Well, considering there is no God, Jesus has been dead for 2,000 years and there's no such thing as a "true church" in the theological sense, the odds are nil, zilch and zero.
Then if there is a God, what are the odds that it is the "Christian" God?
Then what are the odds that God has already sent Jesus to earth or we are still waiting.
Then what are the odds that the true story of Jesus was lost, meaning what are the odds that one sects of Christianity is true vs. all of them are false.
Then, what are the odds that any particular sect of Christianity is the true keeper of the faith.
I don't think there is any legitimate way to figure out the odds of there being a God. Also, there is, quite possibly, an infinite number of Gods that could be made up so how do you calculate the odds when it is one out of an infinite number?
But just looking at the list I presented, I would say that the odds are astronomically against TSCC being the one true church.
But I do think that the odds are so astronomically against there being a God that I often talk as if God is an impossibility, I'll take my chances that I am wrong.
I can not say the same for the LDS church. I think there is so much evidence that shows it to be false that odds are meaningless. Its like the odds on a horse race that has already happened.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2010 04:16PM by MJ.
Let's say there's a 1 in 5 chance of something to occur. I can handle that. But wait, there's more!
Along comes another 1 in 5 chance. Put those serially together, and now it's 1 in 25. But wait, there's more!
Along comes another 1 in 5, we're now up to 1 in 125. Next comes 1 in 625.
It doesn't take many "improbabilities" serially connected to create an almost impossibilility. Yet mormonism has a plethora of such things we're expected to believe.
There are 6.5 billion people in this world and in two centuries of time, God has only reached 13 million with only about 4 million even bothering to attend services. That's a fraction of one percent success rate. If this is the overall goal, God failed big time.
I believe there are some 65,000 christian denominations, and that's not counting all the other religions out there (like Mormonism - LOL).
But that's just now. There have been hundreds of thousands of religions for many centuries, most of which have disappeared long ago, as have their gods - vanished without a trace.
Thanks to Joe the Prophet, we know they are all wrong. All thousands and thousands and thousands of them. Only Joe's church is true. Ever.
You can know this, not by knowing anything about any of all those other churches and gods, but just by believing Joe. Isn't it marvelous?
If the church is true, then it must account for it unusually high Antidepressant usage, its abnormally high instances of financial fraud among its own people, and its typical crime rate. It must also account for its enormous discrepencies in doctrine, historical narrative and political activities, as well as its unacceptably high occurance of retracted, denounced and denied statements of its Prophets.
If it is true and the beacon to a heaven-inspired Zion, then something has gone terribly wrong in heaven.
I don't know the odds and right after I learned the Mormonism is a fraud, I wondered "which church than IS true"? I than read Jesus' words, that all those who belong to him ARE his church. No denomination mentioned nor requierd according to him.