This line of reasoning does not support any specific deity, and is equally weighty making any substitution that you wish.
For example:
1...You live as though Leprechauns exists.
If Leprechauns exists, you can get a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: your gain is infinite.
If Leprechauns do not exist, you gain nothing and lose nothing.
2...You live as though Leprechauns do not exist.
If Leprechauns exist, they can torment you on your visits to Ireland, and they will never share their gold with the unbelieving likes of you: your loss is measured in pounds and pounds of gold.
If Leprechauns do not exist, you gain nothing and lose nothing.
Is this line of reasoning sufficient for me to start looking in the dells for the “wee people”? Substitute any other mythical creature that has the supposed powers of reward and punishment, Vishnu, Thor, Odin, Jupiter and run it again.
It supports ALL of them equally well, and since many of the named mythical beings are mutually exclusive, by extension, it supports NONE of them.
That’s how it’s smoked in a properly functioning “thinking pipe”.
Place your bets. Are you an accident of nature to worship leprechauns or created in the image of God.
The notion of "proper" noetic functioning also implies the corollary notion of improper noetic function. You are implying that there is something wrong with a theist's thinking, in the same sort of way that there is something wrong with the thinking of a person who believes in the existence of imaginary, mythical leprechauns. But how do you account the your notion of something functioning, or not functioning, as it ought to in the first place, resting as it does on the supposition that byproducts of brain chemistry are themselves nothing but the accidental byproduct of chance/necessity, and natural selection? How could evolution not function as it ought to? What sense does it make to attribute properness to something that chemistry can't help doing in the first place?
Cordially,