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CCC comments on Open Thread: March 4 - 10 - Less Wrong
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It does not prevent said experiences from showing the existence of God, or from hinting at the criteria He finds important.
The devil is defined more-or-less by being in oppostion to God. If the devil exists, then so does God, pretty much.
And humans capable of pulling off a trick like that would almost certainly have been discovered by now if they were common.
The more different kinds of God you think can give out mystical experiences, the vaguer the "God" that those experiences demonstrate the existence of. If the Muslim version of God can send them, maybe it shows there's a God but he's not necessarily Christian. If polytheistic pagan gods can send them, maybe it shows that there's a God but he's not necessarily Christian and there isn't necessarily one of him either. You've ended up "proving" there's a God who has few attributes other than his name.
That's just a matter of semantics. Maybe a devil-like being without a God can't strictly speaking be called the Devil, but whatever you call him, surely you believe that if the normal Devil can give out mystical experiences, so can that one, right?
"Every block" is just an example. Suppose there were few but not no sorcerers in the world. Couldn't they produce mystical experiences that you could not tell from God-borne ones?
(And how do you explain the fact that people can take drugs that cause mystical experiences, get electrical shocks to their brain that trigger mystical experiences, and why some known mental illnesses are associated with mystical experiences? None of these things happen for seeing clouds except in passing.)
I find your comment very confusing. Might I suggest that we continue this discussion, after tabooing the words 'God' and 'Devil'?
I'll start out by rewriting my previous post under those same constraints:
It does not prevent said experiences from showing the existence of [an omnipotent, omniscient being], or from hinting at the criteria He finds important.
The [being opposing an omnipotent, omniscient being] is defined more-or-less by being in oppostion to [an omnipotent, omniscient being]. If the [being opposing an omnipotent, omniscient being] exists, then so does [said omnipotent, omniscient being], pretty much.
And humans capable of pulling off a trick like that would almost certainly have been discovered by now if they were common.
No, not unless the claim that you're making fits whatever words you use instead of "God" and "Devil". In order for it to work, you would have to assert that mystical experiences can come only from omnipotent, omniscient beings or other beings who share a cosmology, and from nobody else. I find that a very peculiar thing to claim.
I would think that, if they exist, pagan gods should be able to provide mystical experiences. Pagan gods aren't omnipotent and omniscient. A being that resembled the devil but didn't oppose anyone powerful could provide mystical experiences, and he wouldn't be omniscient, omnipotent, or in opposition to someone who is. Sorcerers aren't omniscient or omnipotent, yet they could make such experiences. And we know that brain stimulation, drugs, starvation, and mental illness can produce mystical experiences and they have nothing to do with omnipotence or omniscience.
And as for sorcerers being common, the argument doesn't depend on them being common, just on them existing. Rare sorcerers are equally a problem for the theory as common ones. There's also the possibility that sorcerers exist in a society that is intentionally kept hidden from discovery by the muggles. (And even then, who's to say that sorcerers haven't been discovered? They haven't been discovered in a reproducible way in a laboratory, but neither has God. They certainly have been discovered in the sense that an awful lot of people over a wide range of times and places were confident that they are real.)
No, I simply need to assert that such experiences are more likely given the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent being than they are without the existence of such a being.
Consider, for example; if I find a drop of oil on my driveway one morning, I may conclude that my car has an oil leak. There are other ways that the oil may have got there; someone else may have parked in my driveway for a few hours overnight, and he may have an oil leak. Or a neighbour may have dripped some oil on my driveway as a prank.
The mere existence of alternate hypothesis is not, on its own, sufficient to show that a conclusion cannot be correct.
Okay, since you're not tabooing 'god', I'm going to take a guess that you mean a very powerful and knowledgeable but neither omnipotent nor omniscient being which is part of a community of similarly powerful and knowledgeable beings, whose unified actions underlie the basic physics of the universe. Is that approximately correct?
If that is what you meant, then yes, you are correct; however, the chances that such beings exist is very small, because if a number of nearly-equally-powerful yet different beings were trying to run the physics of the universe, then we would almost certainly by now have spotted some areas of blatant disagreement between different beings; it would, in short, almost certainly be clearly impossible that a theory of everything could ever be produced. (If they never disagreed about anything ever, then are they really separate beings?)
I'm guessing here (because I'm really not sure what you mean) that you mean a single powerful and knowledgeable but neither omnipotent nor omniscient being?
If so, then again, you're right. Such a being could provide such an experience.
Yes. And I know that I didn't have electrodes in my brain, I hadn't taken drugs, I wasn't starved, and I'm mentally healthy.
True. The occasional rare sorceror who doesn't even know he's a sorceror would work. This would imply some circumstance, possibly some rare genetic mutation, which would permit some human brain to have a very direct effect on another human brain. If this could be controlled - even slightly - and if it worked on non-human brains as well, it could have a drastic positive effect on an organism's survival. If this were the case, I'd expect to see at least one type of mildly telepathic animal, exploiting this.
...I might not, of course. It might be that the 'sorcerors' are the first organism to exhibit this rare mutation.
And if there was a God, and there was a Devil who opposed him, we'd almost certainly have spotted some areas of disagreement between them. (You could claim that yes, we have spotted such things, but of course the same claim could be made for pagan gods.)
Also, pagan gods needn't necessarily run the physics of the universe in the sense of changing the cosmological constant.
This would be true for certain types of psychic powers, but there are other things which can be done only by humans. Sorcerers with spellbooks have to be able to read, for instance, and even if you quibble about whether animals can read, they wouldn't be able to read well enough to use a spellbook.
The point is that mystical experiences are known to have physical causes other than the existence of a supernatural being. I would expect milder versions of those to occasionally produce mystical experiences too. Nobody may have put an electrode in your brain, but the brain is complex and can occasionally misfire by itself.
No, that's not enough. Given that this is lesswrong, I hope you are aware of Bayseianism. The extent to which an experience is evidence of a God compared to evidence of other things that produce mystical experiences depends on your priors.It may be that a God is more likely to produce a mystical experience than anything else, but the prior for the existence of God is low enough that a mystical experience is still most likely to have been caused by something other than God.
Only if they were roughly equal in power and ability. If God is so comparatively powerful that the Devil doesn't get to make changes to the laws of physics, then we wouldn't see any such disagreements (because physics as a whole is still then under control of one being)
In that case, can you please explain to me what exactly you mean by the phrase 'pagan gods'?
Yes, I am aware of Bayesianism.
My prior for the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient being was set pretty high; somewhere over 50%. Why do you claim that that prior has to be set "low enough that a mystical experience is still most likely to have been caused by something other than God"?
I was thinking more of the Devil causing small-scale events like, oh, killing someone's child to tempt them into committing revenge, or sending people mystical experiences in order to increase religious strife. The Devil is commonly described as being able to do things like that and God doesn't stop him, for whatever reason. I don't care if the Devil can change the speed of light.
A being who has powers other than those currently recognized by science, has an area of concern and a level of power over its area of concern that is relatively high in the hierarchy if applicable, and either was worshipped or is in a class of beings that is generally worshipped.
As defining words is difficult even for well-known concepts like "chair" I reserve the right to update this definition. (If a chair is defined as being for sitting, does that mean that a chair designed as a museum art exhibit is not a chair? You try to define it and end up with locutions like "is either meant for sitting, or has features that would be considered to be designed for sitting if it was intended for sitting".)
If you set your prior high enough, anything can become evidence for God, in which case your belief that given that prior a mystical experience is evidence for God is correct but uninteresting.
But that would leave physics down to a single Being, with a single agenda; so there wouldn't be signs of disagreement to be seen in the laws of physics themselves
Ah, I see. So it's a very powerful being, with that power limited (whether by force or by choice) to a single area of concern (or possibly to multiple areas of concern), capable of feats not explainable by current scientific theories, possibly but not necessarily with the power to alter physics directly?
Such a being could presumably create a mystical experience, yes. And if they are able to alter physics directly, then I would expect a messier physics; on the other hand, if they are [i]not[/i], then, though powerful, they are no less subject to the laws of physics than we are and would eventually be explained as science progresses towards a better understanding of the universe.
Not quite anything, no. And I have to be wary of anthropic reasoning.
No matter where my prior is set, though, I still consider such an experience evidence of the existence of God; in that it is more likely that I'd have the experience if God exists than if not. The only difference that the prior makes is in deciding whether or not the evidence is sufficient prove God's existence.
I don't understand why you insist on wondering whether some being has the power to change the laws of physics. Giving someone a mystical experience doesn't change the laws of physics (at least not nontrivially--by some definitions anything a supernatural being does "changes the laws of physics"), and the fact that a devil-like being without an adversary, a pagan god, or a sorcerer could give you one doesn't mean they can change the laws of physics.
"Eventually" isn't now. You don't believe the Devil can change the laws of physics, yet surely you acknowledge that science has no understanding of him or his powers.
Why can't there be other types of beings like pagan gods or sorcerers, that science also doesn't yet understand yet (regardless of whether science might understand them sometime in the future)?
You presumably believe God created typhoid fever and that it is more likely we would see that if God existed than if he didn't. If all you mean is that mystical experiences are evidence for God in the same sense that typhoid fever is, then that falls under "true but uninteresting". On the other hand, if you believe that mystical experiences are evidence for God in some stronger sense than typhoid fever, please elaborate.