steven0461 comments on Closet survey #1 - Less Wrong

53 [deleted] 14 March 2009 07:51AM

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Comment author: steven0461 14 March 2009 10:12:18PM *  2 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Furcas 14 March 2009 10:27:44PM *  0 points [-]

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.