Nornagest comments on Tell Your Rationalist Origin Story - Less Wrong

30 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 25 February 2009 05:16PM

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Comment author: Raw_Power 13 December 2010 09:21:45PM 2 points [-]

Well, I am utterly shocked that at such a young age you didn't even consider the possibility that God was real and that you could pray to him. Seriously, what gives? Where did this sense of distinction between fiction and reality come from? How did you distinguish the Bible from, say, History?

Comment author: Nornagest 13 December 2010 10:02:10PM *  2 points [-]

Well, what are your boundaries on "consider"? I remember entertaining the possibility of God's existence at a pretty early age -- somewhere between two and four, but infantile amnesia's eaten the specifics -- but always as a hypothetical, a playing-pretend game. It took me quite a while to realize that my peers weren't consciously participating in a pleasant fantasy; as late as age eight or so I remember making decisions that could only have been predicated on the opposite assumption.

For context, I was raised in a pretty obviously Christian cultural milieu -- picture books of Bible stories, a sense that it was normal to go to church on Sundays even if you and your parents didn't -- but most of my very early authority figures didn't make a conspicuous show of belief. "Secular" might be the word, but only implicitly so.