Why is the existence of a hypothesis evidence of its [truth]?
The information in the complex hypothesis had to come from somewhere. But it’s mainly evidence for the particular religion against similar non-existant religions.
Yes, the psychological explanation is that we’re biased to see minds too much. You might say that our brains have the wrong priors, systematically weighting minds. But that merely predicts that everyone makes up separate beliefs about gods, which might not be so far from animism. An organized religion in which large numbers of people have the same catechism means that a particular belief has outcompeted other beliefs. You have to explain what competition it won, why it spread. Showing that what people usually call evidence is not evidence doesn’t show that it spread for non-epistemic reasons. But it certainly decreases the chance.
It has been my experience in organized religion, that extremely few have the same catechism. In rare cases where people agree down to the details, it is rarely by logical process… it is emotional agreement form some sort of need to agree.
edit: I realized my message was unclear. What I mean is, people disagree, or hold a nonbelief, on many of the catechisms presented by most religions- but just dont talk about it because the desire of community.
The information in the complex hypothesis had to come from somewhere.
But it’s mainly evidence for the particular religion against similar non-existant religions.
Yes, the psychological explanation is that we’re biased to see minds too much. You might say that our brains have the wrong priors, systematically weighting minds. But that merely predicts that everyone makes up separate beliefs about gods, which might not be so far from animism. An organized religion in which large numbers of people have the same catechism means that a particular belief has outcompeted other beliefs. You have to explain what competition it won, why it spread. Showing that what people usually call evidence is not evidence doesn’t show that it spread for non-epistemic reasons. But it certainly decreases the chance.
It has been my experience in organized religion, that extremely few have the same catechism. In rare cases where people agree down to the details, it is rarely by logical process… it is emotional agreement form some sort of need to agree.
edit: I realized my message was unclear. What I mean is, people disagree, or hold a nonbelief, on many of the catechisms presented by most religions- but just dont talk about it because the desire of community.