JGWeissman comments on Atheism = Untheism + Antitheism - Less Wrong

86 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 01 July 2009 02:19AM

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Comment author: JGWeissman 01 July 2009 09:02:06PM 9 points [-]

God's certainly not an omnipotent person or thing -- faith in God is just faith that the world makes sense

This is like if someone claimed that 2 + 2 = 5, and when I said they were wrong, replied, "When I say '5' I really mean '4'."

The idea that the world makes sense is expressible without any reference to God, and the word "God" is commonly used to mean something else.

Comment author: byrnema comment score below threshold [+] (13 children)

Comment author: JGWeissman 01 July 2009 11:10:41PM 2 points [-]

I'm saying that the belief that the world makes sense is equivalent to belief in God.

That still is not right. I can have a theory that the world makes sense, and is describable by general laws. This theory can be supported by the evidence that I am able to generalize my experiences into physical laws that successfully predict future experiences. Faith is not needed for this, in an unlawful universe that doesn't make sense, scientific rationalism would defeat itself.

To argue that God exists, you don't need to argue that every conceived idea of God is true.

But you do have explain some observable difference between God existing and not existing that does not contradict our actual observations.

Comment author: byrnema 09 July 2009 04:59:20PM * -1 points [-]

I can have a theory that the world makes sense, and is describable by general laws.

Perhaps, for you, it is a theory. For me, I simply, honestly admit that I believe it even though there are alternatives I can’t eliminate.

But you do have to explain some observable difference between God existing and not existing that does not contradict our actual observations.

When you wrote this comment, I imagined that any scientific evidence that science isn’t absolute would be self-refuting so there couldn't be any "evidence" of such. But after reading recently about reductionism here and here and thinking about what the assumptions of reductionism are, I now see that there could be a middle ground, where science is valid almost everywhere, but there are specific places where science doesn’t hold. And there could be rules about where science holds and doesn’t hold so that science isn’t entirely negated. For example, the idea that science could hold everywhere except when it comes to mental entities. So finally, my answer is that any evidence of non-reductionism would be evidence that my God {God=natural world} isn’t absolute. This is because, as I argue elsewhere, reductionism is equivalent to the natural world being self-contained and self-consistent. Non-reductionism would imply that there is something beyond the natural world (something metaphysical).

So I'm a reductionist, but I experience this theistically. I think it is time to move on from the dichotomy that atheism/theism is justified/unjustified belief and consider what makes a belief theistic or not. (On the inside.)

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 09 July 2009 06:55:27PM * 1 point [-]

I now see that there could be a middle ground, where science is valid almost everywhere, but there are specific places where science doesn’t hold.

"Science" can't "hold" somewhere and "not hold" somewhere else. Science is a process by which we reliably figure out stuff, build tools for figuring out stuff, and establish what is known and what isn't, what is more certain and what is less certain. It's not phlogiston that fills territory with knowability essence, it's a set of human activities, in which anything that works is welcome.

Comment author: byrnema 09 July 2009 07:25:24PM * 0 points [-]

Replace "science" with "the hypothesis that everything is governed by physical laws that are never violated and explain everything"

I agree this hypothesis is not synonymous with science as a process, so I was not being precise.

However, is the hypothesis asserting what you accused me of believing? Is believing in this hypothesis believing in some kind of phlogiston that fills territory with knowability essence?

I'm afraid so. And I'm open to being critical of this.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 09 July 2009 08:38:49PM * 3 points [-]

Replace "science" with "the hypothesis that everything is governed by physical laws that are never violated and explain everything"

It's also an empty statement. "Physical laws", at least fundamental ones, is by definition the description of that which governs everything, and at any point you have uncertainty about what's going to happen. If whatever concept of "physical laws" you have doesn't explain what happens, then those laws are falsified, so that they have to be modified to accommodate the new info, and probably include newfound uncertainty. If there turns out to be an intelligent tinkerer or goal-driven whatever behind the scenes, it gets included in the fundamental rules of the game, and studied scientifically.

Comment author: byrnema 09 July 2009 09:12:54PM * 0 points [-]

It's not an empty statement. You gave the definition of physical laws, but the hypothesis is that the physical laws exist.

Is the belief in the existence of governing laws some type of false belief, like believing in a phlogiston of knowability or believing in God?

I'm beginning to think the whole difference between the LW perspective and the theist perspective might (just!) be the difference between a frequentist and Bayesian perspective. Is it possible that our brains are just hard-wired differently and we're all making some kind of mind projection fallacy? Oops, I meant typical mind fallacy. I can understand both points of view, but I find the frequentist view more natural. And when I understand the Bayesian point of view, it is through some kind of mental acrobatics, like I'm just pushing the frequentist perspective to a higher level of abstraction than the one I'm evaluating.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 09 July 2009 09:19:11PM 6 points [-]

You gave the definition of physical laws, but the hypothesis is that the physical laws exist.

No, there is no such "hypothesis". You just study the world, and the more fundamental of the rules you learn are dubbed "physical laws".

Comment author: arundelo 16 February 2010 06:35:15AM 0 points [-]

Well said! -- this and your comments upthread.

Comment author: knb 02 July 2009 02:56:04AM 1 point [-]

Judeo-Christian religions assert that God is indescribable and not anything you can think of ...

This is certainly not my understanding of the Judeo-Christian concept of God, and I spent 12 years in Christian education (believe me, I am not bragging when I say this).

God was supposed to be something ''mere humans'' could reach by the proper application of logic. Your description sounds much more like the purely transcendent Muslim concept of God, according to which God didn't even have to obey the laws of logic, causality, or his own commands.

Comment author: byrnema comment score below threshold [+] (3 children)

Comment author: Jack 08 July 2009 02:46:12AM 1 point [-]

When they argue about the existence of God, they should certainly address the theological arguments explained by modern theologians.

Why? If they are objecting to the religious beliefs of average believers then they should be responding to arguments made in defense of those beliefs. Do theologists have arguments in favor of traditional beliefs of your average American Christian that the New Atheists haven't answered? This would be interesting. But proving theologists wrong wouldn't do anything to change the minds of the average believer since the average believer isn't motivated by those arguments-- the average believer doesn't even believe the same thing the theologist believes! Its like the New Atheists are having this one argument with run-of-the-mill theists and the theologists are saying: "Hey! Wait! Have this other, totally different argument with us instead!"

Comment author: byrnema 08 July 2009 05:50:08AM * 0 points [-]

An atheist can't argue against the most unreasonable belief in God (even if it is the most common one) to demonstrate that belief in God is unreasonable. While you can make progress by showing the majority of theists that important aspects of their concept of God is incompatible with reason, it's disingenuous to say that belief in God is unreasonable just because there are unreasonable aspects to their belief. We must press, is it the case that belief in God is necessarily unreasonable?

Online, I see some atheists scoffing about how ridiculous it would be to expect atheists to provide arguments against every possible version of God. There are hundreds of religions! Well, with this problem of so many gods, it seems necessary to identify the most reasonable concept of God and provide arguments against that one. Theologians, the ones working on the details of belief in God, have developed better arguments about what sort of God is most reasonable.

Comment author: Jack 08 July 2009 01:28:16PM * 1 point [-]

In that case atheists should have to argue against my version of God. I define God as the Empire State Building. Surely that is the most reasonable version of God since lots of people see it every day, there are tons of pictures and videos of it. We have historical documents showing when it was built and how. The Empire State Building definitely exists. I would say that my God is the most likely to exist out of all the theologists Gods except that some theologists have defined God in even more inane ways. If God is merely "existence" then the likelihood there is a God is very very high. Indeed, in that case, saying "There is a God" is likely performatively redundant.

So yes atheists have to respond to the best arguments in favor of the existence of God-- but only so long as the God being debated is a) not tautologous and b) somewhat similar to the God most people believe in. Even given all the religions there are still striking commonalities between them... until one gets to the theologists. I actually have nothing against theologists. I think that flexibility in their understanding of God (particularly of the theological non-realists) can lead to really inventive and insightful ideas about humanity's relation to itself and the universe. But I'd rather not pretend what they say has much of any relation to the beliefs of real practitioners.

Btw, your view of what God is is still on the radical end of theologists. If a Catholic priest published your view, for example, he'd be excommunicated. If an evangelical said it he'd lose his church members and if an Imam said it there'd be a fatwa.

JGWeissman comments on Atheism = Untheism + Antitheism - Less Wrong

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