What if there is a god?
Harari’s Sapiens and Homo Deux are excellent books which explain past and future of humanity. During the experiencing epic history of sapiens -normally- there are some discussions about the religions and existence of god are also exists. Summarily these discussions focus on the role of religion on the catalyzing of the collaboration of sapiens and effects of it the individual and social life. That is the result of religion and acceptable analyses. The hot topic of religion also continues with roots of them.
Where are the religions come from? Are they artificial? These questions get their answer implicitly in the book. The answer is religions cannot scientific things and no longer take place in the modern life. That statement is also true in large extent. Maybe up te now human have used religion as a ‘tool’ in his private life and in the political area. He has trusted to God to keep his life, orchard, and sanctuary. He has relaxed by the feeling existence of guardian. He looks to modern life then decide it would like there is no need to any God because living is a fundamental human right. In political area emperors, kings and other executors governed the people on behalf of god. Nowadays they are governing on behalf of the community. These anecdotal evidence help to us making this inference: Image of god is a product which developed by the humans to make life easier. With that feature as an ‘intersubjective reality’ god, democracy and brand of Peugeot are same and not real.
Whereas the book is not discussing religions ontologically. In the book paradigm, it is impossible because there is no postulate to develop a concept which proves the god. If so let’s develop a special thinking experiment and discuss the ontology of god mathematically. After finishing this paragraphs you may do not be a religious person and you can convert your ‘belief’ from atheism to agnosticism. These paragraphs have not written to convince you to make you believe in god. All discussions about a ‘fallacy’.
Umberto Eco cites comments of his relatives about the characters and places in his novels within his memoirs. Almost everything is artificial however their relatives believes those are real and lean on concrete memoirs from Eco’s past. Meanwhile, his novels consist some real modified memoirs too. Up to reading Eco’s memoir, I have believed everything in his novels is fictional.
Suppose life is a novel and there is a character named by gods like Tolkien’s fictional universes and gods. The novelist has died. John says there is a god but Wyatt says no, this character is fictional. Which one is true? You may do a deterministic rational inference over the witness reports or manuscripts. You may think it does not look like realistic. Ask yourself: up to emerging Internet how many people conceived it except its inventors? Let’s transfer our question beyond: What is the internet? Is it a concrete thing? Is is exist? No. Don’t believe it. It is an invention just for collaborate people.
If you believe the lies there is no lie on the universe. Let’s do not believe the lie of the religion of god. Then, let’s discuss on god from the Bayesian perspective and change the matter. The cancer is the real thing. Diagnosis of cancer leans on several ways like tests, biopsy. For tests, every test way has an error rate that’s why there are misdiagnosing issues. The accuracy of these test defining the parameters four parameters:
TP: True positive or number of the patient is cancer and their cancer test positive (as it should be) TN: True negative or number of the patient is healthy and their cancer test negative (as it should be) FP: False positive or number of the patient is healthy but their cancer test positive (Test error) FN: False negative or number of the patient is cancer but their cancer that negative (Test error)
The accuracy is calculating by (TP+TN)/(TP+TN+FP+FN)
If a medical test accuracy is %99.99 and your doctor has said you are cancer there is %0.01 possibility of misdiagnosis. That means you may be treated though you are not cancer. Vice versa is also possible. Your doctor says you are healthy, there is %99.99 possibility of cancer. You go home happily but you may die.
We are living in the chaotic universe of possibilities. Almost nothing is certain. Like Gerd Gigerenzer stated in his book “Risk Savvy” we need for statistical lessons than biology. We percept the things as if they are certain. Then, how the science works? It works on core math, logic and statistic. Hypotheses, theories, and laws comprise the science. There are no scientific statements which completely fictional. Everything works on rule of the game. Somebody may a hernia emerged after “agricultural revolution” by evidence. If somebody else finds an evidence which proves the hernia emerged before the agricultural revolution the first statement will be false. Everything is fallible.
Epistemology or the philosophy deal with what is ‘right information’ and what is ‘wrong’ have a lot of methodologies. Positivism says we can understand truth only with experiments on the other hand rationalist thinks we can understand everything with constructed thinking.
When we turn back our mundane life we do not use scientific rules of philosophical doctrines. We use heuristics and assumptions, evolutionary. For instance, you will never doubt whether your father is genetically your father. Why? Becuase it looks like you, you remember him from your childhood. So then, did you check it with DNA test even if DNA test also has very small error rate? Examples can be reproduced. We doing a lot of assumptions and if we are not paranoid we will never accuracy of them.
Maybe the image of god this kind of assumption you can neglect it. It is your personal choice. However, if you say science says there is ‘no good’ I kindly ask: what is the accuracy of this statement. If you say ‘there is no god’, is there false negativity? Remember, you go out from your doctor’s office you say ok there is no cancer cell in my body but it is. This universe and unknown beyond of it bigger than your body and god is not a cell. We today know that there is not only one type of existence.
I have never calculated the accuracy of neglecting god. Because this life does not like a stock exchange market and belief is not kind of financial instrument. However, Pascal has done… Pascal’s wager is a calculation of financial expected value of believing and disbelieving god. Financially it is worth to invest.
