Now in Bayesian terms, rock solid evidence can overcome even absurdly low
initial priors. Hence the saying popularized by Carl Sagan “extraordinary
claims require extraordinary evidence.” The more extraordinary a claim, the
lower the initial probability of the claim being true, and thus the greater the
evidence required to overcome the low prior. However, if there is solid
evidence for a specific revelation of god, the evidence will adjust the prior,
increasing the probability of the belief being true.
Notice the dilemma here for theists? The mounting scientific evidence
explaining the origin of life and the universe, sans supernatural cause,
combined with the complete lack of evidence for theism, pushes the
probability for non belief much higher than the initial 50%. Some would
even argue as high as 99.99%. On the other hand, this lack of evidence for
any single theistic belief drives down their already low prior probability to
pretty much impossible.
The lack of evidence for theism is exactly what we would expect to find if
there is NOT a god who is presently intimately involved with his creation.
Again, if this involved god did exist, we would expect to find solid evidence
around which the majority of beliefs would converge. The best this lack of
evidence could support is a deistic view that a god or gods may have created
everything and then went on vacation. Or if you want to believe all the
miracles of the Bible actually happened and suddenly ceased just at the
point we were able to verify miracle claims, we must conclude there was
some sort of cosmic war or accident and god has become incapacitated or
died. This might explain his extremely delayed return. Maybe he will
recover.
In summary, history establishes the undeniable fact that Christianity has
become extremely divergent since we first undertook reading the Bible for
ourselves. In addition to the classic twelve major world religions, the sheer
number of modern revelations to choose between means we have almost no
statistical chance of being right if we take Pascal’s wager.
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