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Theism, Wednesday, and Not Being Adopted
(Disclaimer: This post is sympathetic to a certain subset of theists. I am not myself a theist, nor have I ever been one. I do not intend to justify all varieties of theism, nor do I intend to justify much in the way of common theistic behavior.)
I'm not adopted. You all believe me, right? How do you think I came by this information, that you're confident in my statement? The obvious and correct answer is that my parents told me so1. Why do I believe them? Well, they would be in a position to know the answer, and they have been generally honest and sincere in their statements to me. A false belief on the subject could be hazardous to me, if I report inaccurate family history to physicians, and I believe that my parents have my safety in mind. I know of the existence of adopted people; the possibility isn't completely absent from my mind - but I believe quite confidently that I am not among those people, because my parents say otherwise.
Now let's consider another example. I have a friend who plans to name her first daughter Wednesday. Wednesday will also not be adopted, but that isn't the part of the example that is important: Wednesday will grow up in Provo, Utah, in a Mormon family in a Mormon community with Mormon friends, classmates, and neighbors, attending an LDS church every week and reading scripture and participating in church activities. It is overwhelmingly likely that she will believe the doctrines of the LDS church, because not only her parents, but virtually everyone she knows will reinforce these beliefs in her. Given the particular nuances of Mormonism as opposed to other forms of Christianity, Wednesday will also be regularly informed that several of these people are in a position to have special knowledge on the subject via direct prayer-derived evidence2 - in much the same way that her parents will have special knowledge of her non-adopted status via direct experience when she wasn't in a state suitable to notice or remember the events. Also, a false belief on the subject could have all kinds of bad consequences - if the Muslims are right, for instance, no doubt Hell awaits Wednesday and her family - so if she also correctly assumes that her parents have her best interests at heart, she'll assume they would do their best to give her accurate information.
Atheism tends to be treated as an open-and-shut case here and in other intellectually sophisticated venues, but is that fair? What about Wednesday? What would have to happen to her to get her to give up those beliefs? Well, for starters, she'd have to dramatically change her opinion of her family. Her parents care enough about honesty that they are already planning not to deceive her about Santa Claus - should she believe that they're liars? They're both college-educated, clever people, who read a lot and think carefully about (some) things - should she believe that they're fools? They've traveled around the world and have friends like me who are, vocally, non-Mormons and even non-Christians - should she believe that her parents have not been exposed to other ideas?
Would giving up her religion help Wednesday win? I don't think her family would outright reject her for it, but it would definitely strain those valued relationships, and some of the aforementioned friends, classmates, and neighbors would certainly react badly. It doesn't seem that it would make her any richer, happier, more successful - especially if she carries on living in Utah3. (I reject out of hand the idea that she should deconvert in the closet and systematically lie to everyone she knows.) It would make her right. And that would be all it would do - if she were lucky.
Is it really essential that, as a community, we exclude or dismiss or reflexively criticize theists who are good at partitioning, who like and are good at rational reasoning in every other sphere - and who just have higher priorities than being right? I have priorities that I'd probably put ahead of being right, too; I'm just not in a position where I really have to choose between "keeping my friends and being right", "feeling at home and being right", "eating this week and being right". That's my luck, not my cleverness, at work.
When Wednesday has been born and has learned to read, it would be nice if there were a place for her here.
1I have other evidence - I have inherited some physical characteristics from my parents and have seen my birth certificate - but the point is that this is something I would take their word for even if I didn't take after them very strongly and had never seen the documentation.
2Mormons believe in direct revelation, and they also believe that priesthood authorities are entitled to receive revelations for those over whom they have said authority (e.g. fathers for their children, husbands for their wives, etc.).
3I have lived in Salt Lake City, and during this time was, as always, openly an atheist. Everyone was tolerant of me, but I do not think it improved my situation in any way.
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Comments (320)
Almost everyone who thinks he or she has higher priorities than being right actually does not have higher priorities than being right, but doesn't place enough priority on being right to see that this is the case. This is why we should avoid the "rationalists should win" mantra -- figuring out what "winning" means is at least as essential as actually winning.
Rejecting options out of hand is bad, especially when the alternatives suck.
Can you help me disentangle what you mean by this? There seems to be some equivocation.
I rejected that option for ethical reasons. The alternatives do suck, but "carry on believing as always" and "deconvert, then tell an uncomfortable truth" are at least not unethical.
For clarification, see my reply to MrHen.
Choosing to believe falsely and then speaking honestly is at least as unethical as choosing to believe truly and then lying. The former amounts to lying and then committing the further ethical crime of believing one's own lies.
That's open to interpretation. The procedure by which you are figuring out what " winning " means is itself a rational pursuit, that should better be precisely targeted, with " winning' " in that meta-game already fixed. You have to stop somewhere, and actually write the code.
You do indeed have to stop somewhere, but any algorithm that stops before rejecting everything that's at least one tenth as wrong as Mormonism is broken.
Huh? The algorithm doesn't stop, the meta-meta-goal has to be fixed at some point.
After parsing this, I think you are saying:
So, replacing "priorities" with "X" and "being right" with "Y" we get this:
Which is a very mean and uncharitable way of saying I do not know what you mean. I think my difficulty is that I rank priorities against themselves. To me, Priority of 55 makes no sense. Fifty-fifth Priority does. Bumping priority up means replacing a higher rank with a lower rank. If something has no higher priority is is First Priority. With these definitions, your statement makes no sense because (2) and (4) are incompatible.
OK, I can see how that was unclear, but I stand by the statement. Figuring out what one's true goals are is itself a problem that one can apply rationality to. Many people think applying rationality doesn't help achieve their goals well enough to be worth the costs. But they're wrong: rationality helps achieve their true goals well enough to be worth the costs. If they applied rationality enough, they'd find out that their true goals aren't what they thought they were, and conclude that applying rationality was indeed worth it.
An irrational person cannot reliably assess the cost of being irrational. A rational person can. People who have chosen rationality almost always agree choosing rationality was worth it.
Red and blue box, one of them contains a diamond. Wednesday asks, "how would this "rationality" thing help me get to the red box, which contains the diamond?" But the diamond is in the blue box.
Yeah, that makes more sense. I think there is a danger in telling someone they do not know what they really want or what their true goals are, but I understand your point and agree.
I don't think the danger is in saying that another doesn't know their true goals so much as in thinking that you do know them.
Yes, a fully rational person is better able to assess the relative costs of being irrational vs. rational. But this knowledge won't help them much if it turns out that the costs of being irrational were lower after all.
In maybe 15 years of time, Wednesday comes to this place, or what this place has become by then. She is still a Mormon, and is welcomed. She is interested in participating, because she is open minded enough, educated, and the community is tolerant and helpful. So she gets to learn about rationality, and is taken into the process of becoming a rationalist herself, and a productive, healthy member of the rationalist community.
My question : and after a few months or years of that, does she still remain a Mormon, or a believer in the supernatural ?
If yes, how does she reconcile that with the fact that a few of the priors behind religions are wrong ? That religion requires self deception to work, at some level ? Will there be some projects in which she won't be able to participate, simply because they are at odds with those beliefs ?
If not, then how does she reconcile that with her past life ? How will it impact her already established relationships ? How easy or difficult will it be for her to change her mind ?
I'm not sure why you are so dismissive of your first footnote. The question of being adopted is a testable hypothesis. Whether you actually test it or not, you do not need to rely on your trust of your parents to know the truth here. Since the claim that you are not adopted is not particularly extraordinary there is little reason to actually go and test it. Also, knowing the truth here one or way or the other probably would change very little about how you live your day-to-day life.
Religious claims are extraordinary and if true would have a profound impact on how you should live your day-to-day life. Many "religious believers" are in fact so good at partitioning that this is not the case - they do not live as though their beliefs are true.
Yes, I will make value judgments concerning the merits and characters of both those people and people who "apply reason" in an irrationally discriminatory matter.
Yes, this is the crux of the difference between the two scenarios. We accept many things from authority figures at face value, but they fall into two categories, testable and untestable, and we can easily figure out which is which.
I'm not sure those categories are as meaningful as you think. How many scientific findings are you capable of verifying personally, right now? And believing you're capable of verifying them, "in principle," is quite different altogether...
I don't really buy this line of your argument. I disagree with my parents about quite a number of issues, religion and politics included. I also in retrospect disagree with some of their choices about how to bring me up (school choice etc.). At no point did I have to dramatically change my opinion of them. I didn't have to stop thinking they had my best interests at heart, or stop thinking they were intelligent and educated people. Part of the process of growing up and being exposed to the wider world is the realization that people disagree on all kinds of issues and that you can't rely on any single authority as a source of truth. People can be wrong without being liars, stupid or ill-informed (by comparison to the general population).
The case of Wednesday an excellent example of why I argued that religious belief can be perfectly sane.
I think many theists criticized are not quite as immersed as Wednesday will be. Believing what you thinking is right doesn't require going out and alienating all your friends with it (though I've had some pretty heated discussions with friends). I agree that being a closet atheist in Wednesday's case would be very hard, but it might not be so hard for other theists.
The way I understand rationality is that at least cognitively, there is no higher priority than being right. For various reasons, such as those that you observe in this post, this ideal is difficult for humans to achieve. Consequently, rationality is better seen as a virtue that humans embody on a continuum (though there may be qualitative and categorical differences at some points on that continuum, such as engaging in a certain logical fallacy vs. not engaging in it, or whether you question the views of people on your "side," ever).
I hope there is a place here for anyone interested in rational discourse, regardless of whether 100% of their beliefs are rational. There are many other other failures of rationality besides theism. Anyone coming here holding ideological beliefs (whether theistic or not) should not be surprised when those beliefs are met with skepticism, however.
When asking if she wins it would help to understand what winning means. Is the contest being right? Than she wins by being right. Is the contest not pissing your family off? Than she wins by not pissing her family off.
If "winning" is maximizing value, what does she gain by being wrong? Friends and fuzzies? If that is more useful, than so be it. The danger here is establishing some form of cognitive dissonance where everything in the back of the rationalist Wednesday's mind is screaming that Mormonism is wrong but she smiles and says she believes. I do not consider this to be useful, so I claim this is a losing scenario. If you bump into the obvious truth it is difficult to close Pandora's Box. You may want to close it, but simply pretending it is close is not a winning option.
Ironically, I personally think that some atheists do the same thing. They want to believe God does not exist but never really do. Saying that you believe something when you don't is bad. The particular belief is irrelevant.
The short summary:
ETA:
And I completely agree with this. I am not a terribly bit fan of kicking anyway out unless they are explicitly causing trouble. Someone who makes a bunch of stupid posts should get their karma hammered and will no longer post. Sounds right to me.
Wednesday is wrong. Yet it might well be better for an average Wednesday to remain religious.
The costs associated with remaining religious depend on how you'd live your life otherwise, on whether you'd realistically find something better to do with your attention and caring. In a perfect world, deconversion will always be worthwhile. Given the real-world overhead and apathy/blindness to opening opportunities, it may not be.
If Wednesday sees the argument for cryonics and dismisses it out of hand because her religion guarantees her an infinite life, and if a positive singularity occurs >100 years from now, Wednesday will lose nearly everything in that one moment of dismissal, because of her religion.
Not necessarily. I have a different Mormon friend who wants to be immortal - not just in the going to heaven sense, but also in the not dying sense. She'd probably go for cryonics, if she saw an argument informing her of its potential. Maybe Wednesday would too.
Stephanie Meyer's "Twilight" books are fascinating in this regard. Meyer is Mormon and she doesn't inject her religion into her books any obvious ways (for example, theological issues are never mentioned and none of the characters attends church) but there is a fascinating "pro life" theme that includes both the desire to procreate and the desire to be an immortal vampire if and only if it is possible to be a vampire who restrains their innate urge to tear out the necks of mortals and feast upon their blood.
Once I started reading vampire chick lit with an interpretative frame that it was a sort of "publicly accessible" meditation on the real world ethics of transhumanist immortalism, these stories became a lot more philosophically interesting. I watched Vampire Hunter D after seeing the connection and found myself rooting for the vampire :-P
The critical thing I'm trying to point to is that Meyer's story appears to be anti-abortion and also pro-vampire. And then there's the existence of the Mormon Transhumanist Association...
Personally I think that the lesswrong community might have a phobic reaction to theism specifically because some religious people (especially first generation converts to new religions of which Mormonism has many) are prone to mentally flinching from obvious conclusions... and sometimes they use their theology to justify doing kind of messed up things to their children. The children grow up and sometimes leap to specifically materialist atheism in an emotional counter-reaction.
I have not seen strong evidence in either direction for materialism versus an idea like simulationism except to the degree that materialism inherently pre-judges the answers to questions like (1) whether there might be some "supernatural" monkey business going on in the corners of apparent physical reality or (2) whether a timing attack on physics might produce interesting results (or cause reality to crash).
I think second and third generation theists are more likely to be open to the idea of cryonics and the reasonableness of ethically pursued transhumanist aspirations. You can put all kinds of mumbo-jumbo in people's heads, and while it might make them very frustrating parents, after a generation or three I don't think it will hurt very much, and it might selfishly help them cooperate with other members of their tribe (more than it hurts government policy if people signal their tribal allegiance by voting for, say, dumb educational policies).
By the same token, it wouldn't totally surprise me if first generation converts from theism to rationality may be going beyond the evidence in some of their initial conclusions, specifically because of the passion with which they left a fundamentalist theism and started subscribing to "fundamentalist rationality".
I don't see a sufficient justification to interpret Twilight as anti-abortion independent of the fact that Meyer is a Mormon. It's against forced abortion, but the person whose choice is relevant - the pregnant woman - wants her baby, and takes steps to keep it, over the objections of generally sympathetic characters who advise her otherwise.
So... have you provided her with the arguments?
She wants to sign up but needs to a) talk to her fiancé, and b) wait until after the wedding, which is currently eating her money very hungrily.
That's a lot of ifs.
If Wednesday deconverts, and then there's a positive singularity 30 years from now and it happens that some key people involved in its early stages are Mormons who somehow take steps to ensure that ex-Mormons get as little of the benefits as possible, then she will lose nearly everything on account of her deconversion. But so what?
I would say that a religious person dismissing cryonics is at least an order of magnitude more likely than the scenario you proposed.
I take it you mean that the whole scenario MBlume proposed is at least an order of magnitude more likely than the whole scenario I proposed. Quite possibly; but not, I think, much more than an order of magnitude. And I don't think either scenario dominates the landscape in such a way that we can tell whether or not Wednesday should deconvert on the basis of that one scenario.
"If you do X, the very bad thing Y could be a consequence" is not generally a good argument for doing X.
A problem I have with the LW community is this background assumption that infinite life somehow equals infinite utility, that living forever is clearly the rational goal, and that anyone (the vast majority of people, it seems) who doesn't express any particular zeal for this notion is deluded, irrational, or under religion's spell. A long, healthy life is certainly desirable to most people, but I think there are good, irreligious, perfectly sensible reasons for not placing any great value on immortality or living to see the distant future.
This post raises a whole constellation of connected questions, so here are my thoughts on all of them:
If the question is "Can Wednesday be religious and still be a smart person who's good at using rationality?", the answer is empirically yes (eg Robert Aumann).
If the question is "Can we still call Wednesday rational if she's religious?" the answer is to taboo "rational" and let the problem take care of itself.
If the question is "Is it okay for Wednesday to be religious?" the question is confused in the first place and any answer would be equally confused.
If the question is "Should Wednesday choose to believe religion?" the answer is that you don't voluntarily choose your beliefs so it doesn't matter.
If the question is "Should Wednesday, while not exactly choosing to believe religion, avoid thinking about it too hard because she thinks doing so will make her an atheist?," then she's already an atheist on some level because she thinks knowing more will make her more atheist, which implies atheism is true. This reduces to the case of deception, which you seem to be against unconditionally.
If the question is "Should I, as an outside observer, do my best to convince Wednesday religion is wrong?" the answer depends on your moral system. I'm a utilitarian, so I would say no - I think it's a background assumption here that she's happier being deceived. I know you're not a utilitarian, so you'd have to work it out in whatever system you use.
If the question is "Should we at Less Wrong exclude all theists?", my answer is of course not. If they want to come here and talk about prisoners dilemmas or the Singularity or something, then of course we should welcome their opinions.
If the question is "Should we at Less Wrong tell all theists they can't talk about how great religion is?" my answer is a qualified "yes". Not because we specifically hate religion, but for the same reason we don't allow posts explicitly about politics. There are places for those debates, this isn't one of those places, and having them completely changes the feel of a community and saps its energy.
If the question is "Should we at Less Wrong stop acting like atheism is an open-and-shut case?," my answer is "no". Sometimes in order to move on, we've got to accept certain assumptions. For example, even though there are a few hard-core steady state theorists out there, most astronomers have accepted the Big Bang as a default assumption because they can get more done by building on Big Bang theory and working out its exact implications then they can debating the last few steady-staters ad nauseum or refusing to even mention the beginning of the universe because it might exclude someone. Christians work in exactly the same way; when they want to discuss obscure points of theology, they start from the assumption that God exists and work from there, although they'll discard that assumption when they're debating an atheist. I don't hold it against these Christians - they'd hardly be able to do theology without it - and I hope they don't hold it against us.
If the question is "Should we at Less Wrong stop saying mean things about religion?" then my answer is that we should never deliberately say mean things just for the sake of saying mean things, but that if it's absolutely necessary to condemn religion to make some greater point (like to use it as an example of a bias towards anthropomorphism) then it's not worth refraining from it to prevent potentially some hypothetical theist from feeling excluded. However, writers should make sure to phrase it as neutrally and non-insultingly as possible, something atheists are generally bad at.
If the question is "What kind of person would name their daughter Wednesday?", I have no good answer. Maybe someone who really, really liked the Thursday Next books?
Also, this wins my prize for most intriguing title on LW so far.
Actually, they got the name from Wednesday Addams. If the kid doesn't like the name they will call her Wendy instead. (They want two girls and a boy: Wednesday, Christabel, and Nicodemus.)
That's not necessarily true. Perhaps she believes Mormonism is almost certainly right, but acknowledges that she's not fully rational and might be misled if she read too many arguments against it. Most Christians believe in the idea that God (or Satan) tempts people to sin, and that avoiding temptation is a useful tactic to avoid sin. Kind of like avoiding stores where candy is on display if you're trying to lose weight, say. You know what's right in advance, but you're afraid of losing resolve.
Certainly whatever your beliefs, some people who disagree with you are sufficiently charismatic and good at rhetoric that they might persuade you if you give them the chance. (Well, for most of us, anyway.) How many atheist Less Wrongers would be able to withstand lengthy debate with very talented missionaries? Some, certainly. Most, probably. All? I doubt it.
Overall, though, an excellent response, and I agree with almost all the rest of it.
I used to think this way. "I won't read Mein Kampf because I might turn out a Nazi." This is actually a very insidiously bad mindset. You should believe any argument that can convince you (in fair conditions -- reading Mein Kampf in a calm frame of mind in your own living room, as opposed to under conditions of intimidation in Nazi Germany.) If Nazism is awful, it will still be awful even when you know more about it. And, indeed, most of us don't turn into neo-Nazis when we read Mein Kampf.
Sure, we have bounded rationality. But I don't see how, in probabilistic terms, you can be more likely to get it right without accumulating more evidence. (Maybe your priors are wrong.) If you really think you couldn't stand up to debate with a talented missionary, maybe you aren't really an atheist; maybe you should be glad to change your mind.
Psychologically, I think it's much better for people to trust their reason in this way. It makes it possible to live with more courage. I don't want to live with my head down hoping I won't be exposed to the wrong things.
I had to do this until I was able to sever myself from parental support at age 20. It certainly wasn't pleasant and sometimes I still have nightmares about being discovered breaking the Sabbath (though I've told my parents long since). But if you ask me whether I would have rather remained religious,
TEN THOUSAND TIMES NO!
If Wednesday can partition, that puts an upper bound on her ability as a rationalist; it means she doesn't get on a deep level why the rules are what they are. She doesn't get, say, that the laws regarding evidence are not social customs that can be different from one place to another, but, rather, manifestations of the principle that you have to walk through a city in order to draw an accurate map of it. She can't understand the causality behind the rules, or she would simply know beyond all attempts at partitioning; she would no more be able to convince herself that faith works than convince herself that 2 + 2 = 3; it's a simple rule, and once you see it, it's obvious in one step.
In an absolute sense, God is no more plausible than Santa Claus or fairies. If you can believe in God, you can believe in anything. If Wednesday is amateur-level rational in other domains, then she may be able to contribute interesting comments to Less Wrong. But people, like chains, tend to break at their weakest link, not their strongest; and so being semi-rational in the domain of e.g. biochemistry may do her less good than you think.
I don't know your parents, but I know the people who will be Wednesday's. Nothing terrible will happen to Wednesday if she deconverts: she would make her parents a little sad, and they would probably try to argue her around, but they would not do her harm or kick her out of the house or otherwise mistreat her in any way, shape, or form. I do not object to deception in self-defense (or defense of others in Jews-in-the-attic-in-Nazi-Germany situations), but Wednesday will not require deceptive self-defense.
Isn't this an argument in favor of her becoming an atheist, if the side effects to her are less than to me?
Just because she'd incur a lesser cost doesn't mean she has to value the end enough to tolerate even that lesser cost.
The terrible thing has already happened at this stage. Telling your children that lies are true (i.e., that Mormonism is true), when they have no better way of discerning the truth than simply believing what you say, is abusive and anti-moralistic. It is fundamentally destructive of a person's ability to cope with reality.
I have never heard a story of deconversion that was painless. Everyone I know who has deconverted from a religious upbringing has undergone large amounts of internal (and often external) anguish. Even after deconverting most have not been capable of severing ties to the destructive people who doomed them to this pain in the first place.
There are rationally beneficial forms of partitioning using that same skill - such as the application of estimated beliefs in appropriate contexts. That suggests that partitioning is not anathema to rationality.
To my mind what is much more problematic is giving a free pass to particularly enshrined beliefs may have a contagion effect on other beliefs preventing you from properly evaluating them. In which case our partitioned theist may even have an advantage. At least Wednesday knows for sure some of her irrational beliefs. How many of us can say the same?
The trouble with that is that I believe in some pretty weird things. I believe in a universe with a hundred billion galaxies, each of a hundred billion stars, of the Earth being a globe rushing round the sun when it appears to be still, with the sun going round it. I believe these things not because I have worked them out for myself, but because I understand that Academe believes them, more or less, and people with whom I associate believe them.
Right. The idea that we as individuals arrive at our scientific beliefs via perfect rationality is a fiction. It's good to keep in mind that our scientific beliefs are a product of a particular social network -- we believe things largely because people and institutions we trust believe those things. The difference between being a Mormon and being a scientific materialist is less a qualitative difference (i.e., one person is rational, the other is not) than one of degree, circumstance, and where you place your faith.
The historical causes of the different kinds of worldviews held by different people may be similar, but it doesn't make the different worldviews themselves similar. The evolution was implemented on the same kind of physics that fires up the stars, yet a snail is nothing like a giant ball of plasma. The answer to "2+2=" doesn't depend on where you place your faith. Even if you zealously believe that the answer is 78, even if that's what you were taught in school, just like the other kids who were taught different answers, the answer is still 4.
And there is a rational reason to believe the global scientific community, once you grow strong enough to pose the question: they are often right, and they self-check their correctness.
Of course, different worldviews may be qualitatively very different, but the point I'm making is that our personal reasons for adopting one over the other aren't all that different. My reasons for believing various scientific findings have much more to do with the sociology of my upbringing and current environment than with the actual truth or falsity of those findings. I did some lab experiments in high school and college, but to extrapolate from those personal verifications to the truth of all scientific findings is to make quite an inductive leap.
When you are still weak enough to be shaped into a zealot by any community, independently of their goodness, of course you don't make that choice, by definition. You may well remain unable to make that choice, if this ability is taken away from you by the worldview you were fed with. But rocks don't have that power either.
So, there are two questions on the table: whether there is objective difference, relative to your implicit own goals, between different worldviews instilled in you by the environment of your upbringing, and whether the people are capable of noticing that difference and acting on it.
On the presence of objective difference, I wrote in the comment to which you replied, and you seem to agree. Whether you ever grow strong enough to consider the decision to change your worldview currently significantly depends on your initial worldview, and on your native intelligence. With native intelligence a given, we can only improve this situation by spreading empowering memes.
Huh. Do you need me to post a few dozen links to articles detailing incidents where Mormons did evil acts because of their religious beliefs? I mean, Mormonism isn't as inherently destructive as Islam, but it's not Buddhism either.
Anyway, even if Wednesday ended up living her life without once doing harm to others or to herself because of her beliefs, deconverting would still be a good idea: At the very least, theism will distort the rest of her priorities, because they will be in competition with delusion-based priorities like "I want to please God", and "I want my friends and family to go to the highest level of Heaven". Becoming an atheist would therefore allow her to put the right importance on her real priorities.
I'm operating under the assumption that Wednesday won't grow up to do anything evil, since it's pretty unlikely. I think my friend and her husband have good genes and will be good parents; the remaining factors aren't quite so determinate.
It's not unlikely at all. We already know that her parents will commit one evil act: They're going to indoctrinate their daughter into believing a bunch of nonsense before she's even learned to read, rather than let her make up her own mind. And if Wednesday remains a Mormon, chances are that she'll do the same to her own children.
I think the sort of evil act in question is more along the lines of "go about stabbing people" than "be honest with your children about your theistic beliefs and encourage them to adopt them too".
I would hesitate to call that an evil act. If nothing else, evil requires the intention to do harm, where here the parents are almost certainly intending to do precisely what they believe is in the child's best interests.
If you're a Nazi and you take a pill that causes you to believe Jews are dangerous nonsentient vampires, is killing Jews thereafter less evil? Well, probably in that case all the evil moves causally upstream into the pill-taking. But that, I think, is the same thing we're saying about the pill that is Mormonism.
but the pill was administered you by your parents, who received one from their parents...
if the evil moves upstream to the pill-taking then all (or most) of the evil of mormonism moves upstream to Joseph Smith.
And of course there's no reason for it to stop there. For some reason we haven't explicitly talked about this here AFAICT, but if you're a materialist there's no hope of assigning ultimate evil to people anyway, and there's no point in trying. I'm not saying you disagree.
I don't know by what words to call it, but there is something that to me differentiates the moral qualities of Joseph Smith teaching Mormonism to his followers, and Wednesday's parents teaching it to her: Joseph Smith (I assign high probability) explicitly knew Mormonism to be false, and spread belief in it, knowing its likely consequences, in order to increase his own wealth, status, and opportunity for sex.
That is also the case we're considering in the context of this post -- someone who has evidence that Mormonism is false, but chooses to ignore this evidence for personal gain, and spreads belief in Mormonism by first spreading it in herself.
From one perspective, assuming that spreading lies for profit is actually wrong, that most people would see it on reflection as a less preferable option, and assuming that JS wasn't a mutant, he was mistaken about whether he improved his life by doing so.
fixed =)
Beyond that, I'd find it hard to call any insane person "evil." How do we blame somebody for receiving incorrect sensory inputs?
Of course, this gets into all kinds of analytic philosophy and the "social construction" of sanity. Which is precisely why I want us to be careful what we call evil.
By the same reasoning, an Inquisitor who tortured a woman to death because he was certain she was a witch and that witches are agents of the Devil did nothing evil. Well, whatever, call it 'harmful' instead of evil, if you like. The point is that religious beliefs make those who hold them do things that they would consider evil (or harmful) if they were better rationalists.
To quote Steven Weinberg: "With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
Except that torturing a woman because of a belief that she is a witch is not done for her sake.
Regardless, if we are going to judge all good-faith attempts to help somebody else evil unless the information therein imparted conforms to our present beliefs, then I suspect a great deal of the information we give each other (including on this site) will be judged as evil by the same standard in the future.
What, never? While I can't be sure of the actual (as opposed to professed) motivations of people who tortured alleged witches, I'm pretty sure that in some cases the ostensible purpose of the torture was to produce repentance and thereby save the witch's immortal soul. For someone who believes in immortal souls and heaven and hell and so forth, that could easily end up seeming like a transaction that benefits the torturee overall.
(I agree with your second paragraph, though I'm not sure anyone's doing quite what you describe.)
No, you're right, I'm sure there are cases in which torturers could at least rationalize that what they were doing was for the sake of the woman's soul.
I've often wondered, from my time as a Catholic: if I intentionally kill someone at the moment of their confession/absolution, such that their soul is perfectly clean and I have extremely good reason to believe (within this framework) that their soul will go to Heaven, would I not be making the truly ultimate sacrifice? If my soul then were to go to Hell, I would have been literally as altruistic as it is possible to be, so my soul should go to Heaven; knowing that, however, might make me go to Hell?
Which is why reasonable moral systems ought to be slow to categorize others' good-faith actions as evil--we never know what we are doing wrong. There's some chance that future civilizations will think of me as evil for eating meat--hell, they could think of our civilization as barbaric for consuming living beings at all, rather than synthesizing sustenance some other way.
Still, point taken.
Not the truly ultimate sacrifice from that perspective, no. I recommend Jorge Luis Borges's short fiction Three versions of Judas for further ideas along those lines.
This exact reasoning was generally used to justify the torture of heretics (not witches) until they recanted. After all, no Earthly torture could ever be worse than eternity in Hell, so most versions of utilitarianism would allow anything that keeps souls out of Hell.
Do you have empirical evidence that Mormons are more likely to cause harm than atheists? (Let's say in the clear-cut sense of stabbing people instead of in the sense of spreading irrationality.) Mormons might do more bad things because their god requires it, but atheists might do more bad things because they don't have a god to require otherwise. They might be more likely to become nihilists or solipsists and not care about other people, say, acting purely selfishly. A priori, I have no idea which one is correct.
It seems that as a rationalist, you should be wary of assigning high probabilities here without direct empirical evidence. Especially since you presumably suffer from in-group bias. But perhaps you're aware of studies that support your view that religion is harmful in a simple sense?
(If you consider spreading religion inherently evil, then you have more reason to presume that Mormonism is harmful. You would still have to argue that the harm outweighs any possible benefit, but you'd have a stronger case for assuming that. However, by your comparisons to Islam and Buddhism you seem to mean plain old violence and so forth.)
Do you have empirical evidence that Mormons are more likely to cause harm than atheists? (Let's say in the clear-cut sense of stabbing people instead of in the sense of spreading irrationality.)
I'll claim that, yes, I do have such evidence. The Mormon Church funded many advertisements in favor of California Proposition 8 which denies civil rights to homosexuals.
I agree that this was not a good thing for them to do, but I don't think it falls into the "clear-cut sense of stabbing people".
Even accepting the premise that voting for the proposition was clearly wrong, that's a single anecdote. It does nothing to demonstrate that Mormons are overall worse people than atheists. It is only a single point in the atheists' favor. I could respond with examples of atheists doing terrible things, e.g., the amount of suffering caused by communists.
Anecdotes are not reliable evidence; you need a careful, thorough, and systematic analysis to be able to make confident statements. It's really surprised me how commonly people supply purely anecdotal evidence here and expect it to be accepted (and how often it is accepted!). This is a site all about promoting rationalism, and part of that is reserving judgment unless you have good evidence.
I really don't think a systematic analysis of the morality of Mormons vs. atheists exists, for any given utility function. That kind of analysis is probably close to impossible, in fact, even if you can precisely specify a utility function that a lot of people will agree on. To begin with, it would absolutely have to be controlled to be meaningful ― the cultural, etc. backgrounds of atheists are surely not comparable on average to those of Mormons.
I think this is an issue that rationalists just need to admit uncertainty about. That's life, when you're rational. Only religious people get to be certain most of the time about moral issues. A Mormon asked the same question would be able to say with confidence that the atheists caused more evil, since not following Mormonism is so evil that it would clearly outweigh any minor statistical differences between the two groups in terms of things like violent crime. If you believe in utility functions that depend on all sorts of complex empirical questions, you really can't answer most moral questions very confidently.
I think these two sentences are contradictory. If it is a point in favor of the proposition that atheists are better in some regard than Mormons, then it does something to demonstrate the general case, if only weakly.
Rationality is not about reserving judgment until ideal evidence is available. Rationality is incorporating all the evidence at your disposal. I agree that most of the evidence available is mixed and weak, so it shouldn't be overweighted, but it is still relevant.
If everybody outside your state believed you were adopted, wouldn't that make you want to reconsider? That's one point where I don't accept the analogy.
Less than a quarter of all Mormons live in Utah, and less than half of them live in the United States. They're just very thick on the ground in that one location.
OK, not literally everyone. Point stands, though -- you cannot rationally treat your family's beliefs as more informative than the beliefs of strangers on the other side of the planet with the same relevant characteristics.
Nobody except my parents has the same relevant characteristics with respect to my being adopted, and as far as the Mormons are concerned, nobody except the current Prophet (Thomas S. Monson at the moment) has the same relevant characteristics with respect to the correct beliefs about theism.
What are they? Lots of people call themselves Prophets, claim to be divinely inspired, etc. Surely you don't believe people born in Japan should look to Monson for epistemic authority. Whether God exists and what he's like doesn't have anything to do with whether you were born in Japan or Utah, so why should your beliefs as to whether God exists and what he's like depend on whether you were born in Japan or Utah?
They shouldn't, if your goal is to be right - my point is that Wednesday's goal does not necessarily have to be being right.
If that is your point, then I don't see what work the adoption analogy is doing.
I could demand a DNA test, if I valued being right about my not having been adopted over not annoying my parents/insinuating that they are liars, or over not spending money on the test. I don't have that value ordering, so I just trust them when they tell me so (and consider my other evidence adequate support, although as I mentioned, I wouldn't say I need it.)
I'm reminded of the post a while back on whether an Atheist/Rationalist society would be effective in war.
I have trouble understanding why they wouldn't be (which seems to be the opinion of most of the others here). In an objective moral sense, if Truth doesn't matter more than Winning, then what does? Implicitly most here behave in accordance to that statement - I'd suggest that the amount of time devoted to this site exceeds the amount required for merely winning in contemporary society - but most seem to balk at the concept that Truth might require the sacrifice of life.
Maybe it's scope insensitivity. Risking 1 utilon for 10 utilons (at fifty/fifty odds) is a gamble everyone here would take - but when the risk is 1000 utilons for 10 000 utilons, even though it's the same gamble, it's harder to see it as such (this being the major pause which Yudkowki's dust-mote vs torture analogy brought out).
If we are, in fact, advocating Truth over mere Winning, there are going to be casualties along the way; in concrete terms, if my goal is an equal and just society, then I will be called upon to intervene in any gay-bashings I witness, at the risk of my own life.
So yes, the Atheist/Rationalist society - assuming they have that meta level of moral awareness - will go to war and be more viciously stalwart than any religious group could possibly hope to be. And if Wednesday must choose between Truth and Winning - as long as she isn't a lecherous societal leech, concerned only with besting her opponents, rules be damned - she'll choose the former, regardless of the expense to herself.
I think the standard reply here is that utilons (or utils, or whatever your favored terminology for this) is a standardized measure of whatever-it-is-you-care-about. You might not want to risk 1000 (say) dollars for even odds of 10 000 dollars--that all depends on your personal marginal utility of money. But if you don't think you'd want to risk 1000 utilons for 10 000 utilons at even odds, that just means you're defining utilons incorrectly. By definition, if I understand.
IAWYC, but I don't think Aurini was necessarily making that mistake.
I read their comment as stating that, even when their "shut up and multiply" answer would or should be the same, people are wired to behave differently towards gambles when the stakes are higher. Not that they should, but that they do.
For example, my conscious dollars-to-utility function is nearly linear in small increments from my present position; if I had a 1-in-5 chance of turning $10 into $100, I'd go for it. However, my conscious (lives saved)-to-utility function is practically linear in small populations; but if I had a chance to gamble 10 lives against 100 at 1-in-5 odds, it would be psychologically more difficult to make the clearly correct choice. Or any choice at all; decisive paralysis is a probable actual outcome.
There are sensible evolutionary reasons for this to be the case, but it raises the question of what to do about it for people in positions of power.
I would argue that people actually take the larger gamble when they enter romantic relationships, certainly when they get married, and probably with some other decisions like that.
The thing with atheism, or a naturalistic outlook generally, is not what it does for individuals but what it does for society generally to have more "out" atheists/naturalists. Maybe individually-speaking it'd make some peoples' lives harder but the more openly atheistic individuals we have the better off we all are. I think that's a good reason to both encourage others to become openly atheistic and to become openly atheistic oneself despite negative consequences.
It's unlikely that Wednesday would - without deconversion - think that having more open atheists wandering around would be a good thing in and of itself.
Funny thing: before deconversion, I read Dispatches From the Culture Wars and occasionally Pharyngula, and generally perceived them as being the good guys and many of my own coreligionists as the bad guys.
Of course, this state of cognitive dissonance only lasted a few months, but still.
It's not at all uncommon to side with the perspective character, so to speak, when you read about someone - even someone who disagrees with you. Additionally, siding with certain sorts of atheist bloggers and against the theists they oppose could signify a desire for tolerance more than a belief in the metaphysical propositions at hand.
I don't think we can fault Wednesday for not challenging the anecdotal evidence of God if it hasn't occurred to her to do so. She might not be very interested in religion, and, having no desire to think deeply on the subject, is willing to take their word for it. In fact, she may really be agnostic about religion, and is a prime candidate for conversion.
It is when she is faced with evidence that God does not exist and still persists in her belief that she is irrational. She may choose to continue believing in her religion for many really good reasons X,Y,Z, but the bottom line is that those reasons are more important to her than the truth. So she's not rational in the sense of a person trying to optimally base decisions on the truth (the whole truth). She would rather have her decisions based on her societal norms, for the reasons X, Y, Z.
It is my suspicion that "agnostic" may be too generous a word for someone who accepts a convenient religion because she doesn't care. "Apatheist"?
Do you dislike this version of Wednesday?
Certain words ("too generous", "convenient", "doesn't care") make me feel like you're angry with her.
Hmm. I hadn't been aware of disliking this version. However, I do have a general dislike of thoughtless (by which I just mean not thinking very much, not "inconsiderate") people. And that combines with the unease I have with the idea of a future in which her parents have - by their own lights - failed to parent her well enough; I have enough empathy with my friend to be disturbed by such a scenario, even though by certain standards of course I think some such situations would be an improvement. It's possible one or both of those emotional reactions was conveyed in my word choice.
As an ex-Mormon, I had to personally confront this issue. My family, extended family, friends, neighbors, and the large majority of my hometown are Mormon, so the social costs of leaving my church were extremely high. While in high school, I was primarily in the closet, but I'd express the occasional doubt. Just the suggestion that the church could be tested against evidence resulted in people avoiding conversation with me, my now-wife being warned by mutual friends not to date me, and my parents sternly lecturing me. Note this was merely because I considered the possibility of contrary evidence, not a public expression of disbelief.
In the counterfactual world where I chose not to explore the veracity of religion, my high school years would have been significantly happier, I would have avoided prolonged conflict with my family, I would have served a two-year religious mission, and I would likely be attending BYU right now. In some ways, it does genuinely feel like this would have been better, but I can say with confidence that I made the right choice.
I could easily pick out reasons why someone shouldn't remain Mormon specifically, but I want to engage the least convenient world for why we shouldn't knowingly believe something false. Being a theist might not affect the quality of someone's everyday life much, so there is not an apparent gain from a belief in the truth. But similarly, beliefs about the moon landing, Santa, evolution, heliocentricism, etc rarely influence someone's everyday life. The problem is that once you allow exceptions to seeking evidence, allowing your beliefs to be influenced by evidence, and not starting with a bottom line, the exceptions start bleeding over into beliefs that do affect success. I don't think this slippery slope is inevitable, but if you want to win, you can't trust partitions*.
I absolutely agree that if Wednesday came to our community interested and enthusiastic, we should welcome her with open arms. Nevertheless, I would encourage her to break down any mental partitions she might have, otherwise simply note that theism is not up for discussion in the context of this site.
* This is particularly true of Mormon culture where "I prayed about it, and felt the Spirit tell me it is right" can trump any other argument.
Not to be a total jerk and imply you are a total jerk, but the way you merely consider the possibility of contrary evidence matters a lot. I simply want to point out that there is no chance in the world of accurately describing what you or someone like Wednesday would go through in a sentence and there is always an easy option to tilt the histories in your favor. Someone's perceptions of their own attitudes is difficult enough without trying to remember what your emotional state at age 14. I can hear someone say, "I was only asking questions," and know that the words are true but are a complete lie at the same time. Linguistics is easy to twist into your favor.
Again, I am not implying you match any of these descriptions. I just saw an old pattern and felt like pointing it out (at the risk of focusing on the minutiae of your comment).
I agree that is a common failure mode, and I could be misremembering. I made that statement because I did know a handful of people who would belligerently "question" people about religion, and I am pretty sure I was not one of them. I only spoke to intimate friends about my thoughts, and even then, it was done rarely and with extreme hesitancy. It is the sort of thing that spreads through gossip though, while could also explain some of the negative responses.
With my parents, around age 17, I started to outright refuse to attend church, but the troubles started before then. I got a stern lecture from my mom about age 15 for making a statement that assumed evolution was true.
Thanks for alerting me to the potential problem, but I will respectfully claim it doesn't apply.
Which works for me. I am glad you are willing to accept the question.
This is a great post because it shows just how hard one has to stretch the meaning of "win" to find a way in which atheism always "wins." In the example, it seems that Wedesday "wins" by remaining a Mormon, unless she just happens to place some kind of high personal value on metaphysical truth that can only be satisfied by holding the epistemically correct belief. There's no reason why that should be for everyone, though -- there's a pretty strong case both for not caring at all about these questions, as well accepting one's "default" view if it's too costly to shed. Say Wednesday never becomes a philosopher, but instead, goes into business, or becomes a journalist, or a doctor. It's difficult to imagine how the "less wrong" position of atheism would help her "win" in any of these endeavors, and, in all likelihood, the practical costs incurred by deconverting would swamp any marginal gains she'd get from changing her metaphysical stance on God.
I think people on LW are very hesitant to admit that their strong attachment to "true" metaphysical beliefs may have nothing to do with "winning," but rather, could just be an idiosyncratic personal preference (which is perfectly OK).
Personally I would consider the debilitating sexist and sex-negative messages packaged with Mormonism to be a profound sort of losing in and of themselves, but that's beyond the scope of this blog.
I agree that there is no reason atheists always "win". Maybe becoming a theist while holding all other beliefs constant will be an improvement, but I don't think this is a practical analysis. Ceteris paribus, Wednesday should stay Mormon, but the cognitive algorithms would make her stay Mormon are very likely to have detrimental effects on net.
human beings are capable of having domain and context-specific cognitive algorithms. preferring comforting but false metaphysical truths does not mean she will prefer (more than others) reassuring but maladaptive beliefs about her local environment. her incentives to believe in some fanciful anthropomorphized abstraction are of an entirely different type than her incentives to believe true or false things about the intentions and motives of those she will interact with professionally, say.
are theists more or less likely to demonstrate competence on card-selection tasks or other tests of rational belief formation?
I agree people are capable of partitioning. Theists likely do the same as atheists in emotionally disconnected circumstances like a card-selection task. But this doesn't establish Wednesday is better off as a theist than as an atheist overall. And at least in the Mormon case, where decisions can be fully justified by "I felt good about it, ergo God endorses it", I am willing to claim that theists are less likely to engage in something even as basic as cost-benefit analysis.
i did not say it established she was better off as a theist than as an atheist. i was merely pointing out that being a theist does not make anyone more or less likely (as far as i know) to believe things which are false about their local environment (beyond those things which necessarily follow from their beliefs, e.g., this priest sure is wise in the ways of the Lord! he must be wise about other things, too!).
do we have any data suggesting atheists hold more accurate beliefs than theists about phenomena that they experience firsthand?
Pretty doubtful, especially controlling for IQ and education...
I think it's far from clear that staying religious will make her happier than not.
What if she's gay?
OK, I'm guessing that your Mormon parent friend isn't very comfortable with those teachings of the church. Perhaps they even openly reject them, and will make sure their daughter knows they think anyone who says otherwise is talking nonsense, even if it's the preacher. Perhaps they'll make sure and do that long before they know anything about her sexuality. How will they be with the next boundary?
Maybe it's bisexuality, or SM, or polyamory, or trans, or maybe it's something we'll hear more about in fifteen or twenty years time. Being surrounded by Mormons when you discover you have an inclination like that is uncomfortable. From what I gather about experiences like that, though, it helps to know at least that the religion isn't true, and that there's no Hell.
Even if she's none of these things, I hazard that conversion to atheism can significantly enhance the joy she can take in her sexuality. That's just one of many ways it can bring joy, it's just one dear to my heart.
For the purposes of the point I had in mind I'm assuming Wednesday will be cisgendered, heterosexual (or bisexual and unaware of that/aware but okay with not expressing it), and at least vanilla enough to be comfortable in Mormon culture.
Er, am I missing a reason why it's valid to look only at that side of the scales when weighing up what our attitude to religion should be?
Hence my disclaimer. I'm only talking about a small subset of theists, represented by Wednesday, who are happy, comfortable, and totally immersed in their religion. An uncomfortable Wednesday would have extra reasons to be suspicious of Mormonism, and I would have less sympathy for the choice to remain in the faith.
Is there more to this than if you only allow beans on one side of the scale then it's not hard to guess how it will swing?
I think you are putting the beans on the wrong scale. Alicorn is not measuring proper attitudes for religion. What is being measured are attitudes toward people explicitly like Wednesday. This is less taking all the non-Wednesday theists off the religion scale and more taking the Wednesday beans to a completely different scale. Whether you find that useful is completely relevant, but I think it is interesting.
I really don't think there is any "vanilla enough to be comfortable in Mormon culture" -- Mormon culture teaches overwhelming repression of fundamental sexual drives. It tries to make people feel guilty for masturbating, for Cthulu's sake.
I don't care who you are, what your orientation is, what your kinks are -- that kind of repression is damaging.
What if you're a (romantically inclined) asexual?
Edit: They exist. I know one. (I also know a non-romantic asexual, so I know the difference.)
Wouldn't the expectation of bearing children be a bit of a problem there? Mormons are supposed to have (procreative) sex eventually, as I understand it.
Still, it was a mistake on my part to try to hold and defend the proposition "there is no such thing as a well-adjusted Mormon" -- I'm sure they are a few. My point is simply that the belief structure is very widely damaging -- that knowing nothing about Wednesday, the overwhelming probability is that she would be much better off were she free of it.
Yes, they are expected to have kids, but asexuals don't have to be repulsed by sex, it just doesn't interest them in and of itself. The one I mentioned plans to have children naturally if possible and doesn't talk about sex as a horrifying ordeal, just a neutral prerequisite. If she were going to adopt, I'd expect her to talk about the paperwork similarly.
huh, didn't know that, thanks =)
As a member of the aforementioned subgroup, I endorse this representation. Well said.
It's quite likely that Wednesday will have children, and not unlikely that at least one of them won't have a sexuality that fits well with Mormonism.
Are those odds enough to say that Mormonism is a loss for Wednesday?
I don't think we should exclude them. But that doesn't mean we can't confidently inform them when we know they're wrong.
My favorite rationalist quote ever is "I don't have to agree with you to like or respect you" (Anthony Bourdain). Just because we know theists are wrong doesn't mean we have to be jerks about it. If Newton could make that mistake, anyone can, and we all know how hard it is to climb out of those sorts epistemic holes once you've found yourself in one.
But we shouldn't confuse "not being jerks" with "pretending not to know things that we do in fact know, so that people don't think we're jerks"
What is the relationship between being a good rationalist and having above average or exceptional intelligence? Is climbing out an epistemic hole something anyone can do?
It's not an idle question: it has an immediate consequence of whether or not we can fault Wednesday for being religious. Would it be an ethical failing, a failing of innate talent, or something else?
Innate talent helps, good teachers help, good parents help, good books help.
But luck helps more I think.
Most people only get one chance to get it right, if they're lucky. Wednesday probably won't even get that.
Let's say we live in a world where it is not clear who is adopted and who is not. Most believe a Billion or less are non-adopted, and that they themselves are non-adopted. A few say everyone is non-adopted, some say being non-adopted isn't even possible.
If you believe just 13 million* people worldwide are non-adopted, you need good evidence to believe you happen to be one of them.
Believing you're not adopted based on little evidence makes perfect sense if you're in a world where the vast majority of people are not adopted (or know they are)
*13 million=LDS membership (wikipedia)
Should you be Wednesday's "atheist auntie?" I would say yes.
You're asking, "What does she gain from being an atheist?" Well, there are several possibilities -- someone mentioned a happier sexuality -- but, in my opinion, what really matters is the end of the divided will. Sooner or later, most people find some tenet of their religion that they disagree with, or think is silly, or even horrible, but they're convinced that God wills it. How do you disagree with God? Well, in my case, for a long time, my basic moral premise was "I suck." That's no way to live.
Religion can work very well for people who can compartmentalize, or not take it too seriously. Most religious people treat it as a pleasant tradition and an impetus to do right, and that's pretty much okay in my book. Not everyone is a big fan of consistency the way I am -- I have a rather black-and-white personality. But if you are a stickler for consistency then religion will break you and terrify you, and actually prevent you from living well.
You do her no harm if you're her "atheist auntie." If she stays a Mormon she'll just be a cosmopolitan one who can say "some of my best friends are atheist," which isn't so bad in itself. If she doesn't -- well, she may have to endure secrecy (while her parents are still supporting her) but she may be better off for it in the long run.
Should we be nicer to theists? I actually have a pet peeve against smarmy atheists. That can be just another bias. There can be a snotty, ignorant tone -- less often here, but familiar from people I know in real life who were raised non-religious. I don't like it, it serves no good purpose, and maybe we should consciously avoid it. Stop and think for a minute and there are historical and present-day heroes who believe in God.
In my experience, people in non-fundamentalist religious traditions tend to change their God to match their new opinions.
(That's no way to live either, but at least it can be less mentally burdensome than blaming oneself.)
Edit: I'm saying that sincerely, and I hope it doesn't come off as smarmy/ignorant atheism. It's an accurate description of most of the liberal religious people I know.
I don't think there's much harm in that. It's what my parents and best friend do, and I admire them. They say they're religious, but when it comes to brass tacks they'll use their own common sense every time.
Religion, worn lightly in that way, is just clothing for whatever your beliefs are. If you believe in social justice, say, you may quote Jesus or Isaiah to that end, but your convictions are pretty much your own. Religion, if not taken at face value, is a pretty nice bundle of poetry, song, holidays, and moral precepts, which may not be bad as a component of one's life. I'm not entirely sure I don't want to keep up participating myself, just to be a member of the community.
Religion taken seriously is a completely different animal. If you're sufficiently literal-minded, you can't wear it lightly. You wind up like I did in high school, working in a genetics lab and seriously believing that my gel electrophoresis wasn't working because God was angry with me. I can look back on that time with some degree of amusement now, but it was hell. I was pretty damn close to drinking acrylamide on several occasions. (Happy ending of sorts: there turned out to be a physical explanation for why my experiments didn't work. It wasn't divine retribution, but contaminated reagents.)
The thing is, nobody asked me to be a superstitious, cringing freak. Most people where I grew up took their religion lightly. They had a little healthy hypocrisy. But I didn't; I took it at face value, because I was literal-minded and had a good eye for logical consistency. And when you do that, you wind up praying over your gels.
Didn't come off that way to me. It's what I did for a few years, before I finally gave up my beliefs.
Sounds like you weren't raised Mormon. :)
I was, so naturally what I'm about to say is extremely personal and important to me, and likely to be subject to the "what's true for me must be true for all Mormons", which is absurd, as most Mormons do not go one to become atheists as I have, but still...
...I cannot imagine how one could embrace the beauty and magnificence of this big world if one is stuck in the much smaller world of Mormonism. The contradictions mount and mount, until one of the following must happen:
I claim that giving up on the Extra-Mormon world does make one much less happy, and I just can't imagine being happy in a life of contradictions... but maybe that's just me?
Anyway, for the sake of their happiness, I want my children to have the whole world open to them, and I hope Wednesday will have the same.
what contradictions?
Wow... this was from a long time ago, and I don't remember exactly what I was thinking at the time, but I can try some guesses:
Contradictions in fact: there's really no good evidence for god or Jesus or the Book of Mormon or the Bible... these things are (at least to me) clearly false. (This is a site on rationality, not atheism, so I don't want to get caught up in a discussion on atheism... but if one is honest and rational, the contradictions abound.)
Contradictions in morality: Is alcohol really wrong? Smoking? Coffee?? Not sure what the Mormon positions are on things like oral/anal sex with one's spouse, but I'm pretty sure that they are not at all into masturbation, threesomes/foursomes/moresomes, bi-/homosexuality, swinging, or just about any form of polyamory. Sorry, but these things are fun!! They are simply not sinful, and not wrong. (Sure, any of these could be abused, but the same could be said of candles or canned corn... "could be abused" is not a sufficient condition for "sinful".)
And finally... I'm not sure if there are any vegan Mormons (there probably are), but it seems like the Mormon position on such things (I don't claim to know! only guessing!) is that animals are here for humans to use. As a vegan, I vehemently disagree. I'm guessing that the Mormon church would not have a problem with a member living a vegan lifestyle (would not consider it wrong to so do), but would consider it wrong (at least in the sense of "incorrect", if not in the sense of "immoral") to believe that killing animals is wrong.
I don't think there's a lot of room for one to make up one's own mind about morality/ethics in the Mormon church (and probably in many religions). Considering how many things I think are wrong that the church is just fine with, and how many things the church thinks are wrong that I think are tons of fun... I would be far less happy to still be Mormon.
I'm guessing that's what I was trying to say, almost exactly one year ago.
Wednesday will be informed that not only several but everyone in the entire world is in a position to have special knowledge on the subject via direct prayer-derived experience. She will also be informed to seek out these experiences for herself as ones persons experiences can not be applied to another person. Further those experiences should not be a general feeling of good-will, feeling at one with the universe, strong emotions, uncontrollable crying, etc. as those are not the characteristics of the spirit per LDS doctrine (or dogma if you insist). Instead the experience, whether it includes visions or just the still small voice of the spirit should provide her with knowledge that she could not other wise obtain that is actionable and if testable turn out to be correct as well as making sense. Not everything is testable as we are not able to go back and make a different decision to see what would have happened. As a desire to believe is sufficient to be baptized she will most likely be baptized even if she has not actually had such experiences, but if she takes her religion seriously (which hopefully she should) then she will seek such experiences and from my own experience she will receive them if she does so in the correct manner (being actually wanting an answer and willing to follow whatever the answer is, assuming the answer fits the criteria of what is an actual answer and what is not.
Further if Wednesday's parents are familiar with the doctrine enough then they should welcome you or anyone else that has a different view of the world in to present that view to them and Wednesday. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints claims to deal in truth wherever it is to be found so if you have some truth they should welcome it and if you have falsehoods then they should be easy enough to correct. Further, if her and her parents take the doctrine seriously they should not make fun of you for doing so, though they may present their beliefs and reasoning’s for them to you. As per one of the central tenets: “We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may. “ -Articles of Faith, 11
Further if her parents understand their religion they should not shun or ostracize her should she decide not continue to be a saint. Please be aware that not everyone understands this with in the LDS church, we do not claim to be perfect people but to be people seeking perfection.
There a lot of problems with this. Confirmation bias is a major one (people are likely to remember the times that their perceived/claimed revelations turned out to be correct and not think as much about the misses), as is the fact that people do engage in unconscious processing.
Personally, I've had dreams where I've talked to dead mathematicians. They've been helpful. Does that mean one should believe that I was talking to those spirits? Or, more relevantly for this purpose, do you think that Ramanujan's beliefs that his math came from Hindu deities were justified given the correct, novel mathematical results he received?
Moreover, when Mormons do speak of personal revelation, they aren't almost ever testable claims (e.g. will this coin flip land heads or tails), but personal life advice issues, just like in many other religions, making it essentially impossible to tell if the revelation was at all helpful.
This also is connected to the fairly serious problem that if the LDS church wants to be tested based on its capacity for correct revelation, one needs to deal with both the fact that the revealed claimed in the LDS texts (such as the claimed ancient civilizations) don't fit with archeology at all.
Except that shunning isn't just something that is done by some members of the LDS. It is a practice that is so common that separate communities have been built for such individuals (The LDS church is not the only example of such, Charedi(ultra-Orthodox Jews) have the same thing but that's not what is relevant here.)
You may want to be aware that in general, at Less Wrong, we aren't terribly interested in LDS apologetics or apologetics from any other religion. As far as we're concerned almost all traditional notions of deities have very low probabilities, and general apologetica is unlikely to do much. There are forums to discuss that sort of thing; we are not one of them. In the case of the Wednesday post, the point had very little to do with Mormonism, but was using that example to point out a general possible problem in a certain common heuristic. Trying to argue that Wednesday would have other reasons to believe in Mormonism is both not compelling and misses the point of Alicorn's post.
It sounds like you're saying you've received testable knowledge you couldn't otherwise have received in this manner. Would you mind expanding on that?
Miracles do not follow belief but follow those that believe. Having read a fair number of articles on this site, I know the kind of dismissal to expect should I share any specific experience of mine. As these are sacred to me, I consider it not prudent to share them in a place where I know they'll be ridiculed.
However, I know that everyone that is willing may themselves have such experiences. I know that God is real, Jesus is the Christ, Joseph Smith was a Prophet, and Thomas S. Monson is a Prophet. I know that if anyone follows the steps laid out in Moroni 10:3-5 (see also Alma 32, James 1:3-5) they can for themselves gain such knowledge.
Okay. Could you instead share why exactly you think your experiences would be dismissed, and why you think these reasons are incorrect?
See JoshuaZ's comment below for exactly why I think my experiences would be dismissed.
He seems to be asking why your miracles count as evidence for your faith when other people have similar experiences deriving from contradictory faiths.
However, it seems like you're saying that these miracles don't count as evidence for any faith, including your own (except in a strict Bayesian sense, I guess). Is that accurate?
My question was different - it was about the nature of these miracles in themselves, not their relationship to a faith. If you're able to extract information from miraculous sources, I'd be very interested in your methods (especially as they are intended to be reproducible). Could you demonstrate this?
Alternately, if you still think a demonstration would be dismissed, could you explain on what grounds it would be dismissed and why one would be incorrect to do so? (Or, alternately, whether you believe that we would be correct to dismiss your claims due to some sort of information disparity - though this seems an unlikely position.)
Alternately-alternately, when you say that "if anyone follows the steps laid out in Moroni 10:3-5 (see also Alma 32, James 1:3-5) they can for themselves gain such knowledge", that seems to imply I could try it myself and validate your claim. Is that your understanding?
I think you looked at the above comment, not the below one.
You are basically accurate in saying miracles don't count as evidence of any faith, by themselves. The Spirit is a nescessary condition for determining what faith is right. (faith in this post is a collection of beliefs, faith in the other post is action, or trust, in beliefs) In as much as the Spirit is miraculus I should amend the statement to outward miracles do not, by themselves, count as evidence of anything, they merely indicate that more information is needed.
It is only reasonable that I trust my own experiences. It is also reasonable that I validate my exeriences by keeping a journal of those experiences and periodically reviewing what was recieved and what happened afterwards. This should cut down on the confirmation bias.
My experiences are valid for me, but for anyone else they are point of data that like a miracle doesn't provide sufficient evidence for anything as there are mutliple competing claims. Throwing out evidence you disagree with or that you think is a black-swan event is not a halmark of rationality. However as they can be viewed as low probability events and there could be errors in reasoning, errors in observation, and errors in transmission of those observations means that your model of the world should not be updated unless you yourself can replicate the events.
The method of how to recieve a response is in the scriptures cited. The response should be in both your mind and in your heart. You can try it yourself and validate my claims. Realize though that you are dealing with an entity that is both intelligent and has your best interest in mind, see Alma 32:17-20 for more on that subject.
So I take it you're not willing to demonstrate this ability? Say, by predicting what I've written on an index card (or whatever similar sort of verifiable prediction you're able to access)?
If that's the case, then I could certainly try to do so. Could you help me figure out what precisely I have to do such that you will predict success? The language of the text seems a little opaque. For others' convenience, I'll repost them here:
Moroni 10 3 Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts. 4 And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. 5 And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.
So it sounds like what I have to do is simply ask honestly for a sign of some verifiable sort? Or do I ask for more specific knowledge?
Already covered this:
"Yea, there are many who do say: If thou wilt show unto us a sign from heaven, then we shall know of a surety; then we shall believe.
18Now I ask, is this faith? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for if a man knoweth a thing he hath no cause to believe, for he knoweth it.
19And now, how much more cursed is he that knoweth the will of God and doeth it not, than he that only believeth, or only hath cause to believe, and falleth into transgression?" Alma 32:17-19
Further, "An adulterous generation asks for a sign" which should itself be sign enough.
Yes. See also D&C 9:7-9 which gives a further example, though it is for translating sacred text so while the method of asking is the same the method of response may not be.
Also, you may want to define what you mean by honestly. Honestly being curious as to what will happen is not sufficient if it does not also include a real intention to follow God's commands if a response is received. You cannot fool God and He isn't a wish granting genie.
Essentially what I'm asking for is a reason to believe it. That could include accurate predictions about things regarding which I have no relevant knowledge. It does not include reports that such things are possible and have happened but cannot be produced right now, and it does not include the fact that I am asking for a reason.
I am willing to ask, in humility, for such a reason, from anything that can hear my inner thoughts directly so as to be able to respond. If there is a God that can do so, and belief is in my best interests, and that God has my best interests in mind, then it follows that I should be presented with something convincing to me. If I actually discovered that, say, there is an afterlife and an eternity of reward or punishments depends on one's mental state, I'd seriously consider proselytizing (though in a different manner from most proselytizers). If I discovered that some notion of objective good was not only coherent but obtained in our world, I'd probably alter my behavior drastically. Certainly, I think the prior probability of any specific organized religion being true is infinitesimal (and would in most cases I'd first have to be convinced that it's logically consistent), and a particular religious experience of nonspecific fuzzies would cause me to question my sanity first, but if I had a coherent religious experience that held up on future observation, and provided real reasons to alter my beliefs, I'd do it in an instant.
We do not disbelieve because we have seen even the slightest hint that it is true but we wish to rebel or disobey. We disbelieve because there is absolutely no reason to believe.
I have in fact actually tried this in a different context, and managed to produce an altered mental state, but saw no evidence of the supernatural, nor even a subjective 'experience of the divine'.
But it sounds like, when you imagine someone actually trying what you said would work for anyone, your mind jumps to reasons why it won't work, rather than expectations that it will.
Question: If a chassidic Jew came in here and said the same thing about miracles he saw his Rebbe perform, would you take his miracles with the same level of credence that you assign your own? If not, why not?
A complete answer of this would require a fairly detailed look at the LDS view of faith. To be short there are many multiples of ways that miracles may occur. Miracles do not by themselves produce faith in anything as the chassidic Jew should know. ( per Egypt not being converted and the unfaithfulness of the children of Israel in the wilderness despite the miracles that were performed (at some point daily) in their behalf). The existence of a miracle does not by itself say anything about a belief system.
"And that he manifesteth himself unto all those who believe in him, by the power of the Holy Ghost; yea, unto every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, working mighty miracles, signs, and wonders, among the children of men according to their faith." - 2 Nephi 26:13
You might want to look more at the topic of LDS and their view of Jews (see Orson Hyde's dedication of Jerusalem for the gathering of the Jews in 1842, as well as Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and most other prophets in all of LDS scripture).
Interesting question for someone that isn't interested in apologetics.
I'm sorry if the example of a chassidic Jew created more theological complications than intended. The point was a member of another religion. If it helps, imagine a religion completely orthogonal to anything in the Abrahamic tradition, like say Hinduism. Do you treat your own perceived miracles as different from those of the Hindu? If so, why are they different?
I am not the general LW community. I consider apologetics to be very interesting. But LW has a general established set of goals and attitudes about these things, so I will focus here purely on the basic issues related to epistemological and rationalist considerations. Hence the focus on how you would respond to other religions making fundamentally similar claims. And I'll only do so as long as there's not a feeling that our discussion is damaging the signal to noise ratio. I will however recommend that you read the Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions sequence (it is admittedly rather long).
Faith is a principle of action as well as power. The first part of my response still holds. Even the scripture in part still holds, the Holy Ghost testifies of truth wherever it is to be found. So miracles are not a basis for belief but arise out of belief. Further there are other supernatural entities that can be a part of miracles besides God.
I have read a fair number of those, somehow I hadn't stumbled on the whole sequence, thank you for the link.
That doesn't answer the question in any useful way.
I'm not sure what this means. If miracles are not part of the basis for belief why do you think that Wednesday can use them as part of the justification for her faith?
And if someone performs miracles and says that Mormon deity isn't real or is actually an evil entity, how would you respond?
I didn't say Wednesday could use miracles but could use the Holy Spirit (which might be considered miraculous).
"And if someone performs miracles and says that Mormon deity isn't real or is actually an evil entity, how would you respond?"
Having actually dealt with this claim before I can point to "by their fruits ye shall know them" with the rest of that chapter. As well as "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself". As well as "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith". I also would say pretty much what I have already said.
The same point applies. I don't care whether one calls it "miracles" or "special knowledge"- the essential point applies. If someone else had access to the essentially the same claimed experiences how would you respond?
I see. And if the other individual has his own set of contradictory scriptures, how do you decide that your set is better than his set?