Bugmaster comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (5th thread, March 2013) - Less Wrong

27 Post author: orthonormal 01 April 2013 04:19PM

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Comment author: Bugmaster 14 May 2013 01:08:32AM 4 points [-]

FWIW, I neither upvoted nor downvoted your posts; I think they are typical for a newcomer to the community. However, I must admit that your closing line comes across as being very poorly thought out:

Oh, and I'm a Mormon. And intend to remain that way in the near future.

This makes it sound like your Mormonism is a foregone conclusion, and that you're going to disregard whatever evidence or argumentation comes along, unless it is compatible with Mormonism. That is not a very rational way of thinking. Then again, that's just what your closing statement sounds like, IMO; you probably did not mean it that way.

Comment author: [deleted] 14 May 2013 08:15:32AM -1 points [-]

your Mormonism is a foregone conclusion

Just as I've been told repeatedly that your atheism is a foregone conclusion.

Comment author: Bugmaster 14 May 2013 04:26:04PM 5 points [-]

Told by someone other than myself, hopefully. While I do not expect to become a theist of any kind in the near future, neither do I intend to remain an atheist. Instead, I intend to hold a set of beliefs that are most likely to be true. If I gain sufficient evidence that the answer is "Jesus" or "Trimurti", then this is what I will believe.

Comment author: Desrtopa 14 May 2013 12:59:49PM 6 points [-]

Just as I've been told repeatedly that your atheism is a foregone conclusion.

Can you point to where you've been told that?

What I think most of us would agree on, and what it seems to me that people here have told you, is that they consider atheism to be a settled question, which is not at all the same thing.

Comment author: Estarlio 14 May 2013 04:59:39PM 2 points [-]

If you want to raise my openness to the possibility of a god-level power, then provide me with evidence of consistent, accurate, specific prophecies made hundreds of years in advance of the events. Or provide me of evidence of multiple strong rationalists who are also religious and claim that their religion is based on assessment of the evidence/available arguments.

My atheism isn't a foregone conclusion. It's simply that no-one's ever seriously challenged it and at this point I've heard so many bad arguments that people need to come up with evidence before I'm prepared to take them seriously. But you could totally change my mind, if you had the right things.

I suspect what people mean when they say their atheism is a settled question or whatever is that they don't have time to listen to yet another bad argument for theism. That you need some evidence before they're prepared to take you seriously. Which seems quite reasonable.