Proving Every Religion is Wrong with Math! (Joke Topic, Calm Down)

[Grey Jinjo]

Let's say there are ten religions total in the world. Each religion says that theirs is right and all the others are wrong.

All right, now we finally find the one that is right. At this point, 1/10 groups were correct, and 9/10 groups were wrong (or .9 of all religions).

However, religions are not bound by quantity. There can be an infinite amount of them in existence, so let's up our totals a little. Let's say that now there are 100 religions total with the same stipulations. Now, when we find the correct religion we have 1/100 that are right, and 99/100 that are wrong (or .99 of all religions).

Continue on with another multiple of ten. Now we have 1/1000 religions that are right, and 999/1000 religions that are wrong (or .999 of all religions).

All right, enough with static numbers. We have the ability to reach infinite, so let's actually approach the limit.

Now we have 1/infinite religions that are correct, and 99999~/infinite religions that are wrong (or .999~ of all religions).

Since calculus proves that .999 repeating ~= 1, then .999~ of all religions is actually 1 of all religions, or, more simply, all religions in general.

.

[Articerile]

Ah, but there is only a finite amount of belief in the universe, and thus only a finite amount of religions.

[Grey Jinjo]

Religions can exist without anyone believing them. If every Christian were to stop being Christian today for some reason, Christianity would still exist, it just wouldn't be followed or believed.

[Articerile]

Christianity is based on faith, without faith it is nothing, and thus being nothing it doesn't exist thus rendering it useless in the equation..

[Grey Jinjo]

Originally Posted by Articerile

Christianity is based on faith, without faith it is nothing, and thus being nothing it doesn't exist thus rendering it useless in the equation..

? Don't know what you mean. Christianity as the religion would still exist, it just wouldn't have any believers/followers. If I don't believe that there is a tree in my backyard, will it go away?

I can create a religion right now that I don't believe in. You're making up a lot of unnecessary requirements to justify a finite amount of religions IN A TOPIC WITH A SOCCER BALL IMAGE AS ITS HEADER .

[Articerile]

A tree has physical matter, a religion is a set of beliefs.
If you take all the matter from the tree, there is no tree.
If you take all the belief from the religion, there is no religion.

[Grey Jinjo]

Originally Posted by Articerile

A tree has physical matter, a religion is a set of beliefs.
If you take all the matter from the tree, there is no tree.
If you take all the belief from the religion, there is no religion.

But... there is still the Bible and all of its stipulations and everything.

Say there are no Christians, but Christianity turns out to be true. How can something that doesn't exist be true? This is pretty silly .

[Articerile]

Ah, but there is still the belief of the existance of it as well as the belief of the parts of it as well as physical matter.

Grey.
Grey.
Can you please help me figure out what I'm going on about?

I just based my first two posts on The Hogfather and HHGTTG respectivly, and I wasn't expecting a proper discussion.


Ah!
Say you destroy any physical evidence of Christianity, it would still live on.
Say you destroy any physical evidence of a tree, it would be dead.

This shows Christianity needs belief/memory to survive, scriptures are just an aid to this, not the actual thing itself. That would be saying the Bible IS Christianity.

[Grey Jinjo]

...But

.99999~ = 1

ALL OF THEM

[Articerile]

But... 0.9999999999999999 isn't 1, if it was 1 it would SAY 1. There would still be SOMEWHERE a 0.000000000000001th religion that was right.

[BoltDragoon]

.999 repeating isn't 1. It's just arbitrarily close to it.

[Articerile]

^ that

[Grey Jinjo]

That's not what mathematicians say: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0.999...

PS: I agree that .999~ doesn't equal 1, but whatever. Apparently we're wrong because of some unfallible math that proves common sense wrong.

[Articerile]

Mathematicians are idiots.

So, we've proved that Religion isn't wrong but Maths is.

I'm happy with that result.

I propose a toast!

[BoltDragoon]

You guys wanna see the decision matrix for Pascal's Wager?

              
                                There is a God             There is no God
                                     P = .5                   P = .5    
                              --------------------------------------------
Believe in Him                         inf                      10

Don't believe in Him                  -inf                      20

So the values in the table are the "Goodness values" of each outcome. For example, if you believe and He exists, there is infinite goodness in store, whereas if you believe and He doesn't, there's only 10 goodness, or something.

Anyway, the point is to check the expected value of goodness in each belief. So for believing in God we get:

.5*(inf) + .5*(10) = Inf

And for not believing:

.5*(-inf) + .5*(20) = -Inf

Thus, since the expected value of goodness in believing is infinity and the expected value of goodness in not believing is negative infinity, Pascal reasons that it makes more logical sense to believe in God. Yay math.