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Prismattic comments on Open Thread, May 1-14, 2013 - Less Wrong
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Let me see if I can explain my objection to (1) a different way. Rationalists do not privilege atheism. They privilege parsimony. This is basically a tautology. The only way to subscribe to both rationality and theistic religion is compartmentalization. Saying you want to be rational and a theist is equivalent to saying you want to make a special exception to the principles you follow in every other situation when the subject of God comes up. That's going to take a particular kind of strong argument.
You're telling me that it's essentially impossible to be theist and fully rational. You're saying that not only do rationalists privilege atheism, but if fact they have to follow it by definition, unless they manage to deceive themselves.
I disagree with your objection and I believe that it is possible to reconcile rationality and religion.
That is not the case. Observing something for which one can provide no natural explanation is going to cause a rationalist to increase their probability estimate for the supernatural. It's not going to increase it to near certainty, because the mysteriousness of the universe is a fact about the limits of our own understanding, not about the universe, so it's still possible that something we can't explain has natural causes we don't yet have the ability to measure or explain. But it will cause the estimate to rise. And if inexplicable things keep happening, their estimate will keep rising.
The question, though, is whether there is anything that could ever cause you to lower your estimate of the probability that your religion is correct. If the answer is no, then you're not being rational right off the bat, and your quest is doomed.
What do you mean by compartmentalization, then, if it's not a bad thing? Sounds to me like it's sacrificing internal consistency.
That's true. I actively go looking for things that might challenge my faith, and come out stronger because of it. That's partly why I'm here.
compartmentalization IS a bad thing if you care about internal consistency and absolute truth. It's a great thing if you want to hold multiple useful beliefs that contradict each other. You might be happier and more productive, as I'm sure many are, believing that we should expect the world to work based on evidence except insofar as it conflicts with your religion, where it should work on faith.
Also premature decompartmentalizing can be dangerous. There are many sets of (at least mostly) true ideas where it's a lot harder to reconcile them then to understand either individually.