On the other hand, I’m not sure how finely we should grain possible Gods here. If everyone believed in the same God except with a different number of nose hairs, surely that would be evidence in favor of that God.
Not necessarily, steven. It would only be evidence if at least a few different civilizations had arrived at the same concept of God independently. After all, it’s easy to imagine a world in which nearly everyone is a Catholic simply because Catholics were much more effective at proselytizing and conquering than they were in our world.
Likewise, that a small majority of people are either Christian, Muslim, or Jewish is not evidence for the Abrahamic deity, because these three religions didn’t arise independently. Christianity wouldn’t have existed without Judaism, and Islam wouldn’t have existed without Christianity and Judaism.
I thought we were discussing majoritarian evidence, that is, whether everyone believing in a certain God would be evidence for that God, given that a minority believing in a certain God isn’t evidence for that God. That the believers might have arguments that we didn’t consider is a different topic.
Also, it’s not merely that there might be another way to account for a majority-held belief in the Abrahamic God, it’s that it is a historical fact that there is a causal chain that goes from Judaism to Christianity to Islam. In other words, we know it’s not a coincidence that the populations of three different civilizations ended up believing in a similar God, and therefore there’s no need to account for it.
On the other hand, I’m not sure how finely we should grain possible Gods here. If everyone believed in the same God except with a different number of nose hairs, surely that would be evidence in favor of that God.
Not necessarily, steven. It would only be evidence if at least a few different civilizations had arrived at the same concept of God independently. After all, it’s easy to imagine a world in which nearly everyone is a Catholic simply because Catholics were much more effective at proselytizing and conquering than they were in our world.
Likewise, that a small majority of people are either Christian, Muslim, or Jewish is not evidence for the Abrahamic deity, because these three religions didn’t arise independently. Christianity wouldn’t have existed without Judaism, and Islam wouldn’t have existed without Christianity and Judaism.
The point is that they might have arguments that you didn’t consider, not that there’s no other way to account for the coincidence.
I thought we were discussing majoritarian evidence, that is, whether everyone believing in a certain God would be evidence for that God, given that a minority believing in a certain God isn’t evidence for that God. That the believers might have arguments that we didn’t consider is a different topic.
Also, it’s not merely that there might be another way to account for a majority-held belief in the Abrahamic God, it’s that it is a historical fact that there is a causal chain that goes from Judaism to Christianity to Islam. In other words, we know it’s not a coincidence that the populations of three different civilizations ended up believing in a similar God, and therefore there’s no need to account for it.