I don’t find “it’s different priors” a “rational basis for disagreement” at all! It’s merely a conversation-stopper. Peoples’ assignments of priors have causal histories, and sometimes even actual reasoning behind them! Find those and at least we can start talking again. Assigning priors isn’t some mystical process—probability always comes from the information you have, some people just start with different sets of information.
I read that as the point that was being made—instead of arguing cross-purposes, a theist and an atheist might actually be able to agree that the point on which they diverge is that prior, and then argue about that instead.
I don’t find “it’s different priors” a “rational basis for disagreement” at all! It’s merely a conversation-stopper. Peoples’ assignments of priors have causal histories, and sometimes even actual reasoning behind them! Find those and at least we can start talking again. Assigning priors isn’t some mystical process—probability always comes from the information you have, some people just start with different sets of information.
I read that as the point that was being made—instead of arguing cross-purposes, a theist and an atheist might actually be able to agree that the point on which they diverge is that prior, and then argue about that instead.