How lucky would you have to get to convince you to believe in God? - Page 3

Piers · #21 09-07-2005, 07:49 PM

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Or more generally, how improbable an event would it take to convince you?

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There is no level of improbability.

If I am dealt 13 clubs in a bridge hand I know someone has rigged the deal.

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Let's say a priest walks up to you and says "God has decided to reveal himself to you, He has decided to make you get very lucky in the next week."
…. etc

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So now I know who has been rigging things.

I am confident there will always be a more plausible answer than God, even if its just being very (un)lucky

Edit: To expend on the last point. If it was a very implausible event, and I could see now sign of an explanation, I would just categorise it as something I could not explain and wait for further data input. I don't see why God has to have anything to do with it.

Quaalude · #22 09-08-2005, 05:12 AM

Here's what it would take for me:

Israelis and Palestinians declare a complete peace, completely disarm, send their daughers off to marry the sons of the other side, and then open a pork processing plant on Temple Mount to supply their new, jointly run, international chain of fast-food restaurants.

Osama bin Laden opens a hot new nightclub in downtown New York. George Bush and the 911 families all attend, saying, "Let's let by-gones be by-gones." "Sadam Hussein and the Kurdish 5" are the opening act.

The Pentagon is turned into low income housing.

Every billionaire in the world gives his or her entire fortune away to the poor. World hunger and poverty disappear. Wars cease.

If all of these things happened within a week, I'd probably start to think something might be up.

-Travas

sexdrugsmoney · #23 09-08-2005, 05:30 AM

I'm not going anywhere with this but I'm drunk and thought it was interesting.

Q. With a thin turkey baster or similar, could a virgin be impregnated?

After all, all hymens do have a gap to let urine through, so surely it should be theoretically possible for a fully developed woman to have a hymen intact and be impregnated via turkey baster or some other method.

And what about girls who break their hymen's horseriding or via other physical activity, but haven't actually had sex? Are they still considered virgins despite their hymen breaking via physical exercise, excluding sex?

David Sklansky · #24 09-08-2005, 05:32 AM

Spaminator was right about you.

Kripke · #25 09-08-2005, 05:32 AM

HAHA, great post.

sexdrugsmoney · #26 09-08-2005, 05:37 AM

I hate you David. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

BluffTHIS! · #27 09-08-2005, 06:15 AM

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You and BluffTHIS have me pegged dead wrong. It's not surprising though because religious people need to believe that non believers have a strong psychological component to their non belief. Especially the highly intelligent non believers. But for me at least there is no such component.

Say I think that is a billion to one underdog. If the priest calls thiry unfixed football games right (with the spread of course) Jesus becomes about even money. 25 games and he is still a 30-1 underdog but no longer ridiculously farfetched. 50 games and I'm off to the confessional.

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I don't think I have you pegged wrong and in fact in my posts above stated that you would have to have a series of highly improbable happenings that you observed to make you change your views, which is what you have stated above. I possibly only underestimated how many such occurences you would need.