Wrong. A consequence of Bayes' Theorem is that if two theories A and B fit the data equally well, but A fits hypothetical alternative data better than B does (in other words, B is more falsifiable) then A must assign a lower conditional probability to the actual data than B, by conservation of probability. This means that regardless of where the priors start out, if we keep accumulating evidence without falsifying either the probability of A must eventually become vanishingly small, too small for any reasonable person to even spare the time to consider the hypothesis.

Atheism is also unfalsifiable in practice, though, so I don't see the relevance. And I think the positive evidence points somewhat towards theism, not atheism. Thus I find theism more likely.

Believing in ontologically fundamental mental states means the you believe that the actual territory, as opposed to a map, contains minds. This can seem reasonable, but the reasonableness is an illusion caused by the fact that our monkey brains are pretty good at thinking about other monkey brains and pretty bad at thinking about much simpler things, such as maths.

Thanks for the explanation.

God falls into this category as normally postulated, since he is usually assumed to be fundamental and is usually assigned mental states as well as exhibiting the complex behaviour typical of minds. Ghosts fall into it since for a person's mind to survive the destruction of the physical entity it was contained in/supervenient upon it must have its own ontologically fundamental properties.

God is normally considered to be outside the universe; why do you say he is usually assumed to be fundamental? Also note that there are many conceptions of God, some of which actually are something like fundamental even if isomorphic to a more detailed description (with less errant connotations) of the structure of the ensemble universe.

Here's the corresponding argument for ghosts: death is an event. People's conciousness tends to continue existing through most events, so it probably continues existing through death even though it has never been observed to do so (the same way no universe has been observed to have a cause). Therefore minds must continue existing after death, and we might as well call them ghosts.

And this is where I start thinking you're crazy, for thinking this is even close to a corresponding argument. What similarities do you see? Every single thing we have ever seen has a cause. We have seen the universe. We postulate a cause, by simple induction. We have seen peoples' consciousness fade in and out as they go to sleep or fall into comas. We postulate that it is thus probable that death is like an endless coma. It is hard for me to fathom how you could possibly have seen your argument for ghosts as being at all in the same reference class, except that 'ghosts' and 'gods' are both contemptible hypotheses 'round these parts.

Like, seriously, your analogy on the meta level seems to me like motivated cognition at its worse.

No, it shows that we are cautious that the connotations of our statements don't say anything that we don't mean.

This is only because we already have a word for 'superintelligence'. Most people don't. My point was that we shouldn't be automatically contemptuous of concepts that are really damn similar to the ones we're already postulating just because they're labeled in the language of the enemy.