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Emile comments on How confident is your atheism? - Less Wrong
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Depends on what you mean by "Christianity being true". If you mean "The miracles described in the Bible actually happened in the real world, and there is a supernatural God that cares about our actions and occasionally interferes in the world", then the chances are vanishingly small, less than one in a million.
On the other hand, if you mean "Following religious practice and giving priests a respectable position in society is good for individual well-being, as well as maintaining a harmonious and prosperous society; religious teachings are moral fables that help foster group coordination", then yeah, I'd put a much higher probability to that, though the exact value would depend of the religion being considered, etc.
I probably should have clarified to say, "the chance that Jesus of Nazareth is a resurrected God." I think all modern Christianities have this belief in common, and my estimations are based on this lowest common denominator.
They may all profess that belief, but is it the real reason they're Christians and not atheists? What if metaphysical claims are just identity markers, that Christians hold because they are completely abstract and divorced from reality?
The "religion is good for social and individual well-being" argument is a bit of a steel man; it's easy to make fun of stupid arguments by Christians, but maybe Christianity is actually beneficial for complicated reasons, and many Christians see the benefits but mistakenly believe in simpler reasons (and those that can articulate complex reasons are ignored, because complex explanations are boring and look like tortuous rationalizations).
The important question shouldn't be "is such-and-such point of Christian doctrine factually true?", but rather, "is it better for me and society that I identify as an atheist rather than as a Christian?" . Reducing the second question to the first is a cheap way out. Sure, there are good arguments for why secularism is better than religion, but those are waaay less overwhelming than the arguments of physics and biology (and frickin' common sense) over theology.
Which is a special case of "What falsehoods should I prefer to believe to their corresponding truths?", which is a far broader question.
Identifying as a Christian isn't believing a falsehood, but it does give an incentive to believe certain falshehoods. See here for talk of unbelieving pastors:
(I want to make it clear that the argument I'm describing isn't "believe in pleasant lies if it makes you good and happy")
Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification, I had indeed misunderstood.
The important question might instead be "what is it best for me to identify as?" ...where "best for me" and "best for society" and "best for me and society" are three different interpretations of that question, and which one I pick depends on how important I think I am relative to society, and where "identify as atheist" and "identify as Christian" are two of a near-infinite number of choices.