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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on The Sin of Underconfidence - Less Wrong
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Actually, the main thing that moved me was the comment about Richard Carrier also losing. I was thinking mostly that Hitchens had just had a bad day. Depending on how formidable the opponent is, it might still be a test of my ability even if I prepare.
Carrier lost by his own admission, on his home territory.
I've given a lot of thought to how I'd combat what he says, and what I think it comes down to is that standard, "simple" atheism that says "where is your evidence" isn't going to work; I would explicitly lead with the fact that religious language is completely incoherent and does not constitute an assertion about the world at all, and so there cannot be such a thing as evidence for it. And I would anticipate the way he's going to mock it by going there first: "I'm one of those closed-minded scientists who says he'll ignore the evidence for Jesus". At least when I play the debate out in my head, this is always where we end up, and if we start there I can deny him some cheap point scoring.
"I'm one of those closed-minded scientists who says he'll ignore the evidence for Jesus"
He would probably answer that it is not scientific to ignore evidence. Miracles cannot be explained by science. But they could - theoretically - be proven with scientific methods. If someone claims to have a scientific proof of a miracle (for example a video), it would be unscientific to just ignore it, wouldn't it?
The idea is that you would open with this, but go on to explain why there could not be such a thing as evidence, because what is being asserted isn't really an assertion at all.
I can't agree with the idea that religious assertions aren't really assertions.
A fairly big thing in Christianity is that Jesus died, but then two or three days later was alive and well. This is a claim about how the world is (or was). It's entirely conceivable that there could be evidence for such a claim. And, in fact, there is evidence - it's just not strong enough evidence for my liking.
I don't think making a move towards logical positivism or adopting a verificationist criterion of meaning would count as a victory.
You don't have to do either of those things, I don't think. Have a look at the argument set out in George H Smith's "Atheism: the Case against God".
I didn't think that one had to. That is what your challenge to the theist sounded like. I think that religious language is coherent but false, just like phlogiston or caloric language.
Denying that the theist is even making an assertion, or that their language is coherent is a characteristic feature of positivism/verificationism, which is why I said that.
No, I think it extends beyond that - see eg No Logical Positivist I