saturn comments on The ideas you're not ready to post - Less Wrong

24 Post author: JulianMorrison 19 April 2009 09:23PM

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Comment author: byrnema 20 April 2009 05:26:04AM *  5 points [-]

Yet another post from me about theism?

This time, pushing for a more clearly articulated position. Yes, I realize that I am not endearing myself by continuing this line of debate. However, I have good reasons for pursuing.

  • I really like LW and the idea of a place where objective, unbiased truth is The Way. Since I idealistically believe in Aumann’s Agreement theorem, I think that we are only a small number of debates away from agreement.

  • To the extent to which LW aligns itself with a particular point of view, it must be able to defend that view. I don’t want LW to be wrong, and am willing to be a nuisance to make sure.

  • If defending atheism is not a first priority, can we continue using religion as a convenient example of irrationality, even as the enemy of rationality?

  • There is a definite sense that theism is not worth debating, that the case is "open-and-shut". If so, it should be straight-forward to draft a master argument. (Five separate posts of analogies is not strong evidence in my Bayesian calculation that the case is open-and-shut.)

  • A clear and definitive argument against theism would make it possible for theists (and yourselves, as devil's advocates) to debate specific points that are not covered adequately in the argument. (If you are about to downvote me on this comment, think about how important it would be to permit debate on an ideology that is important to this group. Right now it is difficult to debate whether religion is rational because there is no central argument to argue with.)

  • Relative to the ‘typical view’, atheism is radical. How does a religious person visiting this site become convinced that you’re not just a rationality site with a high proportion of atheists?

Comment author: saturn 21 April 2009 05:11:15AM *  0 points [-]

Here's the open-and-shut case against theism: People often tell stories to make themselves feel better. Many of these stories tell of various invisible and undetectable entities. Theory 1 is that all such stories are fabrications; Theory 2 is that an arbitrary one is true and the rest are fabrications. Theory 2 contains more burdensome detail but doesn't predict the data better than Theory 1.

Although to theists this isn't a very convincing argument, it is a knock-down argument if you're a Bayesian wannabe with sane priors.