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teageegeepea comments on How to Not Lose an Argument - Less Wrong
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If you believe morality is impossible without God, you have a strong disincentive to become an atheist
That idea is distinct from whether or not God exists. In arguments about evolution I have made the point that it is compatible with both the existence and non-existence of God. I did not say that to "leave a line of retreat" for the Christian anti-Darwinist I was talking to, but because I believed he held an incorrect notion of what Darwinian evolution is. The notion of leaving a line of retreat for others seems less rationalist, for it implies valuing certain beliefs themselves rather than the truth per se. The reason to leave a line of retreat for yourself is because it is always possible you are wrong about something and so it is wise to be prepared.
P(evolution|God) is much lower than P(creationism|God), so even if you are leading them to the right conclusion about evolution, they still aren't really reasoning properly if they still hold their belief in God. In fact, one might argue that they are doing worse.
That depends on your motivations. The line of retreat is also useful for improving their reasoning capabilities. Changing one's mind in the face of emotional resistance is hard and takes practice to master.
I'd write that as P(evolution|Creationist God) < P(creationism|Creationist God). One can easily conceive of many variants of God which are not only compatible with evolution, but for which evolution is the most sensible explanation for what we observe around us. E.g. a God which sets the initial conditions of the universe, starts the big bang, and then does not interfere from there on.
The other benefit of writing it that way is that it more clearly highlights the tautological nature of the argument for creationism given the existence of (a creationist) God.
I'm not sure you need that. If you're willing to grant an omnipotent being, it seems like spontaneous creation of whatever he wants would be more likely than anything else.
If miracles are possible, they're always the simplest explanation for everything. Which might itself provide a methodological reason for denying them.
Well, now we're getting into a discussion about the nature of God.
An omnipotent, but non-omniscient God might be compatible with evolution, especially if the universe is large (as it seems to be), because perhaps God, while capable of spontaneously creating stuff, just isn't paying attention to anything going on in our particular neighborhood of the universe.
An omnipotent and omniscient, but disinterested God would also be compatible with evolution, as he could, if he wanted to, create new species, but just doesn't bother, as he has other things to worry about.
Etc.
What about if miracles are possible, but extremely improbable? Which I think exactly describes the universe we are currently in, assuming you are willing to accept "new organisms of a new specie spontaneously coming into existence via random quantum effects" as a possible but extremely improbably miracle.
Nope. by 'Miracle' I mean God goes *poof* and things happen. If you've got an omnipotent, omniscient being with his grubby little paws in everything, then he provides the simplest explanation for any phenomenon.
Not true -- you would still model God as some sort of cognitive entity. Miracles which are parsimonious given the temperament revealed by his previous miracles would be simpler.
For example, given a Judeo-Christian God, if you discovered that gay men were living longer happier lives than straight men, this would not be easily explained as a miracle.
Hmm... I think we are talking about the same territory. It's just that in your map, you've labelled the territory as "God" and in my map, I've labelled the territory as "random quantum effects".
however P(evolution | moral God) would be rather low.
ie, think about all the nasty stuff that had to happen to, well, give rise to all the currently existent beings. Evolution is a nasty process. A god that is sufficiently intelligent and powerful that it COULD have engineered the species it wanted right from the start, rather than just setting stuff in motion and waiting for something interesting to evolve, allowing all that suffering to happen in the process, well... that would seem to exclude such a being from having anything resembling human morality, right? So when taking into account the often associated "god is good" claim, well, the whole thing completely implodes, no?