Re: Theism is popular; what follows?

Mark Goodge wrote:

[me:]
Because (e.g.) it seems clear that a lot of people have the
religious position they do largely because they absorbed it
from their parents or other people around them. When one person
makes two converts or two children, that shouldn't double the
weight I attach to their testimony.

[Mark:]
Yes, but that presupposes that all human culture derives from a
single source (or very small number of sources).
....
If it doesn't, though, then the fact that many people now have
probably absorbed their religion from their parents isn't really
relevant. What's more important, in this context, is how it all
started.

Ah, I now see what you're getting at. And yes, I agree that
if we had (say) 5 billion people Way Back When who all independently
decided to believe in God-or-something, and each of them passed
that belief on to a different person in the next generation, and
so on through the generations until now we still have 5 billion
religious people ... then indeed the fact that they got their
beliefs from other people wouldn't lessen the relevance of the
fact that there are 5 billion of them, or that they form the
majority, or whatever.

But of course we don't have that, or anything like it, and
pointing that out doesn't mean claiming that all human culture
has a single source. It does mean suggesting that present-day
religious belief is mostly derived from a number of sources
much smaller than the number of religious people. I don't
think that's terribly controversial.

It seems to me that if all the current and past
variations on religious beliefs had the same (human) sources then they
would be more similar than they are.
....
I don't think the inhomogenity is strong evidence either way.

Looks to me like you just contradicted yourself :-).

It
neither supports nor detracts from my basic premise that the existence
of religion is evidence for its truth.

1. That premise doesn't make any sense; "religion" encompasses
lots of mutually incompatible things, so there's no such thing
as "its truth". Make it "the existence of religion is evidence
that some religious teachings are true" (which I think is what
you mean) and the inhomogeneity certainly does, for the reasons
I've already given, detract from the plausibility of that claim.

Let "S" stand for "some sort of supernatural something exists"
and "T1", "T2", etc., for various more specific ideas about what
sort of supernatural something exists. And let "N" stand for
some naturalist account of how apparently supernatural experiences
come about.

I claim that

- the alleged evidence for S all takes the form of
evidence for particular T's

I'd disagree that it's all; I'd agree that it mostly takes that form.

Actually, I agree; "all" is a bit too strong. But the evidence
that *doesn't* take that form is terribly weak evidence for S,
or at least all of it I can think of is. (Example: Every time
some difficulty is found in the currently-best-available
scientific theories, that's a very little bit of evidence
for some such proposition as "there is no theory at all like
the ones scientists look for that accurately describes the world".
As such, it's evidence for S. But very weak evidence, especially
in view of how many such difficulties have turned out to be
handled just fine by later scientific theories.)

- these T's are frequently in stark conflict with
one another

Yes, but not usually with respect to the existance of the
supernatural. Nearly all of them are agreed on that.

That's partly because "the supernatural" is defined as
"whatever most religions kinda-sorta agree about" :-).
Anyway: the fact that two theories agree about some things
doesn't stop the theories being in stark conflict.

- evidence for a particular T is generally evidence
against lots of the other T's

Yes, but, again, it isn't evidence against the things that
are held in common.

Sure. But, in fact, if S is true then presumably something
along the lines of one of the T's is true. And then the
fact that we have all this evidence against all the individual
T's is a problem.

- and in particular it's commonly much *stronger*
evidence against the other T's than against N

This is where I disagree completely. It seems to me that the difference
between religions are almost exclusively about what God is like,
rather than whether God (in some meaningful sense) exists. And even
there, there is a lot of agreement on many of the fundamental
attributes of God.

What you've just said doesn't in fact constitute
disagreement with what I said.

and that all of this makes it very plausible that the
aggregate of all that evidence ends up weakening S (by
weakening all the individual T's through which all the
evidence for S is mediated) more than it weakens N.

Imagine that there are two political parties, the Demmicans
and the Republocrats, and that someone claims to have good
evidence that the best possible candidate for the next President
is a Demmican rather than a Republocrat. It transpires that
his reason for saying this is that he's heard a great many
rumours of the form "One Demmican offered a bribe to two
others, one of whom turned it down". From each such rumour
he extracts the fact that a Demmican turned down a bribe,
and he says "Behold, I have all this evidence that at least
some Demmicans are incorruptible". But all his actual evidence
for this is *also* evidence that some other Demmicans are
corrupt, and if he insists on lumping it together then he'll
find himself with (in some sense) twice as much evidence of
corruption as evidence of virtue.

He might be able to avoid this by focusing on the particular
bits of evidence that cast a single person -- Hillary Obama McCain,
perhaps -- in the role of virtuous bribe-refuser. But then he
isn't entitled to point to the whole mound of evidence as if
it helps his case; and he'd better have some answer when his
opponents point out that there are actually more rumours involving
Hillary Obama McCain giving or receiving bribes than there are
involving her refusing them.

Was there supposed to be another paragraph here linking this analogy
with what we're discussing? If not, then I've totally failed to grasp
the point you're trying to make. Sorry.

"Some Demmican would make a good candidate" <-> "Some supernaturalist
understanding of the world is good".

"Hillary Obama McCain would make a good candidate" <-> "Christianity
is right".

"Barack Clinton offered a bribe to Hillary Obama McCain
and Mitt Kucinich, and H.O.M. turned it down whereas
M.K. accepted it" <-> "My sister was terribly ill,
and I prayed 'O Lord Jesus, Son of God, please heal her'
and she got better amazingly quickly".

"Mitt Kucinich offered a bribe to Hillary Obama McCain
and Mike Romney, and H.O.M. accepted it whereas M.R.
turned it down flat" <-> "The Qur'an contains statements
that appear to foresee modern science in ways Muhammad
couldn't possibly have thought of for himself".

"The first rumour gives some reason to believe that
H.O.M. is a good candidate, but also gives reason to
believe that B.C. and M.K. aren't." <-> "The first
story gives some reason to believe that Christianity
is right, but also gives reason to believe that religions
like Judaism and Islam (according to which calling Jesus
"Son of God" is very badly wrong) are wrong."

"The second rumour gives some reason to believe that
M.R. is a good candidate, but also gives good reason
to believe that M.K. and H.O.M. aren't" <-> "The
second story gives some reason to believe that Islam
is right, but also gives reason to believe that religions
like Christianity and Hinduism, whose fundamental
beliefs are strongly repudiated in the Qur'an, are
wrong."

"A big basket of rumours like this, taken together,
ends up giving evidence *against* all the candidates,
because it shows each of them more often in a bad light
than in a good light." <-> "All the supposedly supernatural
experiences people have had, taken together, end up being
evidence *against* all their religions, because they're
generally incompatible with more religions than they offer
evidence for."

(Actually, my interpretation would be that, no matter how much the
Demmicans and Republocrats attack each other, neither of them are
doing any damage at all to the fact that there is actually going to be
an election and there will be a new president. If the concept of an
elected president did not exist, then there would be no point having
Demmicans and Republocrats at all. But I doubt that's what you're
trying to say here).

Correct, it isn't. The Republocrats represent non-supernaturalist
understandings of the world. Of course, to assess whether any
Demmican is the best available candidate one really ought to
look at the available Republocrats too.

Evidence "against" other notions of the supernatural, though, is not
evidence that the supernatural does not exist, it's evidence that
other notions of how it works are at least partly incorrect.

It *is* evidence that the supernatural doesn't exist. (Note:
evidence is not at all the same thing as proof.) And, also
importantly, it *is* evidence that any other bit of alleged
evidence-for-the-supernatural that depends on one of those
other notions is in fact bad evidence.

I really don't see how you reach that conclusion. People disagreeing
over how something works isn't evidence that it doesn't exist. The Big
Bang and Steady State theories of the universe are mutually
incompatible and were once bitterly argued over, but that's no
evidence that cosmology is all wrong. Or can we, in fact, take this as
evidence that a naturalistic view of the universe is less likely to be
right because it's disputed?

If there were a mixed bag of cosmological evidence, some favouring
a big bang ~ 15 billion years ago, some favouring a steady state,
some favouring some kind of cyclic universe without big bangs or
crunches, etc., etc., and if each piece of evidence were good
evidence for one theory and good evidence against most of the
others, and if the evidence were fairly well balanced between
those alternatives -- then yes, that evidence *would* on the whole
be against all the available cosmological theories. (And therefore
in favour of some hypothesis like "those cosmologists don't have
a clue what they're talking about", especially if each school of
thought were supremely confident of its own rightness.)

That doesn't appear to be the case in reality; just about
everything appears to be consistent with a "big bang". (Lots
of details about the first nanosecond are still up for grabs,
I think.)

Suppose there are only three credible religions. They have
deities called Bod, God, and Pod.
....
If those really are the only credible religions, and if
there's any realistic prospect of explaining those alleged
wonders materially, then all that evidence could very easily
end up being overall in favour of the proposition that no
religion is correct.

*If* that were the case, then your theory would have more weight.
But, of course, that's not how it is.

Obviously it's a grotesque oversimplification. But it seems
to me much more accurate than the grotesque oversimplification
that says "basically, all religions agree with one another;
there's just argument about the details". Which is roughly
what you've said above, though I don't believe for a minute
that you really believe it in contexts other than this
argument :-).

I'm not quite sure how much more detailed I can be. I don't think I
can give a detailed answer, it's not something for which I have any
detail. My point is simply that we would not have any concept of the
supernatural if the supernatural did not, in fact, exist.

That's an extraordinary claim. People often have concepts
of things that don't exist. Almost everyone has a concept
of -- well, it happens that there's no standard word for
it, but let's say "monstrous creatures that don't exist
in the actual world". Yeti, dragons, chimaeras, unicorns,
and so on. Would you say that we wouldn't have any concept
of such creatures if they didn't actually exist?

Yeti, dragons, chimaeras, unicorns etc are, conceptually, part of the
natural universe. The fact that they do not (as far as we know) exist
does not, however, damage the concept of the natural universe. If
people were not already familiar with the great diversity of natural
life and a multitude of animal species, some often exceedingly odd,
then they would not have come up with fantasised versions either.

And you think -- you really think -- that gods and demons
and ghosts and ancestral spirits and so on are, unlike yeti
and dragons, so far removed from our experience that no one
would ever have thought of them if something like them
weren't real?

I'm flabbergasted.

[I've snipped the section where you explain how religion could be
useful without being true;

Er, for at least the second time in this thread, what I'm
saying is *not* that religion could be useful without being
true. I dare say it could, but it's an entirely separate
question.

I don't have any particular disagreement
with it so I'm not going to respond to it now but I've noted it for
possible refernce later if necessary]

OK. (I wasn't, of course, saying it to provoke disagreement;
you asked how it could happen that religion might arise
and persist as a side-effect of useful characteristics of
our minds, so I sketched one way in which it might.)

It seems pretty odd to me. Wouldn't we expect to have
(1) God and his entourage, trying to get the truth out,
and (2) the devil and *his* entourage, trying to get
people to believe the most damaging things possible?

I don't think so. For a start, I don't think that God is "trying" to
get the truth out - I think he has got the truth out, but not everyone
is aware of it (yet).

Then "get the truth out" wasn't the best way to express my
meaning. Make it: "get the truth known" or something.

I think that's much the same thing, in this context.

Well, yes, that's what I thought, which is why I didn't
take more pains to be more precise :-). But -- if the
truth is anything much like Christianity -- then God
hasn't done all that well at getting it known, since
most people aren't Christians and Christians disagree
wildly about things that they think are of vital
importance.

And I don't think that all non-Christian
religions are necessarily inspired by the devil (I know that some
Christian think this. I disagree with them). I think that most
non-Christian religion is the understandable result of humans trying
to make sense of the supernatural without having all the necessary
information to be able to do so reliably.

But what they're trying to make sense of, if Christianity
is right, isn't really The Supernatural but something more
specific, namely whatever God and his minions and the devil
and his minions (and any other supernatural beings there
might happen to be) get up to. But what do we actually get?
Uncanny but generally pointless coincidences. People thinking
they've caught a glimpse of their recently deceased partner.
Vague senses of awe or peace or fear. That sort of thing.
And scarcely any of it seems to me like what you'd expect
God-and-his-minions, or the-devil-and-his-minions, to be
getting up to.

Surely, we've got a lot more that that. Yes, a lot of Western
semi-agnostic folk religion is like that, but you can't say the same
for committed followers of any of the world's major religions. (Well,
you can, because it appears you just have, but you know what I mean).

Yup, among committed followers of the world's major religions
there are some much more specific things. Let's suppose for
the sake of argument that Christianity is correct. Then many
of those more specific things make decent enough sense -- but
then the much-more-specific-things among followers of *other*
religions make much less sense. So, e.g., it appears (from
brief googling; don't trust me too much on this) that alleged
miraculous healings are very rare among Muslims but quite
common among Hindus. So (1) why would either God or the
Bad Guys want an apparent Hindu healing miracle? and (2)
why would Islam be so different?

(If the answer to #1 is "duh, God likes people not to be sick"
then (a) that's awfully hard to square with the fact that so
many people do get sick or injured and don't get healed, and
(b) it's awfully hard to square with a big disparity between
different Wrong Religions.)

It doesn't explain why religion started in the first place in multiple
different societies.

I still don't understand why not. Those features of human minds
are universal, or nearly so. Their consequences would certainly
be very variable, but it seems entirely to be expected that
they'd produce some sort of belief in immaterial minds (which
is roughly what's common to most notions of the supernatural)
in many societies.

But why would it happen almost everywhere? Why not in some places,
but not others?

Why almost everywhere? Because those features of human minds
are universal or nearly so, as I said. Why in some particular
places? Because once a particular set of religious ideas has
got itself established somewhere, people will tend to grow up
with those rather than inventing their own. I really don't see
what you think the difficulty is here. At all.

If not-suppressing-the-truth leads everyone who does it
to be (or remain) a theist, and to have the truth "revealed
to them as Christ", then everyone who doesn't end up
believing in Christ is suppressing the truth, no?

Not necessarily, no. In some cases, yes.

Would you care to unpack that a little?

Sure. And (I'm repeating myself here, sorry) my argument is that
if you've got a lot of claims about God, and if they're so far from
matching up that if any of them's right than most of the others
have only "some grain of truth" amid a whole lot of falsehood,
then you don't in fact have good evidence for God there -- even
assuming for the sake of argument that "people believe X" is in
general good evidence for X.

But if they have any grain of truth at all, then it's evidence for God
(in at least some sense). Otherwise, what truth could they have?

Well, e.g., they could be right about some point of ethics.
But what I meant by picking up on your "some grain of truth"
phrase was that (as I understood it) you were saying that
from your perspective they all have "some grain of truth",
and I was pointing out that if any of them is right then
most of the others have no more than that, which is to say
that if any is right then most are mostly wrong, which is
to say that even in the "best" case these claims consist
mostly of wrongness, which makes it hard to give them much
credit at all.

--
Gareth McCaughan
..sig under construc
.

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