Kenoubi comments on Recent de-convert saturated by religious community; advice? - Less Wrong

30 Post author: jwhendy 04 April 2011 03:25AM

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Comment author: beriukay 04 April 2011 02:39:11PM 3 points [-]

For my own part, I'd say that I need to do more work brainstorming through possible conversation paths, and especially identifying why this all bothers me so much.

You might find that the sense of bother never quite goes away. In my experience, there are some (bad) arguments which will always feel right, and some great arguments which will always feel wrong. There are many ex-theists, for example, who still fear hell, even though they know it doesn't exist.

I admit that I still don't find some of the counters to the Teleological Argument to be very satisfying. I suspect that this is a leftover from my theist days, and I'm really not sure how to get rid of that nibbling uncertainty. I'm not even sure if I want to, because I can use it to try to understand people like my old self. Yeah, the question "If god is so omnipotent, can he make a rock so big that even he can't lift it" points to an obvious absurdity, but I remember hearing it and thinking that the questioner was just trying to be cute and clever, and laughing at the question. It never bothered me after that, and it never contributed to my deconversion. So why should "If everything has a cause, then what caused god?" bother a theist?

One possible trick to help build your confidence is to notice when you do things that are known to be wrong. Make a game out of catching yourself when you engage in the most dualistic or irrational of behaviors (like seeing faces in wood, or thinking you have control over the upcoming dice roll, or even being scared of ridiculously improbable things because of watching a horror movie in the dark the other day). If you haven't taken the time, study the cognitive biases that make you susceptible to wrongness, and try to catch your biggest offenders.

This worked to help me gain an understanding for why I was uncomfortable with losing my religion, and got me out of the corner, so to speak.

Comment author: Kenoubi 04 April 2011 03:55:42PM 4 points [-]

You might find that the sense of bother never quite goes away. In my experience, there are some (bad) arguments which will always feel right, and some great arguments which will always feel wrong.

I get this with money. "Money is just funny looking paper. Why will people accept it in exchange for anything in this vast cornucopia of real goods and services?" I know the reasons, and one argument for it is even intuitive: "Don't I accept money as payment? Do I have any reason to think I'm unusual in this regard?" But every time I think about it anew, the "funny looking paper" argument seems convincing and I have to replay the counterarguments to get myself to disagree with it.