You said The fact of widespread theism is evidence for [theism is true]. This sounds mistaken to me. How do you derive it?
You said The fact of widespread theism is evidence for [theism is true]. This sounds mistaken to me. How do you derive it?
That seems accurate to me. Humans seem to have a bias towards induction and induction seems to work. Lots of humans thinking something seems to happen more for true things than for untrue things.
It isn't especially strong evidence. It is also evidence that you have probably already taken into account by the time you choose to ask "is theism true?" and should avoid double counting.
Religion apparently makes people happier. Is that evidence for the truth of religion, or against it?
(Of course, it matters which religion we're talking about, but let's just stick with theism generally.)
My initial inclination was to interpret this as evidence against theism, in the sense that it weakens the evidence for theism. Here's why:
We could also put this in mathematical terms, where F represents an increase in the prior probability of our encountering the evidence. Since that prior is a denominator in Bayes' equation, a bigger one means a smaller posterior probability--in other words, weaker evidence.
OK, so that was my first thought.
But then I had second thoughts: Perhaps the evidence points the other way? If we reframe the finding as "Atheism causes unhappiness," or posit that contrarians (such as atheists) are dispositionally unhappy, does that change the sign of the evidence?
Obviously, I am confused. What's going on here?