Don’t worry, we’ll deal with the Galatian’s personal experience with “miracles” in due time.

But Paul, in Galatians, dismisses the Old God (as Jayman points out) with mere rhetoric. How can one dismiss the creator of the universe so easily if one truly believes in him? And if one dismisses God, then one dismisses Jesus. Paul is not storytelling, Paul is the well documented core logic for a Gospel based religion, and Paul makes major theological mistakes. This diminishes the probability of the deity quite substantially, as internal consistency is paramount.

I agree that internal consistency is important. However, the above is wrong. Paul is not “dismissing God” in Galatians 3:1-5. Contrary, Paul equates the Ascension with evidence of God’s action – the same God of the OT that Paul believed his whole life. Several other verses confirm that Paul did not dismiss the God of the OT.

I mentioned that, if the Myth Hypothesis were true, we would expect that Scriptures would inevitably have to make some kind of accommodation to God’s absence. This does not mean, however, that the Scriptures must necessarily admit that God is really absent, and in fact one of the chief ways Scripture can compensate for God’s absence is by filling in the gap with stories that purport to show God’s presence. Such stories would appeal to various human frailties like gullibility and relationship-based assessment (i.e. believing things because of who says them rather than what is said), and because of God’s absence they would necessarily have distinctive limitations: vagueness, lack of verifiability, a requirement for significant subjectivity in one’s interpretation of the passages, etc.

Galatians 3:1-5 still poses problems for you. First, Paul does not tell the Galatians stories that purport to show God’s presence. He points to the Galatians own experiences of God’s presence. Second, unless we are willing to call people gullible when they trust their own senses, we cannot call the Galatians gullible. Third, since Paul is appealing to the personal experiences of the Galatians his claims are verifiable to his audience. Fourth, Paul’s statements cannot be considered vague since his rhetorical questions imply his audience knew precise answers the questions. Finally, it is the skeptics here who are offering the poor interpretations.

But Paul, in Galatians, dismisses the Old God (as Jayman points out) with mere rhetoric.

I nor Paul said any such thing. The dispute in Galatia was over whether Gentile Christians had to keep all of the Law of Moses. Paul fully accepted the God of the Old Testament and quotes from the Old Testament numerous times.

if the Myth Hypothesis were true, we would expect that Scriptures would inevitably have to make some kind of accommodation to God’s absence. This does not mean, however, that the Scriptures must necessarily admit that God is really absent, and in fact one of the chief ways Scripture can compensate for God’s absence is by filling in the gap with stories that purport to show God’s presence.

True, but Galatians is a poor example of this, in my opinion. Paul’s letters have a low probability of being “stories” and a high probability of being real letters written in the first century by a man starting a new religion. They are not myth, but they promote myth, and should be viewed as such. Paul exploits both the Old Testament and Gospel mythologies to further his goals, which only indirectly supports the myth hypothesis. He is a big problem for the Gospel hypothesis, because the Gospel cannot be separated from Old Testament (Jesus is not a new God, he is a manifestation of the Old God). But Paul, in Galatians, dismisses the Old God (as Jayman points out) with mere rhetoric. How can one dismiss the creator of the universe so easily if one truly believes in him? And if one dismisses God, then one dismisses Jesus. Paul is not storytelling, Paul is the well documented core logic for a Gospel based religion, and Paul makes major theological mistakes. This diminishes the probability of the deity quite substantially, as internal consistency is paramount.

I am not claiming that the Gospel Hypothesis is Christianity (we’ll get to the relationship between Christianity and the Gospel Hypothesis later on). The point of the Gospel Hypothesis is to take the basic premise of an omni-X deity Who loves us enough to become human and die for us so that He and we can enjoy an eternal personal relationship together.

I guess that’s where I’m having a hard time. To me, the Gospel hypothesis should be just that – an evaluation of what we should see in the real world were the Gospel hypotheses about God correct. So, I guess all I’d add at this point is a suggestion to be clear which God you are attacking at any given time – the God of the Bible – or your conceptions of an 0^4 God. That God is not right here right now may disprove that the God of your conception doesn’t exist, but such has no bearing on the God of the Bible.