Hawking Comes Clean

I think that, as usual, it's just a matter of Occam's Razor. If an unfalsified model for the existence of the Universe exists without including a god, simple probability dictates that it is more likely that the Universe formed without divine intervention. If physics research does in fact show a path consistent with available evidence through which the Universe is the result of natural processes, there's simply no need to include a god-term.It doesn't prove that no gods exist. But all things being equal, A is always more likely than A AND B.He's being more clear now because his words, like those of Einstein and any number of physicists and other scientists, have ever been taken out of their intended context.

Occam's Razor is a plain-language statement of the basic laws of probability. "Simplest" does not mean "easiest to understand" like most people think - "simplest" is used in the mathematical sense, meaning "the explanation with the fewest terms."Given no evidence, which of the following two statements is more likely?1) Sarah has blond hair
2) Sarah has blond hair and works as a waitressObviously, in the absence of evidence we cannot prove anything. But all things being equal, 1) is more likely than 2). Why? Probability. The probability that multiple things will simultaneously be true is multiplicative, meaning the more possibilities you tack on, the less likely the whole becomes. A coin has a 50% chance to come up heads. Two coins have a 25% chance to both come up heads.So too with everything else. In any given set of possible hypotheses, the hypothesis that invokes the fewest necessary terms is most likely to be the correct one.In the case of the Universe, we have a simplified case of two possibilities:1) The Universe exists as we observe it, driven by natural laws
2) The Universe exists as we observe it, driven by natural laws and was Created by God.2) invokes an additional entity that is not made necessary by any evidence. While 2) may in fact be true, given current information it is nonetheless less likely to be true than 1). That probability can only be shifted if positive evidence is uncovered that increases the probability of God's existence, in effect making it a necessary term in the equation.You don't need a controlled test to make such a determination. What you need is simply an objective analysis of available evidence and an understanding of the laws of probability. It's not about proof, it's about ascertaining which among all possible hypotheses is the most likely to be true.

Let's do this mathematically then.The probability that the Universe exists as we observe it and is driven by natural laws should be pretty high, wouldn't you say? It;s certainly possible we all live in a dream world or the Matrix or something, but you want to say that the Universe is a "given," so we'll just say that part is 100%. That will be A.What's the probability of God existing? That's tough, but let's be stupidly simplistic just for the sake of illustrating how this works. We'll give God, a total unknown, a 50% chance of existing, like a flip of the coin. That will be B.A = 100%
A AND B = 1 * .5 = 50%The probability of A is higher than the probability of A AND B.The same will be true of ANY possible combination of probabilities. Let's play with them a bit. This time, we'll say that we're 98% sure that the Universe exists as we observe it, and 99% sure that God exists.A = 98%
A AND B = .98 * .99 = 97%The probability of A is higher than the probability of A AND B.What if we're 97% sure that God exists, and only 50% sure that the Unvierse is what we observe?A = 50%
A AND B = .5 * .97 = 48.5%The probability of A is higher than the probability of A AND B.The probability of BOTH simultaneously being true can never ever be higher than the probability of either possibility individually.The greatest possible vale for A AND B is the lowest value of either individually. Let's say we were 100% certain of both A and B:A = 100%
A AND B = 1 * 1 = 100%A AND B is always <= A OR B.Do you see how this works?

But isn't it true that A AND B will always be <= A OR B for any possible value of A and B, where A and B can each independently be any value between 0 and 1? If that's the case, we don't need to know the actual Bayesian priors to establish that one prior will always have lower probability than the other.Unless your argument is that joint probability is inappropriate, that we aren't dealing with an A AND B situation at all. I'd argue that we are, because all god concepts involve suggesting that both the Universe exists as we observe it AND that god exists and is possibly the direct cause. None of them involve anything like "the Universe exists OR God exists," it's always A AND B, never A OR B.It's rather like:1) that guy over there's name is Tom
2) Tom's mother is JillI don't know the probability that the guy in question is actually Tom or the probability that Jill is his mother, but I do know that the probability that his name is Tom AND that his mother is Jill is less likely than either single assertion, because A AND B is always <= A OR B. Completely agreed, but depending on who's making the specific god assertion, we at least get varying degrees of clarity on the definitions of some of those terms. We're of course always lacking the definition of any mechanism involved, but that's just what happens when you answer a mysterious question with a mysterious answer.