A few notes about the site mechanics
A few notes about the community
If English is not your first language, don't let that make you afraid to post or comment. You can get English help on Discussion- or Main-level posts by sending a PM to one of the following users (use the "send message" link on the upper right of their user page). Either put the text of the post in the PM, or just say that you'd like English help and you'll get a response with an email address.
* Normal_Anomaly
* Randaly
* shokwave
* Barry Cotter
A note for theists: you will find the Less Wrong community to be predominantly atheist, though not completely so, and most of us are genuinely respectful of religious people who keep the usual community norms. It's worth saying that we might think religion is off-topic in some places where you think it's on-topic, so be thoughtful about where and how you start explicitly talking about it; some of us are happy to talk about religion, some of us aren't interested. Bear in mind that many of us really, truly have given full consideration to theistic claims and found them to be false, so starting with the most common arguments is pretty likely just to annoy people. Anyhow, it's absolutely OK to mention that you're religious in your welcome post and to invite a discussion there.
A list of some posts that are pretty awesome
I recommend the major sequences to everybody, but I realize how daunting they look at first. So for purposes of immediate gratification, the following posts are particularly interesting/illuminating/provocative and don't require any previous reading:
- Your Intuitions are Not Magic
- The Apologist and the Revolutionary
- How to Convince Me that 2 + 2 = 3
- Lawful Uncertainty
- The Planning Fallacy
- Scope Insensitivity
- The Allais Paradox (with two followups)
- We Change Our Minds Less Often Than We Think
- The Least Convenient Possible World
- The Third Alternative
- The Domain of Your Utility Function
- Newcomb's Problem and Regret of Rationality
- The True Prisoner's Dilemma
- The Tragedy of Group Selectionism
- Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided
- That Alien Message
- The Worst Argument in the World
More suggestions are welcome! Or just check out the top-rated posts from the history of Less Wrong. Most posts at +50 or more are well worth your time.
Welcome to Less Wrong, and we look forward to hearing from you throughout the site!
Note from orthonormal: MBlume and other contributors wrote the original version of this welcome post, and I've edited it a fair bit. If there's anything I should add or update on this post (especially broken links), please send me a private message—I may not notice a comment on the post. Finally, once this gets past 500 comments, anyone is welcome to copy and edit this intro to start the next welcome thread.
I think probably none of those hypotheses are correct. I think you mean well and I think your comments have been stylistically fine. I also obviously don't think people here are are opposed to substantive disagreement, close-minded or intolerant (or else I wouldn't have stuck around this long). What you've encountered is a galaxy sized chasm of inferential distance. I'm sure you've had a conversation before with someone who seemed to think you knew much less about the subject than you actually did. You disagree with him and try to demonstrate you familiarity with the issue but he is so behind he doesn't even realize that you know more than he does.
I realize it is impossible for this not to sound smug and arrogant to you: but that is how you come off to us. Really, your model of us, that we have not heard good, non-strawman arguments for the existence of God is very far off. There may be users who wouldn't be familiar with your best argument but the people here most familiar with the existence of God debate absolutely would. And they could almost certainly fix whatever argument you provided and rebut that (which is approximately what I did in my previous reply to you).
To the extent that theism is ever taken under consideration here it is only in the context of the rationalist and materialist paradigm that is dominant here. E.g. We might talk about the possibility of our universe being a simulation created by an evolved superintelligence and the extent to which that possibility mirrors theism in it's implications. Or (as I take it shminux believes) about how atheism is, like religion, just a special case of privileging the hypothesis. But you don't appear to have spent enough time here to have added these concepts to your tool box and outside that framework the theism debate is old-hat to nearly all of us. It's not that we're close minded: it's that we think the question is about as settled as it can be.
Moreover, while this is a place that discusses many things, we don't enjoy retreading the basics constantly. So while a number of us politely responded to answer your question, an extended conversation about theism or our ability to consider theism is not really welcome. This isn't because we are unwilling to consider it: it's because we have considered it and now want to discuss newer ideas.
You don't have to agree with this perspective. Maybe you feel like you have evidence and concepts that we're totally unfamiliar with. But bracket those issues for now. It is nothing that will be resolvable until you've gotten to know us better and figured out how you might translate those concepts to us. So if you want to stick around here you're welcome to. Learn more about our perspective, become familiar with the concepts we spend time on and feel free to discuss narrower topics that come up. But people here aren't generally interested in extended debates about God with newcomers. That's why you've been down voted. Not because we're against dissent, just because we're not here to do that. There are lots of places on the internet dedicated to debating theism.
Don't mind wedrifid's tone. That's the way he is with everyone. But take his actual point seriously. Don't preach your way of thinking until you've become a lot more familiar with our way of thinking. And a new handle at some point wouldn't be a terrible idea.
Good, thank you.
However, it's important to note that I did not come in here expressly arguing my religion. I recognize how bad an idea that would be, and you've explained it well. So of course, anyone aiming to convert this lot of atheists is certainly going to fail. But that was never my goal, and in fact I never argued in favor of my particular God.
Look at my very first comment—it was not "this is why you are wrong," it was "do you guys have any ideas how you could be wrong?" and the response was "no, we're definitely not wro... (read more)