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

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

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Tags: antitheism atheism contrarianism philosophy religion singularity

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Comment author: Will_Newsome 29 January 2011 01:09:29AM 0 points [-]

The founder of a religion is likely to be more intelligent or at least more insightful than an average follower, but a religion of any size is going to have so many followers that a few of them are almost guaranteed to be more insightful than the founder was; founding a religion is a rare event that doesn't have any obvious correlation with intelligence.

You're mostly right; upvoted. I suppose I was thinking primarily of Buddhism, which was pretty damn exceptional in this regard. Buddha was ridiculously prodigious. There are many Christians with better ideas about Christianity than Christ, and the same is probably true of Zoroaster and Mohammed, though I'm not aware of them. Actually, if anyone has links to interesting writing from smart non-Sufi Muslims, I'd be interested.

I'd also be willing to bet that founding a successful religion selects for a somewhat different skill set than elucidating the same religion would.

This kind of depends on criteria for success. If number of adherents is what matters then I agree, if correctness is what matters then it's probably a very similar skill set. Look at what postmodernists would probably call Eliezer's Singularity subreligion, for instance.

Comment author: jacob_cannell 29 January 2011 01:32:19AM 0 points [-]

There are many Christians with better ideas about Christianity than Christ, and the same is probably true of Zoroaster and Mohammed, though I'm not aware of them.

There's a serious problem with this in Christianity in that you have to figure out what the founder actual said in the first place, which is very much an open problem concerning Christianity (and perhaps Bhuddism as well but I am less familiar with it at the moment).

For example, just this century with the rediscovery of the Gospel of Thomas you get a whole new set of information which is .. challenging to integrate to say the least, and also very interesting.

About half of the sayings are different (usually earlier, better) versions of stuff already in the synoptics, but there are some new gems - check out 22:

When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom]

Or 108:

Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me; I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things will be revealed to him

Comment author: Desrtopa 29 January 2011 01:53:06AM 0 points [-]

Those are certainly things that weren't in the bible before that people would have put a lot of work into interpreting if they had been, but "gems" is not the word I'd use.

Comment author: Nornagest 29 January 2011 01:15:04AM 0 points [-]

If number of adherents is what matters then I agree, if correctness is what matters then it's probably a very similar skill set.

Point taken. I was thinking of number of adherents.

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