Matt_Duing comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong

97 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 March 2010 11:23PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (1329)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: simplicio 20 March 2010 05:10:15AM *  8 points [-]

I hope I don't sound too effusive if I say that's borderline heroic.

But yeah, I suppose if you read "The Varieties of Religious Experience" or some other such book, you realize pretty fast that an experience like that is not really evidence.

I'm nonetheless surprised at your ability to do that calculus, as opposed to just closing the book. It impresses me almost as much as, say, the family of a murder victim speaking up in the defendant's cause. You were surely working through the Venus-of-Willendorf of all biases (I would imagine).

Comment author: Matt_Duing 20 March 2010 06:10:21AM 4 points [-]

Thank you. Another factor that helped me was that I was encouraged to read the Bible. I actually did read all of it and was disturbed by some of the things I found. Something that particularly sticks out in my mind is the story of Jephthah from Judges chapter 11. Here God basically demands that a man sacrifice his young daughter (i.e. stab her to death and burn her body) as repayment for answering a prayer. God also claims responsibility for creating evil somewhere in the book of Isaiah, though the exact reference escapes me. It took me several years after these initial disturbances to ultimately own up to my mistake, but I gradually realized that the truths I were protecting were structurally quite different from the truths that were protecting themselves.

Comment author: wedrifid 22 March 2010 03:06:31AM 2 points [-]

My experience was similar. If you (are similar to me and) want to lose the Christian faith - go to church and read the Bible. Two recipes for apostasy.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 22 March 2010 03:49:42AM 5 points [-]

For another similar account see Julia Sweeney's Letting Go of God-- she was contently Catholic, went to Bible classes, and gradually became an atheist.