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shminux comments on Open Thread, May 1-14, 2013 - Less Wrong
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I have been vocally anti-atheist here and elsewhere, though I was brought up as a "kitchen atheist" ("Obviously there is no God, the idea is just silly. But watch for that black cat crossing the road, it's bad luck"). My current view is Laplacian agnosticism ("I had no need of that hypothesis"). Going through the simulation arguments further convinced me that atheism is privileging one number (zero) out of infinitely many possible choices. It's not quite as silly as picking any particular anthropomorphization of the matrix lords, be it a talking bush, a man on a stick, a dude with a hammer, a universal spirit, or what have you, but still an unnecessarily strong belief.
If you are interested in anti-atheist arguments based on moral realism made by a current LWer, consider Unequally Yoked. It's as close to "intelligent, thoughtful, rational criticism" as I can think of.
There is an occasional thread here about how Mormonism or Islam is the one true religion, but the arguments for either are rarely rational.
That's a really good way of looking at things, thanks. From now on I'm an "anti-atheist" if nothing else...and I'll take a look at that blog.
Could you bring yourself to believe in one particular anthropomorphization, if you had good reason to (a vision? or something lesser? how much lesser?)
I find it unlikely, as I would probably attribute it to a brain glitch. I highly recommend looking at this rational approach to hypnosis by another LW contributor. It made me painfully aware how buggy the wetware our minds run on is, and how easy it is to make it fail if you know what you are doing. Thus my prior when seeing something apparently supernatural is to attribute it to known bugs, not to anything external.
The brain glitch is always available as a backup explanation, and they certainly do happen (especially in schizophrenics etc.) But if I had an angel come down to talk to me, I would probably believe it.
How would you tell the difference? Also see this classic by another LWer.
Personally, I think this one is more relevant. The biggest problem with the argument from visions and miracles, barring some much more complicated discussions of neurology than are really necessary, is that it proves too much, namely multiple contradictory religions.
It's a very interesting post. You're right that we can't accept all visions, because they will contradict each other, but in fact I think that many don't. It's entirely plausible in my mind that God really did appear to Mohammed as well as Joseph Smith, for instance, and they don't have to invalidate each other. But of course if you take every single claim that's ever been made, it becomes ridiculous.
Does it prove too much, then, to say that some visions are real and some are mental glitches? I'm not suggesting any way of actually telling the difference.
Well, it's certainly not a very parsimonious explanation. This conversation has branched in a lot of places, so I'm not sure where that comment is right now, but as someone else has already pointed out, what about the explanation that most lightning bolts are merely electromagnetic events, but some are thrown by Thor?
Proposing a second mechanism which accounts for some cases of a phenomenon, when the first mechanism accounts for others, is more complex (and thus in the absence of evidence less likely to be correct) than the supposition that the first mechanism accounts for all cases of the phenomenon. If there's no way to tell them apart, then observations of miracles and visions don't count as evidence favoring the explanation of visions-plus-brain-glitches over the explanation of brain glitches alone.
It's possible, but that doesn't mean we have any reason to suppose it's true. And when we have no reason to suppose something is true, it generally isn't.
It's a good post, but overly logical and technically involved for a non-LWer. Even if you agree with the logic, I can hardly imagine a religious person alieving that their favorite doctrine proves too much.
FWIW, I've had the experience of a Presence manifesting itself to talk to me. The most likely explanation of that experience is a brain glitch. I'm not sure why I ought to consider that a "backup" explanation.
Right, obviously it's a problem. There are lots of people who think they've been manifested to, and some of them are schizophrenic, and some of them are not, and it's a whole lot easier to just assume they're all deluded (even if not lying). But even Richard Dawkins has admitted that he could believe in God if he had no other choice. (I have a source if you want.)
Certainly, if you're completely determined not to believe no matter what—if you would refuse God even if He appeared to you himself—then you never will. But if there is absolutely nothing that would convince you, then you're giving it a chance of 0.
Since you are rationalists, you can't have it actually be 0. So what is that 0.0001 that would convince you?
There's a big difference between "no matter what" and "if He appeared to you himself," especially if by the latter you mean appearing to my senses. I mean, the immediate anecdotal evidence of my senses is far from being the most convincing form of evidence in my world; there are many things I'm confident exist without having directly perceived them, and some things I've directly perceived I'm confident don't exist.
For example, a being possessing the powers attributed to YHWH in the Old Testament, or to Jesus in the New Testament, could simply grant me faith directly -- that is, directly raising my confidence in that being's existence. If YHWH or Jesus (or some other powerful entity) appeared to me that way, I would believe in them.
I'm assuming you're not counting that as convincing me, though I'm not sure why not.
Actually, that isn't true. It might well be that I assign a positive probability to X, but that I still can't rationally reach a state of >50% confidence in X, because the kind of evidence that would motivate such a confidence-shift simply isn't available to me. I am a limited mortal being with bounded cognition, not all truths are available to me just because they're true.
But it may be that with respect to the specific belief you're asking about, the situation isn't even that bad. I don't know, because I'm not really sure what specific belief you're asking about. What is it, exactly, that you want to know how to convince me of?
That is... are you asking what would convince me in the existence of YHWH, Creator of the Universe, the God of my fathers and my forefathers, who lifted them up from bondage in Egypt with a mighty hand an an outstretched arm, and through his prophet Moses led them to Sinai where he bequeathed to them his Law?
Or what would convince me of the existence of Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, who was born a man and died for our sins, that those who believe in Him would not die but have eternal life?
Or what would convince me of the existence of Loki, son of the All-Father Odin who dwells in highest Asgard, and will one day bring about Ragnarok and the death of the Gods?
Or... well, what, exactly?
With respect to those in particular, I can't think of any experience off-hand which would raise my confidence in any of them high enough to be worth considering (EDIT: that's hyperbole; I really mean "to convince me"; see below), though that's not to say that such experiences don't exist or aren't possible... I just don't know what they are.
With respect to other things, I might be able to.
Huh. That's interesting. For at least the first two I can think of a few that would convince me, and for the third I suspect that a lack of being easily able to be convinced is connected more to my lack of knowledge about the religion in question. In the most obvious way for YHVH, if everyone everywhere started hearing a loud shofar blowing and then the dead rose, and then an extremely educated fellow claiming to be Elijah showed up and started answering every halachic question in ways that resolve all the apparent problems, I think I'd be paying close attention to the hypothesis.
Similar remarks apply for Jesus. They do seem to depend strongly on making much more blatant interventions in the world then the deities generally seem to (outside their holy texts).
Technically the shofar blowing thing should not be enough sensory evidence to convince you of the prior improbability of this being the God - probability of alien teenagers, etcetera - but since you weren't expecting that to happen and other people were, good rationalist procedure would be to listen very carefully what they had to say about how your priors might've been mistaken. It could still be alien teenagers but you really ought to give somebody a chance to explain to you about how it's not. On the other hand, we can't execute this sort of super-update until we actually see the evidence, so meanwhile the prior probability remains astronomically low.
In this context I think it makes sense to ask "showed up where?" but if the answer were "everywhere on earth at once," I'd call that pretty damn compelling.
Not to mention crowded.
Yeah, you're right, "to be worth considering" is hyperbole. On balance I'd still lean towards "powerful entity whom I have no reason to believe created the universe, probably didn't lift my forefathers up from bondage in Egypt, might have bequeathed them his Law, and for reasons of its own is adopting the trappings of YHWH" but I would, as you say, be paying close attention to alternative hypotheses.
Fixed.
You're right, I'm assuming that God doesn't just tweak anyone's mind to force them to believe, because the God of the Abrahamic religions won't ever do that—our ultimate agency to believe or not is very important to Him. What would be the point of seven billion mindless minions? (OK, it might be fun for a while, but I bet sentient children would be more interesting over the course of, say, eternity.)
As I said at the time, it hadn't been clear when I wrote the comment that you meant, specifically, the God of the Abrahamic religions when you talked about God.
I've since read your comments elsewhere about Mormonism, which made it clearer that there's a specific denomination's traditional beliefs about the universe you're looking to defend, and not just beliefs in the existence of a God more generally.
And, sure, given that you're looking for compelling arguments that defend your pre-existing beliefs, including specific claims about God's values as well as God's existence, history, powers, personality, relationships to particular human beings, and so forth, then it makes sense to reject ideas that seem inconsistent with those epistemic pre-commitments.
That's quite a given, though.
If you do assume that God can (and does) just reach in and tweak our minds directly, then being "convinced" takes on a sort of strange meaning. Unless we're assuming that you remain in normal control of your own mind, the concepts of "choice," "opinion," and "me" sort of start to disappear.
I'm trying to talk about a deity in general, but you're right, it often turns into the God we're all familiar with. A radically different deity could uproot every part of the way we think about things, even logic and reason itself.
So in order to stay within our own universe, I think it's OK to assume that any God only intervenes to the extent that we usually hear about, like Old Testament miracles.
And if it were a demon? A ghost? A fairy? A Greek deity? If these are different, why are they different? What about an angel that 's from another religion?