shokwave 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: Will_Newsome 20 January 2011 01:54:08AM 8 points [-]

The only fact necessary to rationally be an atheist is that there is no evidence for a god. We don't need any arguments -- evolutionary or historical or logical -- against a hypothesis with no evidence.

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?

The reason I don't spend a cent of my time on it is because of this, and because all arguments for a god are dishonest, that is, they are motivated by something other than truth.

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...

It's only slightly more interesting than the hypothesis that there's a teapot around venus.

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?

As a side note, I have spent time on learning about the issue, because it's one of the most damaging beliefs people have, and any decrease in it is valuable.

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.

Comment author: shokwave 20 January 2011 03:13:25PM 4 points [-]

Observation: Agenty things are better at causing interesting things than non-agenty things.

I can't help but feel that this sentence pervasively redefines 'interesting things' as 'appears agent-caused'.

Comment author: DSimon 23 January 2011 09:24:41PM 0 points [-]

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.

Comment author: shokwave 24 January 2011 01:35:41AM *  1 point [-]

pre-tuned to find apparently-agent-caused things interesting

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.