[ExI] "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

[Emlyn]

I've had some faithful types that I know see this, and comment on
"probably", like it's a big flaw, and say "isn't that just
agnosticism"? I think probably here means the same as it would in
"Santa Claus probably doesn't exist"; the probability is really really
close to 1.

But I do agree with them to some extent. I'm happy to say "God does
not exist", when I mean it as a placeholder for "it is extraordinarily
unlikely that God exists". When talking about real world things, there
is always an implicit "probably", because the universe is messy and
reserves the right to surprise us. For instance, I would say "The sun
will rise tomorrow", when strictly you could only say "The sun will
very probably rise tomorrow".

No one would have been worried about "There is no Santa Claus. Now
stop worrying and enjoy your life.", except that the kiddies might
discover the ruse (which we cover up, Santa being a kind of
training-god). It's too bad they couldn't have gone with "There is no
God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

-- 
Emlyn

http://emlynoregan.com - my home
http://point7.wordpress.com - downshifting and ranting
http://speakingoffreedom.blogspot.com - video link feed of great talks
on eCulture


2008/10/23 Emlyn <emlynoregan at gmail.com>:
> "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."
>
> That's an ad going on Buses in the UK.
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/21/religion-advertising
>
> Wondering how much public support it's getting?
>
> http://www.justgiving.com/atheistbus
>
> It's still the first day of fundraising according to the website, I
> just copied this from it:
>
> *************
> Fundraising target:     £5,500.00
> Donations so far:       £ 79,227.26
>
> ** This is amazing! We're so grateful for your generosity. If you
> haven't donated yet and would like to then please do - we're now going
> to advertise across the UK. Buses, trains, billboards - the sky's the
> limit!
>
> ** We reached the total at 10.06am - thank you so much to everyone who
> contributed! If you haven't given yet and would like to then please do
> - we can then get adverts inside the same buses to strengthen the
> campaign's impact! **
> *************
>
> By the time most of you look at the site, I expect the total will be a
> lot higher.
>
> --
> Emlyn
>
> http://emlynoregan.com - my home
> http://point7.wordpress.com - downshifting and ranting
> http://speakingoffreedom.blogspot.com - video link feed of great talks
> on eCulture
>