Given what we know about the ways that religions start and spread, we know that they are not generally truth-tracking. The fact that we observe a particular religious belief in the populace (or that we happen to have been born to a family that teaches it) is not a good indicator of that belief being true. Religious beliefs — unlike practical (how-to) knowledge or scientific theories — are not selected for their accuracy.
Further, the various religions contradict one another on pretty much everything (except baseline tribal morality): if Christian theology is true, then Vaishnava theology is false; if Muslim theology is true, then Mormon theology is false; and so on. And there are a lot of them; and many of them mutually forbid acting on the recommendations of the others, so you can't generally hedge your Pascal's Wager between them.
A friend recently asked how strongly I believe that my deconversion from Christianity was not a mistake. Here's my response, and for those of you who are not Christians, I'm just wondering what numbers you would give:
"There is a part of me that wants to say the chance is far less than 1 percent. But when I consider what 1% must mean about my ability to follow complex arguments and base my judgement on the right premises, it seems absurd to say that.
Trying to honestly estimate the chance that I'm wrong about the Bible being generally reliable is a fascinating exercise... I know the number is low, but I'm not sure how low.
Today I would give myself a 1 in 20 chance of being wrong. If I were to consider the arguments of 20 other groups similar to Christian theologians, I would probably misunderstand them at least 1 time in 20. After talking with 20 groups that have a very different worldview, I might think they are all are mistaken, but once in a while, maybe 5% of the time, it would actually be me.
Wow, 5%!?! If I convert that into "There is a 5% probability that the God of the Bible exists and will send me to hell", I feel scared. But I know how to cheer myself up: I just say, "No way, the chance I'll end up in hell MUST be less than 5%. After all, the God of the Bible is CLEARLY just a big, mean alpha-monkey and... [rehearse all the atheistic arguments here]".
This back-and-forth from certainty to uncertainty makes me feel like I'm doing something seriously wrong.
So what about you? What chance do you place on some variant of Christianity turning up to be true, and what chance do you think a god of some sort exists?"
Numbers please.