I don’t disagree with this and am not arguing against it. My point is, there’s lots of people (including probably a very large majority of christians) who don’t conceive of god as caring particularly one way or the other about snake handlers. For these people, Maher’s argument doesn’t hold at all.
Of course, the snake handlers themselves should update (modulo what pragmatist said).
That seems like a lot of comments you made there. Are you saying that if people consistently held poisonous snakes without getting bitten, and on inspection only their vocal faith distinguished them from other people, you personally would not increase your belief in literal god(s) one whit? If so, how do you justify this seemingly anti-Bayesian position?
All pro-snake-handling gods are gods, but not all gods are pro-snake-handling gods.
Evidence against pro-snake-handling gods is evidence against such a tiny slice of god-space that I’m calling it a rounding error.
Evidence in the other direction would have a drastically different effect, of course. In the hypothetical world where snake handling ability was perfectly correlated with stated beliefe and all confounding factors have been accounted for, I would massively increase the probability mass I give to pro-snake-handling gods (and consequently, gods in general).
I don’t disagree with this and am not arguing against it. My point is, there’s lots of people (including probably a very large majority of christians) who don’t conceive of god as caring particularly one way or the other about snake handlers. For these people, Maher’s argument doesn’t hold at all.
Of course, the snake handlers themselves should update (modulo what pragmatist said).
That seems like a lot of comments you made there. Are you saying that if people consistently held poisonous snakes without getting bitten, and on inspection only their vocal faith distinguished them from other people, you personally would not increase your belief in literal god(s) one whit? If so, how do you justify this seemingly anti-Bayesian position?
All pro-snake-handling gods are gods, but not all gods are pro-snake-handling gods.
Evidence against pro-snake-handling gods is evidence against such a tiny slice of god-space that I’m calling it a rounding error.
Evidence in the other direction would have a drastically different effect, of course. In the hypothetical world where snake handling ability was perfectly correlated with stated beliefe and all confounding factors have been accounted for, I would massively increase the probability mass I give to pro-snake-handling gods (and consequently, gods in general).
Is that still true at the limit of zero gods existing? It certainly precludes a counter-example!
Does it help if I add the qualifier “hypothetical” or “possible”?
I.e., All possible pro-snake-handling gods are gods, but not all possible gods are pro-snake-handling gods.
Otherwise I’m not sure I follow what you’re saying...
Yes. (And I only mentioned the exception because it surprised me that the near tautology had a counterexample.)