simplicio comments on Something's Wrong - Less Wrong

82 [deleted] 05 September 2010 06:08PM

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Comment author: simplicio 14 September 2010 05:21:16AM *  0 points [-]

This is itself a good argument against the specific "yawheh did it", but not against the more general "goddidit" [...] An atheist has a top-level belief (or it's negation) which sends down cascading priors and privileges naturalistic hypothesizes. So far this has worked splendidly well across the landscape.

But there is no guarantee this will work everywhere forever, and it's at least possible that eventually we may flip...

I entirely agree. While I don't know of any good reasons to think the origin of life was not a happy accident, it is not inconceivable a priori (simulations, seeding etc.).

When I describe myself as an atheist (which I try not to do), I really mean that

(1) all the anthropomorphic creation myths are really laughable,

(2) there's not much positive evidence for less laughable creators, and

(3) even if you showed me evidence for a creator, I would be inclined toward what I will call meta-naturalism - i.e., still wanting to know how the hell the creator came to be.

Basically, I doubt the existence of gods that are totally ontologically distinct from creatures.