GabeEisenstein comments on Religion's Claim to be Non-Disprovable - Less Wrong

124 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 August 2007 03:21AM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 12 March 2011 07:33:01PM 2 points [-]

Click through the "antitheism" tag for more. This is just one post.

Comment author: GabeEisenstein 13 March 2011 01:54:29AM 2 points [-]

Thank you, I read all of those. What I find is that you are able to focus on some of the non-propositional uses of religious language--like cheering for one's affinity group--yet your attitude toward such utterances is still to treat them as false propositions. I would suggest that someone who emphasizes the absurdity of her own language (that is, absurdity from a factual, propositional perspective) is trying to shift attention away from the propositional and toward an aesthetic sensibility.

If we expect science and get art, we will be disappointed; but if we look at linguistic behavior in its variety, we learn to expect more emotional expression and social interchange, less representation of facts.

I also find that you concentrate on fundamentalist or other strange examples, never the work of thinkers like Buber, Merton, Campbell, Watts, etc. I would especially recommend to you Wittgenstein's views on religion, as found in his essay on Frazer's Golden Bough.

Comment author: lessdazed 24 July 2011 05:47:00AM 5 points [-]

Yvain's parable.