pdf23ds comments on The Wannabe Rational - Less Wrong

31 Post author: MrHen 15 January 2010 08:09PM

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Comment author: pdf23ds 17 January 2010 04:34:19AM *  7 points [-]

OTOH, saying you "believe" in some mostly vacuous statement that you were raised to believe, while not really believing anymore in most of the more obviously false beliefs in the same package, doesn't reflect very poorly on your rationality. (I'm not sure to what extent this applies to MrHen.)

ETA: I view belief in god in a growing rationalist as sort of a vestigial thing. It'll eventually just wither and fall off.

Comment author: pdf23ds 17 January 2010 06:16:25AM 6 points [-]

I'm not sure why my comment is at -1. People often start out at disadvantage, no matter how rational their character, and no matter what their potential*. You can't expect immediate maturity. I was raised as a fundamentalist Christian. I took it pretty seriously around the age of 14 or so, so much that I started looking into apologetics (the rational defense of the faith). After critically evaluating all the arguments for and against, I ended up abandoning the faith within a couple years. If my parents hadn't gone down the path of fundamentalism (which only started when I was around 8 anyway--before that they were much more average-like Christians) then I probably wouldn't have become an atheist nearly as soon. I find it unlikely that I wouldn't have ended up as a rationalist, though.

* Of course, people who are raised as rationalists have more potential, but potential has more to do with intelligence and disposition than upbringing.