Will_Newsome comments on Rationality Quotes: February 2011 - Less Wrong

13 Post author: gwern 01 February 2011 05:46PM

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Comment author: gwern 01 February 2011 05:52:07PM *  17 points [-]

"I submit that claims about God are of this latter sort. There’s simply no reason to take them more seriously than one does claims about witches or ghosts. The idea that one needs powerful philosophical theories to settle such issues I like to call the “philosophy fallacy.”

We will see that people are particularly prey to it in religious discussions, both theist and atheist alike; indeed, atheists often get trapped into doing far more, far riskier philosophy than they need."

--Georges Rey, "Meta-atheism: Religious Avowal as Self-deception" (2009)

(First version seen on http://www.strangedoctrines.com/2008/09/risky-philosophy.html but quote from an expanded paper.)