jimrandomh comments on How to Convince Me That 2 + 2 = 3 - Less Wrong

52 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 27 September 2007 11:00PM

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Comment author: Xaway 17 December 2010 02:31:31AM *  0 points [-]

OK, I'm a Christian. Bit of history: -raised christian -As a teen became agnostic/deist, atheist at 17 -Converted to Christianity at 18

Based on rational thinking I drift towards deism/agnosticism. I'm skeptical of microbes-to-man evolution and abiogenesis. But if abiogenesis could be demonstrated, or if evolutionary processes could be demonstrated to be capable of producing the kind of complexity we see in biology (e.g. evolutionary algorithms run on supercomputer clusters producing real AI) then I'd probably drift towards atheism.

Anyway, at 18 I became a Christian because of direct revelation by God himself, and I was not high.

A similar or better revelation could convince me of a different religion, though Islam would require a much bigger revelation. (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I consider the claim that Islam is true much less likely than the claim that Judaism, Christianity or Buddhism is true, which in turn I consider less likely than the claim that Deism is true.)

Edit: Thanks all for the lovely discussion, I think I've presented my theory of Life, the Universe and Everything in enough detail to get a fair understanding of it.

I hope you like the data point and a lotta luck synthesizing your own theory of L,U and E.

Comment author: jimrandomh 17 December 2010 05:53:17AM 1 point [-]

Anyway, at 18 I became a Christian because of direct revelation by God himself, and I was not high.

What was that like? In particular, how could you tell that it was really a revelation and not any kind of temporary brain malfunction?