Observing a change in the degree of happiness that religion provided could cause you to change the probability you assign to its truth. But when you start with already having observed the current level of belief and the level of happiness provided, I don't think you can adjust your belief for happiness, because it's already factored into the current level of belief.
Religion apparently makes people happier. Is that evidence for the truth of religion, or against it?
If religion makes people happier, why do you care whether it's true?
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?