Desrtopa comments on Questions on Theism - Less Wrong

23 Post author: Aiyen 08 October 2014 09:02PM

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Comment author: Aiyen 08 October 2014 10:26:12PM 7 points [-]

The main prediction that comes to mind is that if Christianity is true, one would expect substantially more miracle claims by Christians (legitimate claims plus false ones) than by any other religion (false claims only). If it is false, one would expect similar miracle claims by most religions that believe in them. Does anyone have data on this one way or the other?

Comment author: Nate_Gabriel 09 October 2014 05:00:18AM 3 points [-]

The main prediction that comes to mind is that if Christianity is true, one would expect substantially more miracle claims by Christians (legitimate claims plus false ones) than by any other religion (false claims only).

This also assumes there isn't some saturation point of people only wanting to talk about so many miracles. (Ignoring buybuydandavis' point, which probably interacts with this one in unfortunate ways.) If people only forward X annoying chain emails per month, you'd expect X from each religion. The best we can hope for is the true religion having on average slightly more plausible claims since some of their miracles are true.

Comment author: Desrtopa 15 October 2014 03:42:32PM 2 points [-]

I certainly can't say this is the best we can hope for; the best case scenario would be one where practically nobody talks about the value of miracles as evidence for an interventionist deity the way practically nobody talks about the value of working automobiles as evidence for our models of thermodynamics; the evidence is simply too obvious to be worth belaboring.