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Eugine_Nier comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (5th thread, March 2013) - Less Wrong
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See my distinction here.
Sure, that distinction exists. I gather your point is that it explains why ibidem is religious? That was not mysterious to me. However what he wanted from us, evidently, was (by definition, it seems to me) the sort of arguments that could be communicated via an internet forum; but he himself had no such arguments. It's not clear to me why he thought such things must exist.
Actually, having written that, I suspect that I'm not entirely grasping what you're getting at by pointing me to that comment. Clarify?
My point is that he feels like he has some (Bayesian) arguments (although he wouldn't phrase it that way) and is trying to figure out how to state them explicitly.
Also, going around saying that beliefs need to be supported by "evidence" tends to result in two failure modes,
1) the person comes away with the impression that "rationality" is a game played by clever arguers intimidating people with their superior arguing and/or rhetorical skill skill.
2) the person agrees interpreting "evidence" overly narrowly and becomes a straw Vulcan and/or goes on to spend his time intimidating people with his superior arguing and/or rhetorical skill.
The tendency to dismiss personal experience as statistical flukes and/or hallucinations doesn't help.
Well, the subject of "arguments" for or against the existence of God was first brought up in this thread by ibidem, I believe. I entirely agree that verbal reasoning is not the only or even the main sort of evidence we should examine in this matter, unless you count as "arguments" things like verbal reports or summaries of various other sorts of evidence. It's just that verbal "arguments" are how we communicate our reasons for belief to each other in venues like Less Wrong.
That having been said, it's not clear to me what you think the alternative is to saying that beliefs need to be supported by "evidence". Saying beliefs... don't need to be supported by evidence? But that's... well, false. Of course we do need to make it clear that "evidence" encompasses more than "clever verbal proofs".
Personal experience of supernatural things does tend to be statistical flukes and/or hallucinations, so dismissing it as such seems reasonable as a general policy. Extraordinary claims require etc. If someone's reason for believing in a god entirely boils down to "God appeared to me, told me that he exists, and did some personal miracles for me which I can't demonstrate or verify for you", then they do not, in fact, have a very good reason for holding that belief.