Exactly.I'm not sure how that's an accurate analogy. Wouldn't the odds here be completely, sweepingly in favor of all the other thousands, if not hundreds of other cars possible to drive down my street?
IOW, i see two choices. One that a red Toyota will drive down my street. The other being that any other car does. Disregarding certain factors that may unnecessarily complicate things further (such as which cars are more widespread within the city. Since that has nothing to do with your point), all cars would have an equal possibility of passing. When they're all lumped together under one possibility, and the red Toyota in another, how can it possibly be a 50/50 situation?
There's one thing: we can judge the quality of the basis of the claim. If there is no evidence either way, then asserting the claim really amounts to a wild guess. In your experience, do wild guesses end up being true at least half the time?Put simply, here i think we can actually deduce logically the probability. When it comes to ideas of god(s), while some are more approachable than others logically, in general as a claim there's hardly anything to judge based upon.
While I've talked in other threads about the problems in pinning down a definition for the term "god", I do think that the term carries with it a fair bit of baggage... specificity that is either true or false, much like "red Toyota" is a lot more specific than just "car".
Just like that claim about the red Toyota, even without specific evidence for or against a god-claim, we can consider what we know about things in general and make some reasonable inferences about it. For instance, have we ever seen any sign that it's even plausible that a mind can exist without a physical brain? Do you think that this fact is relevant to our estimate of how likely a god-claim is to be true?
Also, we have to consider whether it's reasonable for there to be no evidence if the god-claim in question is true. When we look at the specifics of a god-claim, often, there are implicit predictions. If we're talking about a miracle-wielding god, for instance, then we should see... well... miracles. In principle, it's no different than trying to establish that a species is extinct: while you may never see a living example of a particular species, if it still exists, then there should be signs: tracks, maybe. Or stool. Or the remains of its prey. In the case of an animal, the longer we go without seeing evidence for its existence, the less and less likely it is that the animal exists. Why would a god be any different? Why would the likelihood of a god-claim being true stay 50-50 forever despite never seeing any evidence in support of it?
Edit: a shortage of evidence for god might fit the "god exists" model for a while, but not forever. OTOH, a shortage of evidence for god always fits the "god does not exist" model. At a certain point, we can conclude that the "god does not exist" model fits reality better than the "god exists" one.