chosen all the things he is attributed to have done. If, on the other hand, a god exists but had no choice in what it does, the odds go back to 50%. If a god exists that has no choice in what it does though, there is no reason to call it god IMO.

  • Patmospete

    Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.

  • Solidworkscontracts

    the odds of your god existing are very low… if there are 10,000 religions on earth… only one can be absolutely correct…. which leads one to believe that the other 9,999 were conceived by man……. which leads one to believe that the one that is seemingly correct…. is also most likely conceived by man.

  • Solidworkscontracts

    even more clearly…. if 20 religions exist….which we all know do…. only 1 could be absolutely correct… 19 are incorrect…. most likely the last follows suit and is incorrect as well.

  • http://godlessons.com Godlessons

    There are 36000 different flavors of Christianity alone, not to mention all the other religions and their branches. If Christianity is true, but only one particular denomination has the right answer, that means that you have a 0.0027% chance of picking the right denomination.

  • Johnellis_12

    I think it’s funny how that you logically came to a conclusion that favors the existence of God when compared to the atheist alternative of the earth’s existence.

    However, if you choose not to take a stance on the creation/evolution of the earth, you are an agnostic and have a biased opinion in which your “logical conclusion” is based on a logical fallacy as defined by your own beliefs.

  • http://godlessons.com Godlessons

    I think you missed the whole point. The point I was making is that you can’t show the probability of the existence of something. If you accept the ability of being able to calculate the odds of something existing, all on its own, you would have to say that the creator of everything has to be the least likely thing to exist.

  • Johnellis_12

    I understand that, but you can’t make a logical fallacy, post it on a blog and expect people to believe it. In the same way that you come to the conclusion that evolution is the cause of the world’s beginning (by observing the world around you) I’ve come to realize that God created it (by observing the world around me). There is adequate rational to believe in a creator.

    • http://godlessons.com Godlessons

      First of all, it’s not a logical fallacy. I was showing the chances. The chances of a creator God existing are smaller than anything I can think of, merely because it has more properties.As for evolution being the cause of the world’s beginning, I have never said that. Evolution is a biological process, and has nothing to do with the beginning of anything. It says nothing about the beginning of the world or the beginning of the universe.Now, in order to come to the conclusion that God created everything by looking at the world around you, you have to have an idea of what things would look like if they weren’t created by God. What would something look like that isn’t created by God? Without an idea of that, saying that observing the world around you tells you that Goddidit holds no weight.

  • A Christian

    First of all the odds of God vs No God wouldn’t be 50/50 with the logic you are trying to use. You’re assuming that all explanations of God fit into single category of God. In reality many religions view the concept if God in radically different ways. There are around 10000 religions in the world. Using this logic wouldn’t that mean that there are 1000 religious explanations of the world and a few non-religious and a few agnostic explanation for the world? Yes it would meaning that based on a system without any evidence plugged in at all, the odds for atheism are about 1 in 1000 (Obviously these are general and not exact statistics).

    You also cant say that qualities of God statistically reduce the likelihood that he exists without applying it to our universe. In a hypothetical scenario of the universe the odds of God existing would be 50/50 as stated above, but in the fine-tuned, life supporting universe we live in the evidence strongly points in the favor of a Creator. When saying these odds of God we should not focus on hypothetical scenarios but find evidence in the Universe we live in. Probabilities are often influenced by variables in a positive or a negative direction. For example, if the quality of an all-powerful (omnipotent) God fits how our universe is put together better than atheism can then the probability of God increases.

    Just for the sake of the arguement lets look at everything needed to create a living cell from the the elements of the earth. First, the proper chemicals are needed to fuel the construction of amino acids (a type of protein that is the building block of a cell) are ammonia, methane, and hydrogen (these were the chemicals that Stanley Miller used in his highly controlled experiment to create amino acids). The problem is that these chemicals don’t react with each other when carbon dioxide and nitrogen are present. The atmosphere of the earth has always been primarily nitrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen and water vapor. NASA studies have revealed that the atmosphere at the time life was theorized to have developed was primarily nitrogen and carbon dioxide. The actual ability to have a life forming reaction is basically statistically impossible with the composition of earth’s atmosphere. Then even if, impossibly, amino acids did develop they would have to join together in a complex sequence. Not only would this sequence be unlikely to occur, but other compounds react very readily with amino acids which would add variables making the foundation of a cell even more unlikely. Then even if the fundamental pieces of the cell came together in another nearly mathematically impossible event, the specialized parts of the cell would have to develop with full ability to function. Then, after this improbable development of cell parts DNA must be constructed out of only 4 different chemicals on a microscopic scale. This DNA, made of only 4 chemicals, has the ability to store more information than super-computers that have taken thousands of years for humans to develop. The odds of just one cell being created are so infinitesimally small that the odds of life ever being created on earth by chance are 1 in trillions of trillions of trillions, if not impossible.
    However, if an all-powerful, all-knowing God exists then the existence of life isn’t just a ludicrous, unbelievable stroke of impossible luck, but a highly likely event orchestrated by a Creator.

    Hypothetically the probability of God may be 50/50, but in the universe we live in the odds point very clearly to a loving, omnipotent, omniscient God that has a plan for us.

    • http://godlessons.com Godlessons

      You are incorrect. Religions almost always believe in a god. Atheism is not a religion anyway, it is a rejection of gods, and can be considered the opposite of religion.

      In that sense, if we are to do the same thing, the chances are equal that magical weirdness happens as they are that it doesn’t. As an atheist, there is just a rejection of all woo claims. It is up to the woo believers to fight over which of their woo is the right woo. That puts things exactly back where they were, and you wasted a ton of typing just to be shown in 2 paragraphs that you don’t understand what you’re talking about.

    • A Thinker

      Christian, I have some ideas i am just “dyin” to share with someone. Can we chat via email sometime?

    • anonymous

      There are an estimated 1-30 billion planets in our galaxy, and 100 billion galaxies in the universe (and these numbers are probably conservative).  We can round an appropriately conservative estimate to one billion billion planets that exist in our universe.  If you’d prefer to calculate your own probability, that’s fine, but for argument’s sake, consider the probability of all the developments and chemical processes you just mentioned to be something like one in a billion.  Sound fair?  Now look at our estimated number of planets.  Mathematically, at least a billion planets in this universe have experienced the process leading to the origins of life you just outlined, and Earth is one of them.

      It’s the arrogance that irritates me, as it’s always derived from ignorance.  We’re not special in the large scale.  Nothing about our Earth alone suggests the work of a creator’s hand.  He/she/it may very well have created all of these billion planets (along with the rest of the cosmos), but you have to ask yourself what the chances are that this god cares about little old you.

  • justthinking

    what is the alternative to believing in a god? no god and chance. but the pervasive nature of design in this world and also in humans. evolution by chance cannot have a mind that creates an orderly world, just as a pile of a jumbo jets parts cannot get assembled when a tornado goes through it by chance.

    • http://godlessons.com Godlessons

      I’d like to have a word with whoever first started that stupid jumbo jet thing. It’s so mind numbingly ignorant of what evolution is, I can’t even get started. That’s mostly because I have never met anyone that either knew or wanted to know the first thing about what evolution is after they started a conversation that way.

      Evolution isn’t an accident. When you can explain why I can say that, whether or not you agree, come back and we can get you to a point where you will never make that kind of a mindless statement again.

  • fischer1

    The odds have been calculated by the mathematicians – the odds that God exists is 1 in 4.  That may sound low but the odds that evolution occurred has been calculated at 1 to 10 (to the 40th power).   Mathematics doesn’t really favor evolution over God.  

    • http://godlessons.com Godlessons

      If you want to say things like that, show who is saying it, and where I can see it.

      I certainly hope you don’t expect me to eat that bullshit sandwich.

    • http://godlessons.com Godlessons

      If you want to say things like that, show who is saying it, and where I can see it.

      I certainly hope you don’t expect me to eat that bullshit sandwich.

    • notwired

      “The odds as calculated by mathematicians”  ????? I am a mathematician amongst other things and you are talking out of your ass. In fact, you just made this up.

  • Anonymous

    Even as a disbeliever in an omnipotent god, I don’t think you should be trying to educate people on Bayesian probability when your understanding of factorials and combinatorics is so tenuous. The probability of selecting 2 out of 10000 pixels isn’t 1/10000^2. In reality, it would be C(10000,2), or 49,995,000, inasmuch as C(10000,2)=(10000!)/((10000-2)!2!). The reason is fairly simple: when you choose 2 pixels out of a set of 10000, it wouldn’t be possible to choose the same one twice (you would’ve just chosen 1 pixel twice). In case you don’t understand how combinations work: (10000-2)! removes the outcomes of pixels that are left after 2 have “fit,” so to speak, into those two possible selections, while the 2! removes redundant outcomes for results differing only in order by permutation. For someone who’s never studied or has forgotten his or her elementary algebra, I would’ve easily let it slide, but you apparently suggested that you somehow understood how Bayes’ theorem works. I’m not confident you even understand what the purpose of the theorem is (considering the lack of understanding in simple combinations). Don’t write an article against a mathematical theorem (or its erroneous use by monotheists, for that matter) when you clearly have no idea how it’s used.

  • Anonymous

    Even as a disbeliever in an omnipotent god, I don’t think you should be trying to educate people on Bayesian probability when your understanding of factorials and combinatorics is so tenuous. The probability of selecting 2 out of 10000 pixels isn’t 1/10000^2. In reality, it would be C(10000,2), or 49,995,000, inasmuch as C(10000,2)=(10000!)/((10000-2)!2!). The reason is fairly simple: when you choose 2 pixels out of a set of 10000, it wouldn’t be possible to choose the same one twice (you would’ve just chosen 1 pixel twice). In case you don’t understand how combinations work: (10000-2)! removes the outcomes of pixels that are left after 2 have “fit,” so to speak, into those two possible selections, while the 2! removes redundant outcomes for results differing only in order by permutation. For someone who’s never studied or has forgotten his or her elementary algebra, I would’ve easily let it slide, but you apparently suggested that you somehow understood how Bayes’ theorem works. I’m not confident you even understand what the purpose of the theorem is (considering the lack of understanding in simple combinations). Don’t write an article against a mathematical theorem (or its erroneous use by monotheists, for that matter) when you clearly have no idea how it’s used.

    • http://godlessons.com Godlessons

      I appreciate you pointing this out.  I’m sure there are tons of things on this blog that have errors.  I’ve fixed a few that I have noticed, and have fixed a couple that other people have pointed out.  When I get some time, I will fix this one.

      I’m not sure what they are teaching in elementary algebra now, but I certainly never was introduced to these types of probabilities there.  In fact, the level of probability I remember studying in high school was limited to what the chances are of any particular number being rolled with two dice.  It wasn’t until I took a statistics class in college last semester (17 years after high school) that I learned to understand this stuff better.
      Anyway, I never said how well versed I was in this stuff.  Truthfully, I felt literally lost going back to college and taking calculus.  It was nothing like I remembered high school calculus being, and I felt like an idiot almost every time the instructor said, “You should remember this from high school algebra, or 1010.”  I tested high enough to go straight to calculus, but I would be willing to bet that half of the things he said that about were never taught to me before.

      Anyway, thanks again for pointing this out.

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