You are correct, that many people believe in something is strong evidence, but it’s not overwhelmingly strong, and in the particular case of belief in the supernatural it doesn’t win over the weight of the counter-evidence.
Given that they all believe different things, it’s not at all clear to me that people’s beliefs on net are evidence for rather than against “some sort of God”. As in that quote:
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. - Stephen F. Roberts
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.
You are correct, that many people believe in something is strong evidence, but it’s not overwhelmingly strong, and in the particular case of belief in the supernatural it doesn’t win over the weight of the counter-evidence.
Given that they all believe different things, it’s not at all clear to me that people’s beliefs on net are evidence for rather than against “some sort of God”. As in that quote:
This is an excellent point! The vast majority of people do not believe in any particular God. Combining this majoritarian evidence...
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.