Statistics and Religion

Earlier this week I came upon a rather interesting entry in a mathematics book at the library; it discussed statistical concepts that had to do with religion.

Now, as I'm sure many people are aware of, logic and religion don't often meet, which is why this particular article stuck out to me. As many of you, my loyal readers, are aware, I am an atheist and firmly believe that mathematics is one of the most important subjects we cover in our lives. So, reading someone mathematically prove that we should all be devout christians was quite surprising to me.

the proof went like this:

Let's suppose we flip a perfect coin, with a perfectly random result. If it lands on heads, we will win $50, but if it lands on tails we win nothing. Our expected winnings, if we play the game a large number of times, according to the law of large numbers, is $25, because:

.5 (the proportion of results that yield us money) times $50 = $25 and:

.5 (the proportion of results that yield us no money) times $0 = $0

Add the two of these together and we get $25, our expected winnings.

Now, let's apply this to the christian faith. Suppose we lead devout christian lives and God rewards us for this by admitting us in to heaven where we live in paradise for eternity, since it is forever, the reward is (infinity, sorry it didn't come out as well as I would have liked). Suppose, now, that there is no God, and we live our lives accordingly and die at the end of it, here our reward is Zero. Now let's assume that, after our life is spent ignoring the presence of God, we are sent to Hell for our sin, for we have broken the first commandment, and done so most of our lives, our gain here is eternal suffering, hence we win - (negative infinity). So, if we write everything up, we get:

X (the chance there is a God) times (the reward for believing in him) =

(1-X) (which is the chance there is not a God) times 0 (the reward for believing in him) = 0

Expected reward:

Sounds pretty good, now if we don't believe in God:

X (the chance there is a God) times - (the reward for not believing in him) = -

(1-X) (the chance there is not a God) times 0 (the reward for not believing in him) = 0

Expected reward: -

Hold on, this can't be good. Assuming we don't believe in God, our expected reward is -, the worst possible loss imaginable. This means that, for anybody familiar with gambling, it makes more sense to worship God than to not worship him, as it has the greatest likelihood of yielding an appealing reward.

So, christians, statistically speaking, y'all aren't as crazy as I originally took you to be, I apologize.

Fear

There is something i feel that many people, throughout their lives, lose sight of: the fact that one day we are all going to be dead, we will simply reach the end of our lifetime and pass on. Now, I'm not saying we don't all know this, most people know it. It's because we know this that we created religion, which we use merely as a way to avoid the subject of real, permanent death, of actually not existing. No, people have not forgotten it, they've just distracted themselves from the real thing, real death. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what you do in your meager little life, you will die, quite soon in the grand scheme of things, and be forgotten.

Now, there are a lot of things people worry about from day to day, but, unless you follow some form of obscene deity who promises you immortality, many of them are quite frivolous. Actually, they're frivolous especially if you believe in some kind of obscene deity. In your life there are very few things that matter, because, no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, you're always just fighting your way towards a better death.

Really, there's nothing that you have to do in life. Do nothing and you'll only die a little faster than the rest of us; put in a little effort by eating every once in a while and you'll survive for at least a few years, but, for many of us, those few years are not enough; that meager existence would simply not be enough for us, which is why we choose to overload ourselves with work and conflict which, complication our lives in a fashion which we claim to hate. We validate our own existences by making others' seem less than our own, meager in comparison to what we have accomplished. We fight our ways up some infinite ladder, one which the bottom cannot be seen, only felt, and the top is strived for, but never reached.

So, you might have a hard time one day, you might slip up, and what you do might cause irrevocable damage to you life, but really, what's the worst that can happen? You'll only die. Now, let's suppose you live you life perfectly, not a single flaw, everything goes exactly as you want it to and you never face a single bit of conflict, hatred, or pain. You'll still only die.

So, really there's not much to worry about in life, because the end result will always be the same. We should make the best of the time we have and not dwell on the few mishaps that we encounter. Everyone has problems, everybody's broken, but what matters is what we make of it.

Sorry To Bother You

(note: not an actual suicide note)

I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while now so I don’t want you to think that I just walked off and simply got the idea from something I saw or something I met in those few moments on my way to the water fountain that touched me deeply enough to make me do something like this. This act was the result of many hours of heavy contemplation, and I believe that, while it may not be the only path I can take, it is the best.

There are a few things I suppose I will regret. Sadly though, none of them are things I might be able to change. I am sorry that I wasn’t able to do anything to help Max. I wish the odor that had filled my head hadn’t been enough to make me lose Kiowa. I wish I would have told Sally how I felt about her before it was already too late. However, all of that is in the past now; there’s nothing I can do about it. Max and Kiowa are dead and Sally is married. I suppose I should be contented by the fact that she’s happy. Wishing that she’d be happier with me is selfish, but I still wish it were true. Many nights I consider what it would be like if she was right there along side me in my truck, cruising along, just the two of us, not a care in the world. She would be a much better conversationalist than the six cans of beer that occupy the passenger seat on most evenings.

I’m sorry for troubling you with this; I really don’t mean to. I just had to get a few of my thoughts out before it was too late. I don’t want you to think I’m just bellyaching about my life, it’s been a good one. I’ve gone out; I’ve seen the world, seen war, death, friendship. I’ve experienced a multitude of feelings, some of which other people will never get the chance to feel. I’ve felt the sting of loss, more than once in fact. Max, Kiowa, they’re gone, both drowned. Perhaps I should drown myself, have the lives of the three of us meet our own respective fates through the same medium. It would almost suggest some kind of universal causation, wouldn’t it? But, no, that style of irony is beyond me, I’ll keep my death simple, hopefully something that can be carried out, then quickly cleaned up and forgotten.

Now, I’d like for nobody to think that they caused me to do this; there has not been a single person who has led me to believe that this is the path for me to take. I’d like to thank my mother and father, you helped me a lot during these last few months since I got back from the war. Everyone here has been very supportive of me, I just don’t seem to be able to assimilate back in to modern society. War has just inhibited me from easing my fit back in to the mold that normal life presents to us.

I’ve tried to find a way around what I’m about to do, there just isn’t one. I’ve tried to support my parents, or at least get to a point where I can support myself, and worry about repaying my parents for all they’ve done, but I haven’t been able to hold down a job for more than ten weeks since I returned. School is just so pointless and irrelevant to anything that I’ve experienced in my life that I can’t bring myself to accept it as a legitimate means of improving the state of my life.

I don’t imagine my death will be too difficult, human life is so fragile. There are those of us who like to think we’re tough. We’re not though. Death is just such a simple thing, much simpler than life. I imagine I’ll be able to go without too much trouble, Kiowa didn’t seem to have much trouble with it. He just slowly drifted away, sank slowly into the field, drowning in the remnants of humanity. I could have saved him, I know I could’ve. It would have gotten me the Silver Star if I had, But then, where would I be now? The same place, probably. Lingering along my elliptical pathway, constantly moving but not really going anywhere.

I am worried about where I’ll end up when I die. That is, assuming I end up anywhere at all. I was raised to believe that up above me is a loving God that will take me in and shelter me in Heaven. Of course I may also be damned to Hell, in which, considering the nature of my sins, I’ll be placed, standing, in a large field of men and women who have committed similar sins and will, while paralyzed and unable to move, have my arms and other bones broken and mangled. Of course, who’s to say that there even is a God, or that there even is a Hell? Perhaps I’ll die and death will be the simple end of life, nothing further. My being will simply cease to exist and the world will carry on without me, unchanged, not caring about the fact that a single living entity has met its end.

I’ve thought about the issue a lot. Is there a God? Did some higher being place us here to carry out our duties to him like bees to their queen? Even though we know full well that our master will be living long after we’ve fallen. Perhaps the whole idea of religion was created to comfort us, leading us to believe that something does happen to us after we die. Perhaps the human brain isn’t able to handle the feeling of not existing, and so creates scenarios in which we all carry on our meager existences in some way shape or form, even after our bodies begin to decay. Catholicism, Judaism, and the Muslim faith all teach us that we will receive immortality in heaven. The Buddhist faith teaches us that we go through reincarnation until we achieve enlightenment. Hinduism simply teaches us that we are reborn over and over, the universe recycles our souls, transplanting them in to other beings at birth based on how ethically we have lived our previous life. How can we possibly say that one of these is better than the other? With all these arguments, how can we possibly conclude that any one of them is right? Maybe they’re all wrong. Perhaps, after we die, we do simply stop living, and our consciousness ceases to exist.

This meager life I’ve taken up since I returned just seems to me to be the same day lived over and over, with each day being only a slight variation on the last. There’s no one out there who seems to have any form of remote interest in my story, my failure. I sit in my Chevy, drifting along, letting my life drift away with the time. Why prolong the process? The conclusion will be the same, regardless of any feeble amount of effort I put in on my part to change the course of my life, which has become so based on routine that I’ve become trapped in my own loop with no way out. I may as well end it here.