Richard Dawkins is full of surprises. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Joel Kontinen
Our old friend Richard Dawkins keeps on surprising us. A few years ago, he admitted that a serious case could be made for a deistic God. Recently, he went a step further.
Dawkins acknowledged that he is not fully certain that God does not exist. In a debate with Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, he described himself as an agnostic instead of an atheist. He said that the probability of God’s non-existence is 6.9 on a 7-point scale.
That would be 98.57 per cent. Expressed as a probability it would be 0.985714285.
It is not difficult to calculate that it would be easier to win the top prize in the Finnish lottery (in which the odds are one in 15,380,937. Yet every year someone manages to win a few million euros.
The probability for this is 0.0000065.
It is by far a much smaller number than 1- (6.9 / 7.0) or 0.014285714. Thus, according to Dawkins’ logic, the probability that God exists is by far much greater that winning a few million euros in the lottery.
Source:
Webb, Al. 2012. Richard Dawkins, Famous Atheist, Not Entirely Sure God Doesn't Exist. The Huffington Post (24 February).
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