Nornagest comments on Open Thread: March 4 - 10 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Coscott 04 March 2014 03:55AM

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Comment author: CCC 11 March 2014 05:19:11AM *  1 point [-]

Why is your prior so strong ? Is this due to the usual somewhat arbitrary combination of your genetics and upbringing -- which, IMO, is where most of our priors come from -- or is there some other reason ?

Virtually entirely due to my upbringing.

Hmm, well, I hope you don't see me as one of those people.

No, I don't see you as one of those people. Such people are to atheism as militant fundamentalists are to any religion; they're there, they're outspoken, they won't listen to anyone who disagrees with them, and they're fortunately very rare.

All of the evidence for the existence of gods (of any kind) that I have ever seen was either faked for a profit (weeping statues, faith healing, etc.), hearsay (friend of a friend of a cousin who heard about this one time...), or unfalsifiable ("god acts in mysterious ways"). What's worse, many phenomena that have been historically attributed to direct intervention by gods -- such as thunder, lightning, living tissue, formation of planets, rainbows, volcanic eruptions, disease, etc. -- have since then been explained in terms of purely natural mechanisms. This leads me to believe that future acts of god(s) would likewise be reduced.

I've given a bit of thought to the idea of proving the existence of miracles in a laboratory setting. It runs into a few problems.

For a start, let's divide miracles into two types; the once-off miracle, which happens only once and cannot be reproduced under laboratory conditions, and the repeatable miracle, which happens every time the right conditions are in place.

For obvious reasons, the once-off miracle is not suitable; since it cannot be reproduced, it cannot be used in a scientific context to show more than coincidence.

So let us then consider the repeatable miracle. For the purposes of discussion, I will pick out one potential example; let us say that all fires refuse to burn any orphan. This would be reproducible in a laboratory, and it would be clearly miraculous, by our current understanding of science.

Now, let us consider a world where no fire had ever burnt an orphan. How would it differ from our world? Well, there are a few obvious ways - almost all firemen would be orphans, it would be possible to prove a parent's death by checking if their children are burnt by a candle flame, and some psychopaths would kill their own parents to become fireproof.

And scientists would struggle to find a mechanism for the fireproofness of orphans. Sooner or later, someone would suggest something that sounded vaguely believable... and it would be tested. If it fails the test, then someone else will suggest something else, and so on. The history of science is full of theories that later turned out to be false - phlogiston, luminiferous aether - and were replaced by better theories. In this case, the theory would be wrong (since it's direct divine influence saving all the orphans) - but unless it could be disproved, it would be accepted (and if it could be disproved, it would be replaced).

Either way, the laboratory tests wouldn't say 'miracle'.

If you posit the existence of an incredibly powerful and mysterious entity -- be it a god, or an AI, or a Matrix Lord, or whatever -- then how can I prove to you that any given phenomenon was not caused by him (it/them/etc.) ?

Quite honestly, I haven't the faintest idea. Trying to prove the non-existence of God is exactly like proving a negative, because it is a negative.

What criteria do you use to judge whether any given event was caused by the god, or by some perfectly natural mechanism (the exact nature of which may or may not be known to you).

All perfectly natural mechanisms were set in place by God as well.

Hmm, I think I do disagree with you on something (other than our conclusions, that is). When I consider a piece of writing, I consider all the things that you mention, but I also compare the setting and the events in the book to those in the real world.

Thus, for example, if I were to read a story that is written in the style of a news report, about perfectly ordinary people who live in modern-day San Francisco, behave in ways consistent with human nature, and fight vampires -- then I would still discount the story as fiction, because I am quite certain that vampires don't exist (given the total lack of evidence for them). The same applies to elves, magic users, alien visitors, etc.

That said, I am still not clear about your own approach. From my perspective, the vast majority of the Old and New testaments is written in the same way as the Book of Job, with the possible exception of commandments ("thou shalt not do X" / "thou must do Y") and the infamous "begats" in Chronicles.

Presumably, you would disagree, so could you perhaps contrast Job with some other passage, which you do take to be literal ?

The infamous 'begats' in Chronicles have a problem, in that they assume that Adam and Eve were real (that's where the biblical literalists get their 'the Earth is six thousand years old' from; counting generations and making some assumptions about how long people live).

As for literal; that's a very high bar to meet. I often hear (and even make) statements which are intended to communicate a true fact, but which are not literally true; and even in court, eye-witness statements may and often do conflict on minor details.

So, given that I hold it to the bar of 'eye-witness statement' or, in parts, 'hearsay' rather than to the higher bar of 'every last literal word perfectly true', I shall present to you the four Gospels as an example

Comment author: Nornagest 11 March 2014 09:05:51PM *  4 points [-]

For a start, let's divide miracles into two types; the once-off miracle, which happens only once and cannot be reproduced under laboratory conditions, and the repeatable miracle, which happens every time the right conditions are in place.

I can see a couple of issues with this formulation, defining a miracle for the moment as a suspension of natural law by divine fiat. First, while a one-time miracle presumably wouldn't be reproducible under laboratory conditions, most miracles that I can think of would leave an inconsistency with known physical law and could be analyzed by working backwards from the available evidence. Some would be more obvious or easier to evaluate than others; if the face of the Virgin Mary appeared in my cornflakes one morning, I'd have only until they got soggy to publicize the event, but if a volcanic eruption in Luzon generated a pyroclastic cloud that scoured the rest of a town down to bedrock but left every board of a flimsy wooden church unharmed, there's still plenty of lahar sediments to analyze. You don't need to grow evidence in a Petri dish for it to be real science.

(Though it's worth mentioning here that lots of religions, plus Charles Fort, allege odd phenomena. Incorrupt corpses are alleged for a number of Catholic saints, for example, and the corpses in question certainly look less corrupt than I'd expect them to be, but they also show up among Buddhist monks.)

Then there's the idea that miracles might show signs of agency, i.e. be directed at some goal; God's motives in the context of Christianity are of course famously ineffable, but the miracles alleged in the Bible do show certain patterns (protection of the innocent or of a chosen people; glorification of God; etc.) and we might reasonably expect these to continue. We can pick these out with statistical methods: if preachers of one particular sect are indistinguishable from those of another in terms of habits and demographics and there's enough of both to make a good sample, but the rate of lethal accidents for one is zero, that's certainly suggestive.

Finally, many alleged miracles are persistent in time but limited in space: Lourdes water, weeping statues. These leave an inconsistency that's laboratory testable (many have been tested, generally with negative results) but wouldn't be factored into models of physical law, or which at least would lead to much less elegant physics than we observe.

Comment author: CCC 12 March 2014 09:55:55AM 0 points [-]

First, while a one-time miracle presumably wouldn't be reproducible under laboratory conditions, most miracles that I can think of would leave an inconsistency with known physical law and could be analyzed by working backwards from the available evidence.

That is an excellent point, and some analyses of the sort have been done. The Shroud of Turin being a famous example (conclusion: radiocarbon dating suggests it was likely from a thousand years or so too late, but it's not yet quite clear how it was made; lots of argument and disagreement). Another, perhaps a little less well-known, would be the Miracle of Lanciano

Though it's worth mentioning here that lots of religions, plus Charles Fort, allege odd phenomena.

It's not impossible that God might respond equally to anyone who fulfills a certain list of criteria, regardless of what religion the person follows. A devout Buddhist may have as much chance of leaving an incorrupt corpse as a devout Catholic.

...which leads, of course, to the immediate question of what the relevant criteria are. I don't know. I have a few guesses, but they're speculative.

Then there's the idea that miracles might show signs of agency

This is an excellent point. However; in order to detect the agency, it would be necessary to have some idea of the goal. Considering that omniscience and omnipotence are often considered divine attributes, the best idea that we can have for the goal is to consider that what is happening is what was intended; but that quickly becomes a circular argument, because it is trivially clear that if what is happening is what was intended, then it was successful.

if preachers of one particular sect are indistinguishable from those of another in terms of habits and demographics and there's enough of both to make a good sample, but the rate of lethal accidents for one is zero, that's certainly suggestive.

It would be very suggestive and, quite honestly, a little worrying. It would imply that there was nothing worthwhile in the preachers of one sect, and at the same time, that none of the preachers of the the sect joined for selfish motives (such as, for example, immunity to fatal accidents) and don't really care about doing their duties correctly.

Finally, many alleged miracles are persistent in time but limited in space: Lourdes water, weeping statues. These leave an inconsistency that's laboratory testable (many have been tested, generally with negative results) but wouldn't be factored into models of physical law, or which at least would lead to much less elegant physics than we observe.

That is true. I guess that would fall under laboratory-testable. I imagine a number of them would be faked, or turn out to be a one-in-a-billion statistical fluke - the genuine ones may get lost in the noise.

Comment author: Desrtopa 15 March 2014 02:30:43AM 0 points [-]

It's not impossible that God might respond equally to anyone who fulfills a certain list of criteria, regardless of what religion the person follows. A devout Buddhist may have as much chance of leaving an incorrupt corpse as a devout Catholic.

On the other hand, it's also quite possible that the phenomenon of incorrupt corpses occurs regardless of the virtues of the individuals in question, but then corpses of the particularly virtuous are held up as examples of divine grace, while the incorrupt corpses of ordinary people, not being seen as evidence of anything in particular, are ignored.

You mentioned before the possibility of militant atheists cherrypicking evidence to support their position. This is certainly a consideration that has to be accounted for, but so is the possibility that the evidence favoring religion only appears compelling because it is cherrypicked. This also occurs to a considerable extent with nigh-certainty. Consider, for example, the healing miracles of Lourdes, which Nornagest mentioned above, which have made it an international pilgrimage destination, despite the fact that statistical analyses of the recovery rates of pilgrims do not suggest that the location has any particular healing power. Counting every unexplained recovery, while not counting the nonrecoveries, can create the appearance of persistent miracles.

Hard-to-explain things happen all the time, and we're much more likely to notice them if they seem indicative of something important to us than if they don't.

Comment author: CCC 16 March 2014 04:19:20AM 0 points [-]

On the other hand, it's also quite possible that the phenomenon of incorrupt corpses occurs regardless of the virtues of the individuals in question, but then corpses of the particularly virtuous are held up as examples of divine grace, while the incorrupt corpses of ordinary people, not being seen as evidence of anything in particular, are ignored.

That is also a possibility. And it can be tested for; if it is true, then the percentage of incorrupt corpses should be constant whether the people were virtuous before dying or whether they were legally executed for crimes committed (and not later exonerated by, say, DNA evidence).

...I have no idea what the results of actually checking that would be, but it would certainly be interesting.

You mentioned before the possibility of militant atheists cherrypicking evidence to support their position. This is certainly a consideration that has to be accounted for, but so is the possibility that the evidence favoring religion only appears compelling because it is cherrypicked. This also occurs to a considerable extent with nigh-certainty.

That is a very strong possibility that must be borne in mind, yes.

Consider, for example, the healing miracles of Lourdes, which Nornagest mentioned above, which have made it an international pilgrimage destination, despite the fact that statistical analyses of the recovery rates of pilgrims do not suggest that the location has any particular healing power. Counting every unexplained recovery, while not counting the nonrecoveries, can create the appearance of persistent miracles.

From the Wikipedia article on Lourdes:

An estimated 200 million people have visited the shrine since 1860,[4] and the Roman Catholic Church has officially recognised 69 healings considered miraculous. Cures are examined using Church criteria for authenticity and authentic miracle healing with no physical or psychological basis other than the healing power of the water.[5]

Both references were retrieved on 5 May 2009, though the second was dated 21 October 2003. There we have a rate; 69 miraculous cures, out of 200 million people (and any number of non-miraculous cures as well, of course).

If there is nothing to Lourdes, then this should be similar to the number of miraculous cures among a random sampling of 200 million people with various illnesses.

(Sixty-nine out of two hundred million is low enough to give the appearance of statistical noise; that's odds of close to one in three milllion)

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