➘ #27 Source Article

◉ A plain English walkthrough of the Master Proof above.

1. The argument begins with the observation that experiences of religious peace and joy are about equally likely under Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and even secular psychological accounts. No one worldview makes these feelings uniquely probable.
2. In Bayesian reasoning, evidence only supports one hypothesis over another if the likelihood of the evidence is higher under one than under the other. This is what the Bayes factor measures.
3. Since the likelihoods are about equal across worldviews, the Bayes factor comparing them comes out close to one. That means the experience of peace doesn’t tip the scales in favor of any one worldview.
4. Posterior odds (our updated beliefs) are simply prior odds multiplied by the Bayes factor. If the Bayes factor is about one, then the posterior odds remain basically unchanged. In other words, peace and joy do not move our rational credences away from where they started.
5. The worldviews under consideration are mutually exclusive: at most one can be true. But they all predict that peace and joy will occur. So every worldview has high likelihood for the same evidence.
6. To test whether peace and joy can be diagnostic, we ask: could there be one worldview under which peace is more likely than under all others? If that were the case, the Bayes factor for that worldview would be greater than one against every rival.
7. But if we suppose that, we run into contradiction. For one worldview to have higher likelihood, the others must have lower. Yet the premise was that all likelihoods are approximately equal. So it’s impossible for any single worldview to be uniquely supported.
8. From this, it follows that peace and joy are non-diagnostic across rival worldviews. Every worldview can claim them, so none can use them as distinguishing evidence.
9. Neuroscience reinforces this by showing that the same brain mechanisms generate these feelings across different contexts—religious rituals, secular concerts, military drills. That universality explains why the likelihoods converge.
10. Therefore, emotional apologetics—the claim that feelings of peace and joy are confirmation of divine truth—fail the evidential test. They cannot discriminate Christianity from its competitors, nor from naturalistic explanations.

◉ Narrative Summary

The central question is whether feelings of peace and joy can serve as evidence that Christianity is true. To count as evidence, these feelings would need to be more likely under Christianity than under other possible worldviews. Bayesian reasoning makes this explicit: evidence only favors one hypothesis over another if the probability of observing it is higher on that hypothesis. This is what the Bayes factor captures.

But when we look closely, peace and joy show up across many rival systems—Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Indigenous traditions, and even naturalistic accounts in psychology. Neuroscience confirms this parity, since the same affective circuits are engaged in religious rituals, concerts, sports events, and even military drills. This means that the probability of experiencing these feelings is roughly the same no matter which worldview is true. And when the probabilities are about equal, the Bayes factor hovers around one, which leaves our beliefs exactly where they started. Peace and joy therefore add no weight to Christianity over its competitors.

One might suppose that Christianity still has some special edge—that perhaps peace is more intense or more enduring there. But this contradicts the starting observation of parity: comparative studies and first-person reports show the same qualities of tranquility across traditions. No hypothesis can claim exclusive ownership. Trying to say that one faith’s version is unique collapses under the evidence.

The conclusion is straightforward. Because these emotional states arise broadly, because they are mechanistically explained by shared human psychology, and because no worldview predicts them better than any other, they are non-diagnostic. They cannot be used to confirm Christian truth claims. Emotional apologetics fails because it lacks the discriminating power required of genuine evidence. The peace that is genuinely stable and rationally grounded is not tied to ritual or dogma but to beliefs proportioned to the strength of the evidence.