sketerpot comments on A survey of anti-cryonics writing - Less Wrong

75 Post author: ciphergoth 07 February 2010 11:26PM

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Comment author: sketerpot 06 March 2010 07:27:28PM *  5 points [-]

This illustrates an interesting feature of a lot of religious proselytism: the arguments sound convincing to someone who already believes them, but completely nuts to everyone else. Let's dissect this one:

Life after death happens because the Bhagavad Gita says so. The Bhagavad Gita is true because everyone who your religion says to have achieved enlightenment (a status you confer only upon members of your religion) is a member of your religion.

To anybody else, even people with religions of their own, this is obviously not evidence of anything; it's just religious egocentrism. So why are such arguments so common? (Oh, and you should totally believe that the Bible is true, because Jesus died for your sins. I hear this one all the time.)

Comment author: byrnema 06 March 2010 07:50:22PM *  1 point [-]

If it doesn't sound reasonable, you probably haven't understood it yet. Often because a set of words are more load-bearing than they appear on the surface.

For example, 'achieved enlightenment' may be something that they have had experience with and equate with wisdom. If someone who seems quite wise (at one or two or more levels above yourself) believes in Bhagavad Gita and says their wisdom comes from Bhagavad Gita, you might believe them. Alternatively, you may have identified some thoughts in yourself as 'wise', and then find these thoughts expressed easily and matter of factly by Bhagavad Gita. This is how religions build their credibility: through awe and recognition of common (but noT-too-common) truth.

(So I'll add that) maybe the problem with religion is that people don't understand what the source of wisdom is. They think if they identify a source of one truth, that source is reliable for other truths. So the problem is epistemology, again.

Comment author: JGWeissman 06 March 2010 08:24:18PM 4 points [-]

Sometimes, a comment that looks like off topic, incoherent rambling (which has been down voted past the view threshold, so we really should not respond to it) really is off topic, incoherent rambling.

Comment author: Morendil 06 March 2010 08:12:55PM 1 point [-]

Where do you think they're pulling the 7.3 million figure from?