Welcome to the Penn and Teller bulletin board, a great place to keep in touch with
fellow Penn & Teller fans or ask questions about the guys. We welcome your thoughts!
Anonymous,
You are way off on your odds. A 50/50 chance is a coin toss, where the laws of physics show us that each possibility (heads or tails) are equally likely of occurring.
The laws of nature have very different odds regarding some things. For example, there is not a 50/50 chance that I will either spontaneously combust vs the chance that nothing will happen to me. To show how the laws of nature would have to blatantly violated for the Evangelicals to be right, consider this far more realistic coin toss scenario:
After you die, you rot: Heads
You rot after you die: Tails
The evangelicals are right: The coin comes to rest on it's edge after being tossed into a lake, and stays on the surface of the water. Someone moves it under a rock. Three days later, the coin isn't there, but some people swear that they saw it float up into the sky.
Now, if you can show me a coin toss with THAT outcome, you may be on to something. I'm guessing that it doesn't happen 50% of the time though...