Bayes' theorem provides a useful method of rationally determining the likelihood that a hypothesis or claim is true by considering a prior probability and updating that with new information. Using this method, this calculator will calculate how likely you expect God's existence to be. (It's hard to define a single conception of God that appeals to everyone, but this calculator is focused on an uncaused, intelligent, supernatural entity which transcends the physical universe, is capable of creating planes of existence and life, would take an interest in any created intelligent beings, and which might be expected to have the qualities of omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, and omnibenevolence, akin to popular conceptions of the Abrahamic god and classical theism. If this doesn't work for you, the calculator will still work, but you may need to think about the answers a little differently than presented. What's important is that you consistently use the same definition and conception of God throughout the calculator.) Based on various observations of things that would depend significantly on God's existence, and how probable you believe those observations would be given the existence of God or the lack of God's existence, it will calculate the probability that God exists using Bayes' theorem.
How Bayes' theorem works: With Bayes' theorem, a hypothesis with some existing likelihood or credence for being true is first considered. (The hypothesis may be something such as, "This coin is fair.") Then, a piece of evidence (a test, event, or observation) is considered (such as the result of a flip of the coin). Based on how expected the observation would be depending on whether the hypothesis is true or whether the hypothesis is not true, an updated probability for the hypothesis can be determined. Specifically, Bayes' theorem tells us that the probability that a hypothesis is true given a new piece of data (which we then call the "posterior probability") equals the previously held probability for the hypothesis (called the "prior probability") multiplied by the probability that the data would be as it was if the hypothesis was indeed true, and dividing that by the total probability that the data would have been as it was regardless of if the hypothesis is true.
Mathematically, that can be expressed as P(H|E) = [P(E|H) × P(H)] / P(E) where P(H|E) is the probability of a hypothesis being true given some evidence (or "datum/data"), P(E|H) is the expectation of the evidence being as it is assuming the hypothesis is true, P(H) is the prior probability that the hypothesis is true, and P(E) is the total expected probability for the evidence being as it is. The value of the total expectation of the evidence P(E) can itself be calculated by adding the expectation for the datum given the hypothesis times the prior probability together with the expectation for the datum assuming the hypothesis is false times the prior probability that the hypothesis is false. Thus, Bayes' theorem can be written out as P(H|E) = [P(E|H) × P(H)] / [P(E|H) × P(H) + P(E|¬H) × (1-P(H))] where P(H|E) is the probability of a hypothesis being true given some evidence, P(E|H) is the expectation of the evidence being as it is assuming the hypothesis is true, P(H) is the prior probability that the hypothesis is true, and P(E|¬H) is the expectation of the evidence being as it is assuming the hypothesis is not true. This calculator works by taking the inputs collected in the sections below and performing this equation with those inputs. (Learn more about Bayes' theorem at Bayes' theorem (Wikipedia), Bayes theorem (YouTube: 3Blue1Brown), You Know I’m All About that Bayes: Crash Course Statistics #24 (YouTube: CrashCourse), A visual guide to Bayesian thinking (YouTube: Julia Galef), and Bayes’ Theorem Problems, Definition and Examples (Statistics How To).)
In this application, the hypothesis being evaluated is "God exists," and the data are various observations and facts about reality which are generally argued as being either more consistent with God existing or more consistent with God not existing. To allow the calculation to work properly here, each of the below evidence sections needs to be conditionally independent given the hypothesis. Meaning, probabilities for the expectation of each evidence point can be assigned based specifically on whether or not God would exist, distinct from and not dependent on any other evidence section. (In other words, if you hypothetically knew whether or not God existed, then at that point learning of the existence of one evidence section would provide no additional knowledge on the expectation of any other evidence section.) This is important as the calculation of one line of evidence in effect becomes the new prior probability used in calculating the following section, and it ensures that no one piece of evidence is counted more than once. To prevent any evidence from being counted more than once, each evidence section has been designed to address a specific nuance not addressed in any other section, and likewise it remains important to only consider the nuance of any individual point which is unique and not an aspect that was considered as part of an earlier evidence point. In some cases, it can be difficult to disentangle two evidence sections, so the explanations in the evidence sections include notes of which specific aspects of the evidence to consider, as well as a note on what aspects have been previously addressed in earlier sections and should as such be taken for granted when considering the current evidence section. (Similarly, anything informing your input in the Prior Probability section should be distinct from the topics in the evidence sections.)
For each section, you can input a value between 0 and 1. 1 correlates to 100%, 0.5 correlates to 50%, 0.0001 correlates to one chance in 10,000, and so on. The number may have as many decimal places as you like, but for more extreme values like 0.9999 or 0.0001 make sure you have justification for your numbers and that you're not being driven by personal biases. All fields are pre-populated with a default value of 0.5 (50%), but the inputted expectations of the various observations will generally be higher or lower than this. Some observations may also be considered as a high or low likelihood regardless of whether God exists. (For example, a person might consider that it would be to some degree unexpected to find constants of the universe being "fine-tuned" whether the universe would have arisen naturally or whether it would have been created by God, and that it would simply be more unexpected in one scenario compared to the other.)
Beware also of cognitive biases such as confirmation bias which can cause people to interpret information in a way that is more favorable towards their existing beliefs. Too much biased input can result in very skewed results. A single decimal place can make the difference between God being calculated as probably true and probably false. (Note especially that in the evidence sections, not counting the Prior Probability section, numbers very close to 0 will affect the final results more than numbers very close to 1.) For best results, be careful that you input reasonable and intellectually honest values into the calculation. Be especially careful of any inputs that are particularly extreme, allowing enough room for the possibility that some of your assumptions or analyses may be mistaken. Of course, this calculator will not provide a perfect, objective answer on God's existence, because the values you enter will be at least somewhat speculative and subjective, and different people have different levels of knowledge about the various issues. The results cannot be considered as evidence for or against the existence of God, but they can serve as a barometer for your believes and biases about the likelihood of the existence of God using a more rational way of factoring in all the relevant evidence compared to relying on intuition alone.
Tip: You may try to come up with a range of higher and lower reasonable values for the various input fields and experiment with how the different inputs affect the final results, and that way you will be able to calculate a range of probabilities that you might consider reasonable. You may even discover that you can consider it reasonable to estimate the probability of God as both high and low, depending on the combination of values inputted. Note that if the results of the calculation are starkly different than your intuition, you may need to carefully consider why that is. You may need to check your input to ensure that you did not enter input incorrectly (such as missing a decimal place, or mixing up the "Expectation Given God" and "Expectation Given Not God" fields) or that you did not neglect to include some evidence that is informing your intuition. Or you may need to consider if your intuition is being heavily influenced by personal biases. Your goal here should not be to change your input for the purposes of matching your intuition or some desired result, rather it should only be to think more carefully about what is happening.
In the Prior Probability section, enter a value for how likely you would expect God's existence to be prior to considering the points of evidence in this calculator. For example, you should enter a value for how likely you would expect for an entity like God to exist as if you did not know whether there was a physical universe, whether physical constants appeared fine-tuned to allow for the natural development of our universe, etc. All individual pieces of evidence that would inform your final opinion on God's existence should ideally be included in the evidence sections below and not inform the prior probability directly. Custom evidence sections can be added at the bottom to account for things that would inform your conclusion but are not already covered by the other sections. (However, if there are any other things that would inform your opinion on God's existence and which you choose to not calculate as distinct pieces of evidence, those things should directly inform your input for the prior probability.) Enter a value greater than 0 but less than 1, which represents the range between 0% and 100%. For example, a value of 0.5 means your Prior Probability for God's existence is 50%.
For each of the remaining sections, there are two input boxes. The left input box is "Expectation Given God." Here, enter a value between 0 and 1 (which equals 0% to 100%) to represent how likely you would expect the given evidence to be as it is assuming God does exist. For example, some people have had personal experiences that they feel demonstrates the existence of their god (such as feeling what they perceive as the presence of their god, or seeing coincidences in their life, etc.). So in the corresponding "Personal Experiences" evidence section, you would pretend that you did not already know this fact and decide how likely you would expect people to have such experiences, assuming God is real. Note that this can include both the possibility that God would intentionally cause things to be such a way as well as the possibility that they would naturally be that way and that God would have simply not intervened. In other words, if God exists it might be that God would be responsible for such personal experiences, or it might be that such things would also happen naturally (with people misattributing their experiences) and that God simply wouldn't prevent such natural events. Again, you are just entering the expected likelihood of the given observation in the hypothetical scenario that God exists. Entering a higher value in this field results in a higher calculated likelihood that God exists.
In the box on the right, "Expectation Given Not God," enter a value (between 0 and 1) for how likely you would expect the given evidence to be as it is assuming God does not exist. So for example, how likely would you expect people to have personal experiences (feeling as though their god is present, seeing coincidences in their life, and other experiences they consider indicative of the existence of their god) if God does not in fact exist? Again, act as though you did not already know whether people had such experiences, and try to imagine how likely you would expect it naturally (that is, assuming God does not exist). Entering a higher value in this field results in a lower calculated likelihood that God exists.
Care was taken when preparing this calculator to include the most significant metrics possible with the least overlap possible and to present them in a balanced way to minimize the chance of skewed results. The metrics chosen were inspired by Crash Course Philosophy, the Wikipedia article titled Existence of God, The Probability of God by Steven Unwin, an older yet related Probability of God test, as well as more generic research into the most common arguments for and against God.
This calculator includes brief explanations and important instructions that can be opened within each section to describe the particular issues that the various sections of the calculator represent. This may help you keep in mind the specific points most relevant for each section of the calculation. It attempts to present an even-handed summary of each issue from both sides of the issue. However, it is up to you to do your own research on these topics in order to input informed values. Links for further research are included along with the evidence sections, but you may wish to find further resources and discussion to have a more well-rounded understanding of the issues.
It should also be noted that for simplicity this calculator does not explicitly consider additional possibilities like multiple gods. Assuming you do not consider such alternative possibilities to be plausible, you have the option of simply ignoring the possibility of multiple gods for use of this calculator. Alternatively, if you think other theistic models like polytheism are plausible, you can either treat the "given God" sections as more broadly referring to any gods, or you can treat the "given not God" sections as including both materialistic and those alternative theistic models, and the result of the calculation will reflect that accordingly.
If you would like to factor additional observations or pieces of evidence in to the calculation, press the "Add a custom section" button at the bottom. If you would rather not factor a particular item below into the equation, or if you would rather calculate a different metric: To ignore a section, simply leave both values at 0.5. Any section where the "Expectation Given God" and the "Expectation Given Not God" values are equal will not affect the results of the calculation. To substitute one factor of your own in place of one of the sections below, simply pretend that the section represents what you want to calculate. The titles associated with given sections are just suggestions and do not affect the calculation.
Disclaimer: This calculator attempts to fairly portray popular opposing positions on this issue. However, it cannot be guaranteed that it does so perfectly, and this does not attempt to serve as a thorough philosophical handeling on the arguments about God's existence. Where it does present arguments and counter-arguments, it does so in a limited way and without offering counters to the counter-arguments or otherwise evaluating the merits of the arguments, and there are bound to be other perspectives and information beyond what is presented here, which is why further reading and research is recommended on the various topics. Although great care was taken to make this calculator the best that it could be, it was ultimately designed for fun and interest and not intended to serve as an authoritative source.
Defining the hypothesis: This calculator will estimate the probability of the existence of God. (Note that this calculator is only about God, it was not designed to calculate the probability of a religion.) It's hard to define a single conception of God that appeals to everyone, but this calculator was designed with the working conception of God as an uncaused, intelligent, supernatural entity which transcends the physical universe, is capable of creating planes of existence and life, would take an interest in any created intelligent beings, and which might be expected to have the qualities of omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, and omnibenevolence, akin to popular conceptions of the Abrahamic god and classical theism. Note: If this doesn't work for you, the calculator will still work, and you can substitute your own definition, but you may in some places need to think about the issues a little differently than presented. The main thing is that you consistently use the same definition and conception of God throughout the calculator.
Determining the prior probability: The prior probability of a hypothesis in Bayesian reasoning represents an existing credence in that hypothesis prior to considering some given evidence. To determine a value for the prior probability to use here, before factoring in the evidence below—that is, trying to imagine as if you did not already know about the existence of the universe, about religions, etc.—consider how likely you would expect God's existence to be: Does it seem like something that makes sense and you would expect has a good likelihood to exist? Or does it seem more like one of any number of possible things that you would not at the outset expect to be likely to exist? Some view the question of God's existence as a binary choice, in that either he does exist or he does not, and so say that if assuming a starting position of ignorance, a value of exactly 0.5, which is fifty-fifty, should be used as the prior probability. Others say that since there are many more conceivable entities which do not exist than which do exist, the prior probability of the existence of any given specific hypothetical being must be set far lower, such as 0.000001, which is one in one million. However, you may decide that the prior probability should be set higher or lower than either of those, based on philosophical and logical reasons as well as your own intuition and assumptions.
Note that as this calculator's evidence sections below only involve empirical facts about reality which can be used to update the calculated probability of God's existence, there remain certain other arguments made for and against the existence of God based purely on applying theory and logic to the concept of God itself. That is, there are arguments which simply debate whether an entity matching the defined characteristics of God would or would not be the kind of being that should exist. For example, there is the Ontological Argument made in favor of God's existence which, put briefly, argues that if God as defined is the greatest possible being, and it could be imagined that God exists in some hypothetical world, and existence in reality is greater than imaginary existence, then to fulfill the definition of being the greatest possible being it therefore would have to be the case that God must actually exist in reality, since otherwise God wouldn't be the greatest being. Conversely, there is for example the argument from incoherence made against the existence of God, that qualities like being omnipotent, or being both omniscent and capable of choice, or being omnipresent and non-spatial, are inherently paradoxical and that therefore a god with such defined characteristics cannot possibly exist. (For a proper discussion of such arguments and rebuttals to them, further research into these topics on your part is encouraged.) To whatever extent you find these or other such purely philosophical arguments persuasive, you may consider them here when choosing a prior probability.
See also: Concepts of God (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), What is God Like?: Crash Course Philosophy (YouTube), God (Wikipedia), What is Bayes's theorem, and how can it be used to assign probabilities to questions such as the existence of God? What scientific value does it have? (Scientific American), The Probability of God (Institute on Religion and Public Life), God and Rev. Bayes (The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry), Ontological argument (Wikipedia), Omnipotence paradox (Wikipedia), and Argument from free will (Wikipedia).
In the number box below, enter a decimal number somewhere between 0 and 1 (which represents 0% to 100%), and this will be the prior probability. For example, 0.5 would represent a 50% initial expectation that God would exist, or 0.0001 would represent a 0.01% (1 in 10,000) initial expectation. Note that the value here is largely subjective, dependent on what you as an individual consider reasonable, and you may not be settled on any particular value. Meanwhile, the inputted value can have a significant impact on the calculated probability. Therefore, after filling in the rest of the evidence sections, you may try a range of values which you would consider reasonable for the Prior Probability to see how the results vary accordingly.
We live in a physical universe, buzzing with subatomic particles, countless stars and planets, hundreds of billions of galaxies, dark matter, and more, and with unimaginably vast amounts of empty space between it all. Some say that without God, we wouldn't expect there to be a universe, that the Big Bang indicates that the universe had a beginning which suggests a first cause or that in order to avoid an infinite regress in causes there needs to be an uncaused first cause, and that a personal god must be this first cause given the qualities of power and rational agency that would be needed for a being to create the universe at a particular time (as opposed to the universe existing from eternity), or alternatively that a single, nonphysical god is simpler than the universe, metaphysically or otherwise, and therefore easier to regard God's existence as a brute fact rather than assign the brute fact of existence to some basic form of the universe itself, and so the expectation for the existence of the universe without God ought to be regarded as lower than the prior probability expectation of God himself. Others say that our current understanding of the physics of the Big Bang does not justify any inferences about a personal god, that there are theoretical hypotheses within the framework of natural physics that could account for the Big Bang without invoking God as the first cause (e.g. which instead may involve some more simple prior state of the universe like an inflationary vacuum), that the Big Bang is not necessarily the start of all reality (i.e. there could have already been infinite space or a multiverse or previous universes), that arguments for an uncaused first cause invoke a model of time which flows past a present moment which, at a fundamental level, is not how time truly works (but rather that there is a so-called block universe wherein later events and earlier ones are all equally real and that there are simply patterns and relationships, but not causes, between neighboring states), and that we would not necessarily expect a non-physical god to choose to create a physical universe either. See also: Cosmological Argument (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Aquinas and the Cosmological Arguments: Crash Course Philosophy (YouTube), Cosmological argument (Wikipedia), Universe (Wikipedia), Big Bang (Wikipedia), Multiverse (Wikipedia), and Cosmology (Wikipedia).
In the number box below on the left, enter a number between 0 and 1 for how likely you would expect the existence of the physical universe assuming God exists. In the number box below on the right, enter a number between 0 and 1 for how likely you would expect this assuming God does not exist.
Note: Depending on the degree to which you might consider it plausible for a physical universe to exist naturally in the absence of a supernatural creator, the "Expectation Given Not God" field below may be thought of as something of a balance to the prior probability of God you entered in the previous section.
There are various fundamental physical constants with values that appear fine-tuned, without a clear explanation for why many take their particular values, and often where even a small deviance from the observed values would very likely have precluded the development of matter, astronomical structures, and life as we know it. Some say that this is evidence that the universe was created intelligently and carefully to permit life to exist, as the odds of the constants randomly taking the values needed to enable the natural development of life as we know it are extremely small—too small to be the product of random chance, and that only a sufficiently powerful and intelligent creator could have produced such precision. Others say that a multiverse which is predicted to exist by other theories in physics would involve so many universes that seemingly fine-tuned ones like ours would inevitably exist, that some of the constants may ultimately turn out to not be fine-tuned as the study of theoretical physics advances, that God would not be constrained by the need of fine-tuning to create intelligent life or even a physical universe and so fine-tuning is not expected assuming God, and that the extremely small fraction of the universe which is hospitable to life as we know it is not what we would expect of a universe specifically designed for life. See also: Fine-Tuning (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Fine-tuned Universe (Wikipedia), Fine-tuning (Wikipedia), Naturalness (physics) (Wikipedia), Multiverse (Wikipedia), and Does Life Need a Multiverse to Exist? (YouTube: PBS Space Time).
In the number box below on the left, enter a number between 0 and 1 for how likely you would expect the apparent fine-tuning of physical constants assuming God exists. In the number box below on the right, enter a number between 0 and 1 for how likely you would expect this assuming God does not exist.
Note: Consider these probabilities (about how expected it would be for the physical constants to appear fine-tuned in a way which is compatible with the development of life) in isolation, taking for granted the fact that the physical universe itself exists.
Life, from single celled organisms to multicellular animals, exhibits extraordinary complexity and apparent design, ranging from information coded inside DNA to the intricate and interdependent functions operating within organisms. Some say that meaningful and complex design does not arise without an intelligent designer, and so just as a sophisticated clock with its perfectly interlocking gears and finely printed numbers is indicative of the clock's designer, or a textbook with its meaningful content and precise printing is indicative of its author and printer, so too such an ordered and complex nature of living things—even the molecular machinery of the simplest cells, and so much more so higher life forms like plants and animals—is indicative of a supremely intelligent and powerful designer, and that evolution alone would be inadequate to create the life forms on our planet. Others say that inferring designers for known man-made objects cannot be generalized to nature and self-replicating living systems, that the Theory of Evolution describes mechanisms such as descent with modification and natural selection which are strongly evidenced, well understood, and fully capable of accounting for the precise kinds of order, complexity, and apparent design we see in the biological world, and that there are many ways in which living systems demonstrate excessive complexity which—while expected by an iterative process like evolution which has no intended end goal—would not be expected by an intelligent designer capable of balancing any needed complexity with more elegant simplicity. See also: Intelligent Design: Crash Course Philosophy (YouTube: Crash Course), Intelligent design (Wikipedia), Evolution (Wikipedia), and Evolution of biological complexity (Wikipedia).
In the number box below on the left, enter a number between 0 and 1 for how likely you would expect life to have this sort of apparent design assuming God exists. In the number box below on the right, enter a number between 0 and 1 for how likely you would expect this assuming God does not exist.
Note: Consider these probabilities in isolation, taking for granted that the universe is one in which complex life is possible.
There are many examples in nature of organisms with apparently poor design, such as nerves that take circuitous routes, malformed vestigial eyes in blind cave-dwelling fish, broken and non-functioning pseudogenes, or organs that are inelegantly designed or even prone to malfunction. Some say that a perfect and intelligent designer would not create beings with such traits, whereas they are accounted for by the natural process of evolution. Others say that apparent flaws could be explained in context of God, where God may have intentionally used evolution to create life, or that we simply don't properly understand why some of these seemingly poor designs are the way they are. See also: Argument from poor design (Wikipedia) and Evolution (Wikipedia).
In the number box below on the left, enter a number between 0 and 1 for how likely you would expect this apparently poor design assuming God exists. In the number box below on the right, enter a number between 0 and 1 for how likely you would expect this assuming God does not exist.
Note: Consider these probabilities in isolation, taking for granted that complex life exists.
Human beings are sentient, conscious, self-aware, and intelligent. We can experience empathy, happiness, and love. We can appreciate the beauty in everything from nature to music to the elegance of mathematics. Some say that such qualities and phenomenon are transcendent or spiritual in nature and would be best explained as coming from God, arguing for example that the actual experience of consciousness would seem to transcend the physical particles of the brain, or arguing that God would be expected to create a basically beautiful world like ours, or arguing that there would need to be an objective source of morality, like God, for our feelings of right and wrong to objectively reflect reality. Others say that consciousness and emotions are grounded in neurology and brain chemistry, are found to varying degrees in animals, and should be understood as arising through the process of evolution, and that the perception of beauty of the world or our sense of right and wrong are in certain regards subjective and can also be fully accounted for in an evolutionary framework, requiring no supernatural explanations. See also: Argument from consciousness (Wikipedia), Argument from morality (Wikipedia), Argument from beauty (Wikipedia), Consciousness (Wikipedia), Neurology (Wikipedia), Social evolution (Wikipedia), and Pleasure (Wikipedia).
In the number box below on the left, enter a number between 0 and 1 for how likely you would expect people to experience such qualities assuming God exists. In the number box below on the right, enter a number between 0 and 1 for how likely you would expect this assuming God does not exist.
Note: Consider these probabilities in isolation, taking for granted that complex life exists.
Many people feel that they have had a personal experience with the supernatural such as seeing divine providence acting in their life through coincidences, experiencing precognition or prophetic dreams, witnessing a miracle like someone surviving a very dangerous situation or spontaneously recovering from an illness, feeling what they perceive as the presence of their god during prayers, seeing a mystic who appeared remarkably clairvoyant, or encountering a ghost, among other such experiences. Some say that these personal experiences go beyond what would be naturally expected and as such are evidence of supernatural realities or even of God's direct intervention in people's lives. Others say that these experiences are reported by people with very different religious beliefs who attribute them to widely varying gods or spirits which is suggestive of the fact that appealing to supernatural explanations, let alone any specific supernatural explanation, is misguided, and that such experiences are well explained by neurological phenomenon, statistically expected coincidences, cognitive biases, or by other natural means, and that therefore such anecdotes cannot be taken as evidence of God. See also: Miracles (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Religious experience (Wikipedia), Parapsychology (Wikipedia), and Coincidence (Wikipedia).
In the number box below on the left, enter a number between 0 and 1 for how likely you would expect people to have these experiences assuming God exists. In the number box below on the right, enter a number between 0 and 1 for how likely you would expect this assuming God does not exist.
Note: Consider these probabilities in isolation, taking for granted the existence of human consciousness and experience.
If God exists, he cannot be seen, nor does he interact with us in a clear way that empirically demonstrates his existence, and numerous scientific studies on the efficacy of intercessory prayer or other supernatural claims have failed to demonstrate the supernatural. Divine hiddenness also leads to nonbelievers who would otherwise be open to belief. Some say that if God indeed exists, we would not necessarily expect that God would stay so hidden, or that a good and loving god would always choose to make himself known to anyone open to belief, or that we might even expect obviously supernatural occurrences like magic, prophets that reliably foretell the future, healers causing limbs to regrow upon invoking God, people traveling to spiritual realms or conversing directly with God or angels, or prayers getting unmistakably answered, to be commonplace, as envisioned in religious or mythological texts. Others say that God's transcendent nature would preclude more direct observations of God within the physical universe, so the lack of any ability to empirically detect God is expected, or that God actually does intervene in the world or respond to prayers but that it is to a degree that is simply difficult to conclusively demonstrate or study, or that God may simply choose to not make signs of his existence or any supernatural realities otherwise empirically demonstrable so that people could have greater free will, and that there may be other circumstances or unknown reasons in which a loving god would not preclude nonresistant nonbelief. See also: Hiddenness of God (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Argument from nonbelief (Wikipedia), Studies on intercessory prayer (Wikipedia), and Parapsychology (Wikipedia).
In the number box below on the left, enter a number between 0 and 1 for how likely you would expect this inability to detect God assuming God exists. In the number box below on the right, enter a number between 0 and 1 for how likely you would expect this assuming God does not exist.
Note: Consider these probabilities in isolation, taking for granted that human-level intelligent life exists, that life on earth appears to be both complex and flawed, and the fact that there are many anecdotal accounts of spiritual experiences. Additionally, if you believe that there is evidence for a particular religion or that there is empirical evidence to say God publicly revealed his existence in the past, consider the points in this section only within the present-day context and outside of any evidence about that religion, as evidence for a particular religion will be addressed in the last section.
Religious and spiritual beliefs have historically played a significant part in the story of humanity, with cultures all over the world developing their own religions and supernatural beliefs about spirits, gods, or God, varying based on the era, region, and society. Some say that based on the pervasiveness of spiritual beliefs, the very fact that spiritual beliefs are so widespread, having a place in almost every culture known throughout human history, may indicate that God may have intentionally created humanity to be predisposed to belief, or that it may suggest humans are tuned in to cues from a spiritual reality and God, which is suggestive of the existence of God. Others say that the pervasiveness of spiritual beliefs may have entirely natural causes, such as originating out of an evolved tendency to see agency even where none is and subsequently spreading and developing like any other idea, and that the nature and presence of these beliefs having varied dramatically across time and place undermines the idea that there is any particular underlying truth to them and is more consistent with the idea that they are simply human inventions.
Some also say that if God were real, he would have ensured there would only be a single religion for all of humanity, or at least cause there to be a religion which would be uniquely, universally, and consistently discoverable by the majority of humankind, rather than leave the vast majority of humankind confounded by a shifting host of mutually-exclusive religions. Others say that God would not necessarily try to get followers within any particular religion, or that God may have indeed been revealed in a true religion but that it is up to people to sort the true religion from the false beliefs. See also: Argument from inconsistent revelations (Wikipedia), Religion (Wikipedia), and Evolutionary origin of religions (Wikipedia).
In the number box below on the left, enter a number between 0 and 1 for how likely you would expect the presense of widespread, yet largely dissonant and incompatible, spiritual beliefs and religions, without there being any one which categorically stands distinguished in a way most people recognize, assuming God exists. In the number box below on the right, enter a number between 0 and 1 for how likely you would expect this assuming God does not exist.
Note: For this section, only take into account the expected degree for whether there would be widespread, yet conflicting, spiritual and religious beliefs, while taking for granted the existence of human life and experience, anecdotal accounts of personal spiritual experiences, and the inability to empirically detect God and the supernatural or demonstrate miracles.
For all the good that there is in the world, there is also bad. Natural disasters ruin whole populations. Innocent children across the world suffer from diseases or starvation. Even sentient animals in nature suffer from predation, injury, and disease, with no fundamentally apparent reason that things must be this way. Some say, if God is considered to be perfectly knowing, powerful, and good, then if he actually existed, we would not expect such a high degree of gratuitous evil in the world, and that the entire structure of sentient life would be designed in a system with minimal—or even zero—suffering, whereas the world we find ourselves in is consistent with the indifference of naturalism. Others say apparent evils in the world can be reconciled with God, for example by saying that at least certain evils may facilitate soul-building, or that certain evils may be necessary to allow free will, or that some evils such as the suffering of animals must be regarded as merely an illusion, or that in many cases we simply cannot know what God knows to understand why such suffering is actually justifiable or ultimately good. See also: The Problem of Evil: Crash Course Philosophy (YouTube: Crash Course) and Problem of evil (Wikipedia).
In the number box below on the left, enter a number between 0 and 1 for how likely you would expect apparent evils and injustice to exist in the world assuming God exists. In the number box below on the right, enter a number between 0 and 1 for how likely you would expect this assuming God does not exist.
Note: Consider these probabilities in isolation, taking for granted the existence of sentient life, the presence of apparent design flaws among sentient life attributable to evolution, and the inability to empirically detect God or the supernatural.
Many people believe that God spoke to reliable prophets or guided the writings of perfect scriptures or was revealed to people through clear miracles in the establishment of a particular religion. Some say that the net weight of evidence for their particular religion is strong and that they wouldn't expect such a religion to develop without having actually had this divine involvement and that this is, by extension, evidence of the existence of God. Others say that there isn't any religion which has a significant net weight of evidence in its favor, and that as such there is no need to appeal to God to explain the existence of any religion, and conversely that there seemingly being no true religion is more expected assuming God does not exist. See also: Religion (Wikipedia).
In the number box below on the left, enter a number between 0 and 1 for how likely you would expect the sort of evidence you believe there to be for a particular religion you consider likely, or the lack thereof, assuming God exists. In the number box below on the right, enter a number between 0 and 1 for how likely you would expect this assuming God does not exist.
Note: For this section, only take into account the net weight of evidence particular to a religion, to the exclusion of all the issues addressed within the other sections of this calculator, and taking for granted the presence of anecdotal spiritual experiences, the inability to empirically detect God, and that a multiplicity of varying religions do exist.
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