Doesn’t this apply to you? You just claimed to have strong evidence that your God’s existence predicts the empirical world approximately as well as your God’s nonexistence does.
Yes, but I didn’t claim it as evidence of anything other than that such belief isn’t particularly maladaptive (consequenceless beliefs won’t interfere with your predictive power). If it helps you understand my point, P(the world we live in | invisible unicorns in a far away galaxy fart rainbows) is also very high, which is not at all an argument in favor of invisible unicorns (only that there’s no evidence against unicorns nor will believing in unicorns therefore result in poor predictions).
To the extent that belief in a God that values faith is consequenceless, it can’t be maladaptive. To the extent that such belief has consequences, it will make predictions about the real world. Making predictions about the real world means they can test the belief, which regardless of the result will be suspect (one way, it is evidence against their belief in God, the other way evidence against their belief that God values faith).
My point is that most Christians don’t think through the consequences of claiming that something is evidence for God. Why have faith if they’re arguing that their belief is a scientifically verifiable one—in such a case, faith would be more likely to mislead them than science.
Long story short, if you find yourself arguing with a Christian about whether something is or isn’t evidence for God, you could have cut the whole thing short by asking them “Will your suggestion let me test for the existence of God?” Not only is there only one reasonable way they can answer, there’s specifically a command against testing God.
Yes, but I didn’t claim it as evidence of anything other than that such belief isn’t particularly maladaptive (consequenceless beliefs won’t interfere with your predictive power). If it helps you understand my point, P(the world we live in | invisible unicorns in a far away galaxy fart rainbows) is also very high, which is not at all an argument in favor of invisible unicorns (only that there’s no evidence against unicorns nor will believing in unicorns therefore result in poor predictions).
To the extent that belief in a God that values faith is consequenceless, it can’t be maladaptive. To the extent that such belief has consequences, it will make predictions about the real world. Making predictions about the real world means they can test the belief, which regardless of the result will be suspect (one way, it is evidence against their belief in God, the other way evidence against their belief that God values faith).
My point is that most Christians don’t think through the consequences of claiming that something is evidence for God. Why have faith if they’re arguing that their belief is a scientifically verifiable one—in such a case, faith would be more likely to mislead them than science.
Long story short, if you find yourself arguing with a Christian about whether something is or isn’t evidence for God, you could have cut the whole thing short by asking them “Will your suggestion let me test for the existence of God?” Not only is there only one reasonable way they can answer, there’s specifically a command against testing God.