= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Desrtopa comments on Open Thread, May 1-14, 2013 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (648)
How legitimate does "most legitimate" have to be? If I thought there were any criticisms sufficiently legitimate to seriously reconsider my viewpoints, I would have changed them already. To the extent that my religious beliefs are different than they were, say, fifteen years ago, it's because I spent a long time seeking out arguments, and if I found any persuasive, I modified my beliefs accordingly. But I reached a point where I stopped finding novel arguments for theism long before I stopped looking, so if there are any arguments for theism that I would find compelling, they see extremely little circulation.
The arguments for "theism" which I see the least reason to reject are ones which don't account for anything resembling what we conventionally recognize as theism, let alone religion, so I'm not sure those would count according to the criteria you have in mind.
I'd be happy to hear what you've got. I can't just ask you to share all of your life-changing experiences, obviously. Having looked for new arguments and not found any good ones is a great position, I think, because then you can be pretty sure you're right. I don't know if I could ever convince myself there are no new arguments, though.
I'm certainly not convinced that there are no new arguments, but if there were any good arguments, I would expect them to have more currency.
If you want to explain what good arguments you think there are, I'd certainly be willing to listen. I don't want to foist all the work here onto you, but honestly, having you just cover what you think are the good arguments would be simpler than me covering all the arguments I can think of, none of which I actually endorse, without knowing which if any you ascribe to.
I'm sorry, I can't help you with that. I'm sure that you've done much more research on this than I have. I'm looking for decent arguments because I don't believe all these people who say there aren't any.
Well, what do you mean by decent? Things I accept as having a significant weight of evidence, or things I can understand how people would see them as convincing, even if I see reasons to reject them myself?
In the latter sense, it makes sense to assume that there must be good arguments, because if there weren't arguments that people found convincing, then so much of the world would most likely not be convinced. But in the former sense, it doesn't make sense to assume that there must be good arguments in general, because for practical purposes it means you'd be assuming the conclusion that a god is real, and it makes even less sense to assume that I specifically would have any, because if I did, I wouldn't disbelieve in the proposition that there is a god.
One of the things that those of us who're seriously trying to be rational share is that we try to conduct ourselves so that when the weight of evidence favors a particular conclusion, we don't just say "well, that's a good point, and I acknowledge it," we adopt that conclusion. Our positions should represent, not defy, the evidence available to us.
This is largely a problem of the nature of each side's evidence. MOst of the evidence in favor of God is quickly dismissed by those who think they're more rational than the rest of humanity, and the biggest piece of evidence I'm being given against God is that there is no evidence for Him (at least none that you guys accept). Absence of evidence is at best a passive, weak argument (which common wisdom would generally reject).
And no, I'm not assuming that God is real, I'm simply assuming that there's a non-negligible chance of it. Is that too much to ask?
And the same question arises that has been raised several times: how ought I address the evidence from which many Orthodox Jews conclude that Moses was the last true Prophet of YHWH?
From which many Muslims conclude that Mahomet was the last true Prophet of YHWH?
From which many Christians conclude that Jesus was the last true Prophet of YHWH?
From which millions of followers of non-Abrahamic religions conclude that YHWH is not the most important God out there in the first place?
Is it not reasonable to address the evidence from which Mormons conclude that Lehi, or Kumenohni, or Smith, or Monson, were/are Prophets of YHWH the same way, regardless of what tradition I was raised in?
If skepticism about religious claims is not justified, then it seems to follow naturally that skepticism about religious claims is not justified.
It's important to note that in fact, most Muslims and many Christians (I don't know Judaism as well) believe that Moses, Mohammed, and Jesus were all true prophets. They differ in a few details, but the general message is the same.
I think it is definitely reasonable to address all of this evidence. One of Thomas Monson's predecessors expressly stated that he believed God truly did appear to Mohammed.
I never said I was necessarily skeptical of claims by Jews or Muslims. Some of them must have been brain glitches, just as some claims by Mormons probably are too. But I have no problem accepting that Jews, Muslims, and Christians (maybe even atheists) can all receive divine revelation.
As I said before, it's impractical to try to stretch this logic to argue in favor of any one religion. I'm talking about the existence of God in general.
FWIW, the form of Judaism I was raised in entails the assertion that Jesus Christ was not the Messiah, so is logically incompatible with most forms of Christianity.
That aside, though, I'm content to restrict our discussion to non-sectarian claims; thanks for clarifying that. I've tried to formalize this a little more in a different thread; probably best to let this thread drop here.
You're right, silly me, I honestly should have remembered that. Judaism seems less...open...in that way. But I still think that details of the nature of God aside, the general message of each of these religions, namely "la ilaha ila allah," is the same. ("There is no God but God," that is. It's much more elegant in Arabic.)
This whole mess is certainly in need of some threads being dropped or relocated. Good idea—where is it?
Well, if we're mistaken in dismissing the evidence theists raise in support of the existence of gods, then of course, with the weight of evidence in favor of it, it's reasonable to assign a non-negligible probability to it.
The important question here is whether the people dismissing the purported evidence in favor are actually correct.
Suppose we're discussing the question of how old the earth is. One camp claims the weight of evidence favors the world being about 4.5 billion years old, another claims the weight of evidence favors it being less than 12,000 years old. Each camp has arguments they raise in favor of this point, and the other camp has reasons for rejecting the other camp's claims.
At least one of these camps must be wrong about the weight of evidence favoring their position. There's nothing wrong with rejecting purported evidence which doesn't support what its advocates claim it supports. Scientists do this amongst each other all the time, picking apart whether the evidence of their experiments really supports the authors' conclusions or not. You have to do that sort of thing effectively to get science done.
As far as I've seen, you haven't yet asked why we reject what you consider to be evidence in favor of an interventionist deity. Why not do that? Either we're right in rejecting it or we're not. You can try to find out which.
As long as we're not sure of the truth (you may be, but our society in general is not), it's silly to go around saying who's "correct" in accepting or rejecting a particular piece of evidence.
I believe I understand why you reject all evidence in favor of God. I know a lot of atheists, and I've read a lot of rationalism. To simplify: the books are all made up and the modern revelation is all brain glitches. And you believe that according to your rationalist way of thinking, this is the only "correct" conclusion to draw.
I think that you're fully justified in rejecting this evidence based on the way you look at the situation. I look at things differently, and I accept some of the evidence. And thus we disagree. What I'm wondering now is whether you think it's necessarily "wrong" to accept such evidence.
Suppose a researcher performs an experiment, and from its results, concludes that lemons cure cancer. Another scientist analyzes their procedure, and points out "Your methodology contains several flaws, and when I perform experiments with those same flaws, I can show with the same level of significance that ham, beeswax, sugarpill, and anything else I've tested, also cures cancer. But if I correct those flaws in the methodology, I stop getting results that indicate that any of these things cure cancer."
Do you continue to accept the experiment as evidence that lemons cure cancer?
It's hard to get around this without seeming arrogant or condescending, but yes, I do.
It's a major oversimplification to say that my position is simply "the books are all made up and the modern revelation is all brain glitches," but I do believe that every standard of evidence I've encountered in support of any religion (and I've encountered a lot) can be re-applied in other situations where the results are easier to check, and be shown to be ineffective in producing right answers.
If a person does science poorly, then the poorness of their research isn't a matter of opinion, it's a fact about how effectively their experiments allow them to draw true conclusions about reality.
No, I don't, and here's why: in the context of clinical trials, there are established agreements about right and wrong methodology.
What does this correspond to in your analogy? What this part does is show that the scientist questioning the methodology is correct, and the original experimenter is wrong. However I don't see any objective evidence that your "methodology" is better than a methodology that allows for God.
However, if you're trying to mean that your "correct" methodology is science in general, and that accepting evidence of God is inherently unscientific...
yes, that's what you're saying. OK. That's largely what I was wondering—in your mind, there's no possible way to reconcile religion and rationality. Because the only evidence for God was found using a bad methodology, namely, personal experience.