BecomingMyself comments on Theists are wrong; is theism? - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Will_Newsome 20 January 2011 12:18AM

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Comment author: komponisto 20 January 2011 01:24:28AM *  11 points [-]

Many folk here on LW take the simulation argument (in its more general forms) seriously. Many others take Singularitarianism1 seriously. Still others take Tegmark cosmology (and related big universe hypotheses) seriously. But then I see them proceed to self-describe as atheist (instead of omnitheist, theist, deist, having a predictive distribution over states of religious belief, et cetera), and many tend to be overtly dismissive of theism.

The word "but" in the last sentence is a non-sequitur if there ever were one. Tegmark cosmology is not theism. Theism means Jehovah (etc). Yes, there are people who deny this, but those people are just trying to spread confusion in the hope of preventing unpleasant social conflicts. There is no legitimate sense in which Bostromian simulation arguments or Tegmarkian cosmological speculations could be said to be even vaguely memetically related to Jehovah-worship.

The plausibility of simulations or multiverses might be an open question, but the existence of Jehovah isn't. There's a big, giant, huge difference. If we think Tegmark may be correct, then we can just say "I think Tegmark may be correct". There is no need to pay any lip-service to ancient mistakes whose superficial resemblance to Tegmark (etc) is so slight that you would never notice it unless you were motivated to do so, or heard it from someone who was.

Comment author: BecomingMyself 20 January 2011 01:39:28AM *  1 point [-]

Tegmark cosmology is not theism. Theism means Jehovah (etc).

The way I read it, it seems like Will_Newsome is not using the word in this way. It may be a case of two concepts being mistakenly filed into the same basket -- certainly some people might, when they hear "Theism-in-general is a mistaken and sometimes harmful way of thinking about the world", understand "theism-in-general" to mean "any mode of thought that acknowledges the possibility of some intelligent mind that is outside and in control of our universe". Under this interpretation, the assertion is quite obviously false (or at least, not obviously true).

I wonder if there is still a disagreement if we Taboo "theism"? (Though your point in the last paragraph is a good one, I think.)

Comment author: komponisto 20 January 2011 01:46:29AM *  4 points [-]

Tegmark cosmology is not theism. Theism means Jehovah (etc).

The way I read it, it seems like Will_Newsome is not using the word in this way

Indeed not; hence my criticism!