[Wikipedia-l] Re: Why I don't believe (any more) in NPOV

[Toby Bartels]

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Richard Grevers wrote in part:

>>>You are comparing apples and oranges here... The holocaust is knowable
>>>because people actually experienced if first hand. The existence of God is
>>>not provable and is based upon belief ('faith'). Anyone who "knows" rather
>>>than "believes" that God exists is probably violating the tenets of their
>>>professed religion.

>>I'd wager that there are more people alive today
>>that have directly experienced God first hand
>>than have /ever/ directly experienced the Shoah.
>>I don't pretend to have data to back up that hunch;
>>however, I do know some of the former people personally,
>>and if you like, then I'll ask if it violates their beliefs
>>to claim to /know/ that God exists.  I doubt it.
>>Not all faiths are as wishy-washy as (say) liberal Protestantism.

>There is exactly 0 people who have experienced any god,
>while there are still quite a few that survived Shoah, so
>I don't know how you got your results.

You're now relying on a technicality to make your point.
But NPOV can't judge whether these people's
(claimed) direct experience of God is real or all in their heads --
any more than it should judge this of the Shoah.
(And then you get /my/ interpretation -- it's real /and/ all in their heads.)

As for how I got my results, I'm figuring that 12E6 people died in the Shoah
(using a common estimate, if you don't limit the victims only to Jews),
so if the Nazis killed most, then that's 20E6 experiencers of the Shoah ever.
Compare that to 6E9 people now alive, of whom 90% believe in God.
For my estimate to be true, only 1 in 300 need experience God directly,
which seems reasonable to me (even though it's all in their head).

I should also note that I'm using "God" here
as a generic term for «the Presence of a Divine Person».
I don't assume that there is only 1 such Divine Person,
much less that Christian Triune thingy.


-- Toby