shokwave comments on Theists are wrong; is theism? - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (533)
I contend that there is evidence for a god. Observation: Things tend to have causes. Observation: Agenty things are better at causing interesting things than non-agenty things. Observation: We find ourselves in a very interesting universe.
Those considerations are Bayesian evidence. The fact that many, many smart people have been theistic is Bayesian evidence. So now you have to start listing the evidence for the alternate hypothesis, no?
Do you mean all arguments on Christian internet fora, or what? There's a vast amount of theology written by people dedicated to finding truth. They might not be good at finding truth, but it is nonetheless what is motivating them.
I should really write a post on the principle of charity...
I realize this is rhetoric, but still... seriously? The question of whether the universe came into being via an agenty optimization process is only slightly more interesting than teapots orbiting planets?
I agree that theism tends to be a very damaging belief in many contexts, and I think it is good that you are fighting against its more insipid/irrational forms.
I can't help but feel that this sentence pervasively redefines 'interesting things' as 'appears agent-caused'.
As curious agents ourselves, we're pre-tuned to find apparently-agent-caused things interesting. So, I don't think a redefinition necessarily took place.
This is sort of what I meant. I am leery of accidentally going in the reverse direction - so instead of "thing A is agent-caused -> pretuned to find agent-caused interesting -> thing A is interesting" we get "thing A is interesting -> pretuned to find agent-caused interesting -> thing A is agent-caused".
This is then a redefinition; I have folded agent-caused into "interesting" and made it a necessary condition.