Nonreligious people do need to adjust for the large number of intelligent religious people. But consider that the adjustment is made to the prior plausibility of religion before you know that billions of people believe it.
Imagine living in an alternate world where everyone was an atheist. An archaeologist digs up a somewhat contradictory manuscript with a few historical errors that ends with a description of a man coming back from the dead and ascending into the sky. As far as the archaeologist can tell, no one ever believed this manuscript and it’s not even clear the writer believed it himself. In this world, I wouldn’t give it a second thought. I wouldn’t even give it a first thought.
In our world, the millions of people who say this story has changed their lives and they have witnessed miracles and so on provides evidence for this manuscript. It’s not as much evidence as we might naively think, because we know that people are likely to have mystical experiences and believe they have witnessed miracles even with no reason (for example, everyone agrees Greek paganism is false, but Greek pagans still record miracles and mystical experiences). However, I am willing to admit that the large degree of belief in religion makes religion an order of magnitude more likely than it would be if there weren’t any such belief (I wouldn’t invoke the wisdom of crowds here, but I might invoke some attenuated form of Aumann).
But consider how vanishingly small the plausibility of religion was in the world where no one believed it, and even an order of magnitude isn’t enough to save it.
But I would like to thank you for bringing up this topic. Looking at the Sanity Waterline thread, some people seem much too willing to suspend their usual good sense in the service of bashing religion just a little bit more. And I think it’s a general rule that it’s always healthier to show people arguments for things they disagree with (whether they’re good or bad) than to keep them watching a constant parade of things confirming their previous beliefs.
Nonreligious people do need to adjust for the large number of intelligent religious people. But consider that the adjustment is made to the prior plausibility of religion before you know that billions of people believe it.
Imagine living in an alternate world where everyone was an atheist. An archaeologist digs up a somewhat contradictory manuscript with a few historical errors that ends with a description of a man coming back from the dead and ascending into the sky. As far as the archaeologist can tell, no one ever believed this manuscript and it’s not even clear the writer believed it himself. In this world, I wouldn’t give it a second thought. I wouldn’t even give it a first thought.
In our world, the millions of people who say this story has changed their lives and they have witnessed miracles and so on provides evidence for this manuscript. It’s not as much evidence as we might naively think, because we know that people are likely to have mystical experiences and believe they have witnessed miracles even with no reason (for example, everyone agrees Greek paganism is false, but Greek pagans still record miracles and mystical experiences). However, I am willing to admit that the large degree of belief in religion makes religion an order of magnitude more likely than it would be if there weren’t any such belief (I wouldn’t invoke the wisdom of crowds here, but I might invoke some attenuated form of Aumann).
But consider how vanishingly small the plausibility of religion was in the world where no one believed it, and even an order of magnitude isn’t enough to save it.
But I would like to thank you for bringing up this topic. Looking at the Sanity Waterline thread, some people seem much too willing to suspend their usual good sense in the service of bashing religion just a little bit more. And I think it’s a general rule that it’s always healthier to show people arguments for things they disagree with (whether they’re good or bad) than to keep them watching a constant parade of things confirming their previous beliefs.