Computer Programming and the Existence of God
Answering Philosophical Questions by Using Simple Programs
Aug 20, 2009
In a press release on May 15, 2009, Ion Saliu stated that he had found a Mathematical Proof of the Absurdity of the God Concept. This proof is derived from his Fundamental Formula of Gambling (or FFG for short) and its key concept of Degree of Certainty (DC). The question for any programmer is, therefore, can this formula actually be used to disprove the existence of God?
The Fundamental Formula of Gambling
Saliu sums up the FFG as the:
And the formula is quite simple:
Where:
- N is the number of trials
- DC is the degree of certainty that an event occur
- P is the probability of an event occurring
For the programmer this, of course, translates readily into a function
Creating a FFG Function
The function will return the number of trials given:
- the degree of certainty as a percentage
- the probability as a percentage
And so, for example, a Perl function would look like:
Or for VBScript it would be:
This can be better understood by looking a real example.
FFG and Coin Tossing
If a coined is tossed then there is a 50% chance of it coming down heads and 50% chance of it coming down tails. For the thrower to have a 75% degree of certainty that they throw at least one head the calculation in perl would be:
The answer is two throws (as shown in figure 1) and, of course, anyone can test this with a coin, or move on to more complex situations (such as choosing cards from a pack of cards). Or they can move on to considering the existence of God
FFG and the Existence of God
If the FFG is applied to the existence of God then the inputs could be:
- P = 50 (either God exists or He doesn't)
- DC = 100 (God definitely exists)
Unfortunately, the following will result in error:
However, if the inputs are changed so that:
- P = 50 (either God exists or He doesn't)
- DC = 99 (God probably exists)
then:
This time a sensible answer will be returned (as seen in figure 2).
Conclusions About God and the FFG
The FFG calculation cannot, of course, prove that God does not exist. However, it does show that :
- statements such as "God exists" (with a DC of 100%) are invalid
- statements such as "God probably exists" (with a DC of 99%) are valid
But, on the other hand:
- statements such as "God does not exist" (with a DC of 100%) are invalid
- statements such as "God probably does not exist" (with a DC of 99%) are valid
So, like life, a program can only prove that God may, or may not, exist and it is down to the programmer's personal beliefs to come up with the correct answer (if, indeed, there is one).
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