I'm not sure about how I feel about Eliezer's approach on religion in the sequences. On the one hand, I like using sarcasm; on the other, that doesn't seem to work for more deeply-rooted beliefs, like religion. I think he should've left religion out of his sequences on rationality and criticized it later. The way he did it, it may scare off people who still have a somewhat deep link to religion, before they can learn enough to be able to break free.
On the third hand, I think I may be biased towards avoiding conflicts.
On the specific point illustrated by the story, as expressed in the quote at the beginning of the post, I do agree. I try to induce that same feeling of "shock from how stupid people can be" when I notice a mistake I've done, as some kind of mini-"Crisis of Faith".
Eliezer makes the same point at If Many-Worlds Had Come First.
I think the Master Plan is to mostly leave religion out of the books he's writing instead, or at least out of one of them. Anyone else remember reading something along these lines?
Today's post, The Amazing Virgin Pregnancy was originally published on 24 December 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
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This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Zen and the Art of Rationality, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
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