How on earth does that follow.
I see why you're ashamed. You haven't even been able to eliminate being a fundamentalist theist.
I have eliminated being an atheist or theist or deist or anything other than an agnostic because that's what I am. I haven't eliminated the possibility that some fundamentalist theism might actually be right, even if I regard this as highly unlikely and far less likely than e.g., that there is no god.
I agree, but in this case, there being absolutely no evidence for or against either position, they are the rare exception.
Not true, actually, but it doesn't matter. Probability isn't the number of possible cases divided by this number for each possible case, or this number with whatever evidence we have. Two mutually exclusive outcomes have probability 50/50 only if both outcomes are equally likely. Empirical interpretations of probability (i.e., those which allow evidence to change the probability or allow for falsifications) are based on the basic (frequentist) probability of Kolmogorov (von Mises formulated an empirical probability interpretation before Kolmogorov, but Kolmogorov formalized probability, giving us the axiomatic probability theory we have come to know and love). In such interpretations we calculate probabilities such as that of a fair coin by imagining an infinite number of identical "experiments" of flips and take the limit. Without evidence, there is no way to calculate the value given this or any empirical probability interpretation.
Subjective interpretations don't help you here either. While they have their origins in Bayes and Laplace and to some extent earlier thinkers, it wasn't until Keynes, De Finetti, Ramsey, Cox, Good, Savage, Jeffreys, and others that the subjectivist interpretation was sufficiently well formalized and once again, we find that 0 evidence for two mutually exclusive outcomes doesn't give us a 50/50 split. In fact, in the entire history of the development of probability, no interpretation (rigorously formalized or no) provides us with a basis for calculating the probability that one of two possible outcomes/states is 50/50 because we have no evidence that either outcome/state is true.
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But there is evidence to work with and with the probability of finding more.
Which allows us to compute how likely one or the other probability is using Bayesian theory (usually, although there are other methods), but this neither gives us the probabilities and we can do the same for the existence of god.
Fine, except it isn't incorrect.
By all means, let's here how your idiomatic probability calculus works to make your statement correct.
My default position is disbelief when the only evidence is hearsay.
Have you ever seen electrons? Have you been to every place that hearsay would have believe exists (like every town or city on a map)? Have you ever received medical advice you believed to be good just because the doctor said so? The problem is that while there are many things that you (IMO, rightly) believe to be true and for which there exists evidence, for most of these you have to accept hearsay evidence that there is evidence.
Better still, as one's position exists only in relationship to one's belief in the truth of some statement, the existence of something, the reality of some state of affairs, etc., nobody has a default position. What you describe is a default position to claims in the truth of propositions/SoAs, not a default position.
Contrariwise, when there are two equally likely, or unlikely, possibilities, with no evidence at all, I'm free to believe either or neither, while reminding myself of the total lack of evidence, much less proof.
You're free to believe both, either, and neither regardless of evidence, but this doesn't make the probability 50/50.
