Saturday, March 27, 2004

Statiscally Speaking About God

Shonk, at Selling Waves, has an interesting post up titled “Statistics prove that God is dead." The catalyst for the post seems to have been a scathing rebuke of Richard Dawkins and an email exchange in response to the scathing.  I thought the post was a great read.  The conclusion of Shonk’s post follows.

"Anyway, the point is that statistics can be misleading and deceptive even in instances where they are applicable. Getting back to the religion question, however, the larger point is that statistics aren’t even relevant to begin with. All they do is obscure the debate. If there is or isn’t a God, it really doesn’t matter how many people believe in him/her/it. To draw another analogy, just because the majority of people throughout the bulk of human history found slavery acceptable doesn’t mean they were right; by the same token, the fact that the majority of people throughout history were wrong about slavery doesn’t mean they were wrong about loving their children or any number of other beliefs they had. “Right” and “wrong”, if we stipulate that such things exist in the first place, aren’t subject to a vote."

Update: In a tag team effort, Shonk’s brother Curt takes to the mat following Shonk’s earlier post "Statistics prove that God is dead." Curt’s post is titled “Religious polemics? To the hatchet-mobile!" It’s a pin.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/27 at 07:57 AM
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