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rosyatrandom comments on Theists are wrong; is theism? - Less Wrong
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I'm in the 'everything that can exist does so; we're a fixed point in a cloud of possibilities' camp. I'm also an atheist because I see theism as an extra-ordinarily arbitrary and restrictive constraint on what should or must be true in order for us to exist.
It's simply too narrow and unjustified for me to take seriously, and the fact that its trappings are naive and full of wishful thinking and ulterior motives means I certainly don't.
The way I've been envisioning theism is as a pretty broad class of hypotheses that is basically described as 'this patch of the universe we find ourselves in is being computed by something agenty'. What is your conception of theism that makes it more arbitrary and restrictive than this?
Since my metaphysical position is (and I'm going to have to come up with a better term for it) pan-existence, having gods that create and influence things requires that those possibilities where they don't (or where other, similar-but-different gods do) are somehow rendered impossible or unlikely.
Gods being statistically significant requires some metaphysical reason for them to be so simply in order to stop the secular realities dominating, and the arbitrary focus of theistic gods on humanity and our loose morals only serves to make them ever more over-specified and unlikely.
The answer is simple: evolution.
That which replicates is more (a priori) likely than that which does not.
Out of the space of universes, those that spawn many sub-universes will statistically dominate.
Just another rewording of the SA.
I dispute the 'a priori' claim. There are cases where this would not be so. I think this is an a posteriori conclusion on the order of 'sun will come up next Tuesday'.
Rosy asked for significant probability mass on God-endowed universes.
Jacob's argument works a priori, not necessarily, but with significant probability mass.
I believe you are mistaken (on this overwhelmingly unimportant question of semantics.) The cause and consequence of replication are rather critical for whether being the kind of pan existential god universe thing that replicates will make said universe more prolific.
and two highly plausible answers to the questions of cause and consequence are "because of certain features of the universe" "that are preserved with high probability by replication"
Compare to
"Well there's this 'sun' thing, a giant glowing ball apparently tracing a circular path that, for about half its arc, is obstructed by a large object, creating a sequence of distinct periods in which this sun is visible, one of which will be called Tuesday, ..."
You seem to have introduced new assumptions.
My assumptions have significant probability a priori.