Okeymaker comments on Avoiding Your Belief's Real Weak Points - Less Wrong

49 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 05 October 2007 01:59AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 06 April 2015 09:03:53PM 1 point [-]

Can anyone point out the weakest points in christianity? You need to know enough about it and you need to give it considerable thought.

(I am christian. As long as I can remember I have adopted a mindset of skeptical thinking and self doubt, but since I in real life don´t know many people who are smarter than me and knows enough to say anything about christianity, I ask you. My mom is agnostic and pretty clever, but she can come up with better arguments for a God than I can. A fair warning, I doubt that many here knows enough about christianity to actually come up with something, but I would be positively surprised if someone did. I have some weak points of my own, but it would be very useful to see if I have missed something instead of just sticking with that.)

Comment author: [deleted] 06 April 2015 09:17:32PM 3 points [-]

A list that pops up for me, but I don't think they are exactly unusual (and most if not all of them can be found somewhere on this blog):

  • Pain, suffering, death, injustice, etc.
  • Why did rabbits evolve to evade foxes and foxes to catch rabbits?
  • Why would elephants starve to death after they have lost their last teeth, going through all that suffering? Why not a painless death?
  • Why all those design inefficiencies (eyes backwards, testicles on the outside, ...)?
  • Is there anything that is actually evidence for the existence of god?
Comment author: Vaniver 06 April 2015 09:23:40PM 2 points [-]

testicles on the outside

I thought this made obvious sense for temperature regulation reasons. (The eye is a much stronger example.)

Comment author: [deleted] 06 April 2015 09:28:34PM 2 points [-]

I agree, if you are limited to the stupid designs that natural selection can produce. But if you are god, you should be able to do better!

Comment author: polymathwannabe 07 April 2015 09:57:44PM 0 points [-]

Then why do mammals need a different temperature in their testicles? Like mammals, birds also regulate their own temperature, and they do just fine with internal testicles.

Comment author: [deleted] 07 April 2015 10:17:11PM 0 points [-]

They evolved from dinosaurs. It could have something to do with that. Mammals are fundamentally different from reptiles and birds. Blame evolution.

Comment author: Romashka 08 April 2015 11:20:51AM 0 points [-]

Didn't mammals evolve from reptiles, too? I think your argument would be stronger if you only left 'mammals are fundamentally different from birds'.

Comment author: [deleted] 08 April 2015 12:12:01PM 0 points [-]

Yes they did, but birds are much more related to dinosaurs than mammals are. All life forms evolved from Unicellular organisms.

Comment author: Romashka 08 April 2015 02:27:58PM 0 points [-]

And why, do you think, did it take biologists until XIX century to agree upon the unicellular part?

Comment author: Jiro 08 April 2015 06:55:19PM 0 points [-]

If you really believe God is responsible for everything, "blame evolution" isn't really a good answer. Are you claiming that God is constrained in how he could set up evolution?

Comment author: [deleted] 08 April 2015 07:19:51PM -2 points [-]

I think God created the world, then he let it have it´s run. I wouldn´t say that he "set up" earths evolution in any specific way... Except for the creationists (are they even considered christian?) I don´t know any christians who would deny evolution today.

Comment author: polymathwannabe 08 April 2015 07:48:25PM 1 point [-]

Creationists describe themselves as Christians, and it's hard to see how anyone else could be in a better position to tell them what they are, especially within Protestantism, where there's no central authority on what the religion is and is not.

Comment author: [deleted] 09 April 2015 10:58:48AM *  -2 points [-]

I have always believed that you need to worship Jesus as a god, as someone divine, in order to call yourself christian. The source I have used as support for this claim is The 1986 edition of this encyclopedia For the record, it was ultimately supervised by four professors and actually written and produced by many more, including docents in religions.

Jiro says that "blame evolution" is not a good answer. But I have the right to believe in evolution even though I believe in a God. There is no need for a contradiction there.

Comment author: ChristianKl 09 April 2015 12:03:35PM 1 point [-]

I have always believed that you need to worship Jesus as a god, as someone divine, in order to call yourself christian.

Most US creationists would indeed say that they do worship Jesus as a God. Most of the Christian's with whom you interact might not believe in creationism but it's a mistake to assume that the people you know are representative for the whole world.

See the gallup poll for the US.

For the record, it was ultimately supervised by four professors and actually written and produced by many more, including docents in religions.

Argument by authority doesn't bring you far on LW. Especially when you make trivial errors such as questioning whether creationists are Christian.

Comment author: Romashka 09 April 2015 12:09:12PM 0 points [-]

I did not downvote this, but I think whoever did meant it as 'actually, you are NOT entitled to believe in evolution'. (People who view evolution through the lenses of genetics and biotechnology and not, say, botany and zoology, intuitively seem to me less baffled by it - not always a good thing. You have to be as baffled as you possibly can, to seek out any weak spots at all.)

Comment author: Jiro 09 April 2015 09:27:53PM 2 points [-]

The reason that "blame evolution" isn't a good answer isn't that evolution specifically is incompatible with Christianity. The reason is that "blame anything" isn't a good answer, whether it's evolution or something else. God is supposed to be in complete control over the universe. The argument "God only let it happen because of X" is nonsense no matter what X is, because God can do anything he wants; he's not subject to constraints.

Comment author: Vaniver 08 April 2015 12:21:31AM *  3 points [-]

they do just fine with internal testicles.

I will admit, I don't know much about bird testicles. But looking into it for 5 minutes suggests that there seem to be more significant streamlining concerns for aquatic and flying animals than normal ground animals, and the different convection for being suspended in water / moving quickly through air suggests to me that it might be easier to do temperature regulation if they're internal (as might come to the mind of any man who's gotten into a cold pool).

Comment author: gjm 07 April 2015 12:40:58AM 3 points [-]

weakest points in christianity?

Depends on what sort of Christianity. For instance, much of blossom's list is clearly addressed to those who believe that God designed earth's living things (directly or less so) but some Christians don't believe that.

Would you care to say a few words about the variety of Christianity you favour?

(In case the answer is no, here are a few suggested weak points for different varieties, all probably expressed too tersely to be more than the barest gesture towards an argument. Hardcore inerrantist fundamentalism: internal inconsistencies in the Bible. More mainstream but still fairly "traditional": arguments from evil and silence. Varieties that stress God's love over his power and suggest that for whatever reason he largely has "no hands on earth but ours", but still see him as exerting moral influence: the fact that Christians are not spectacularly better morally than everyone else. Highly sophistimacated apophatic theology that refuses to say anything definite about God: impossibility of actually having any evidence to speak of for a being so vaguely defined; lack of continuity with the Christian tradition whose existence and longevity are pretty much the only reason for paying any attention to such ideas. All but the last: general shortage of evidence and tendencies for the more impressive sorts to evaporate on closer inspection; maybe complexity penalty for introducing into your model of the universe a god whose properties are so hard to pin down.)

I doubt that many here knows enough about christianity to actually come up with something

I don't know how LW compares with other places occupied by large numbers of intelligent atheists, but my experience generally is that a large fraction of atheists are former theists, many of them former serious and well informed theists. I don't know whether we will come up with anything you find impressive (and of course you may be strongly motivated to find anything we do come up with unimpressive...) but if not it probably won't be out of sheer ignorance of Christianity.

Comment author: [deleted] 07 April 2015 09:41:28PM *  -2 points [-]

Thank you for your answer.

Would you care to say a few words about the variety of Christianity you favour?

I am an evangelic christian and within my belief the gospels override everything else that is or can be seen as contradictory. (I don´t read the Torah since I am not a Jew and I do not seek wisdome in the old testament even though I have had a surprinsingly wise teacher who taught me how to interpret that old rubbish in ways that actually made sense to me.) See, if I believe Jesus was divine, I have to value the words of Christ higher than the words of his followers and mortal predecessors.

I don't know how LW compares with other places occupied by large numbers of intelligent atheists, but my experience generally is that a large fraction of atheists are former theists, many of them former serious and well informed theists.

Yes, my hope was and is that someone like that will answer my question. You are right, your answers do not impress me, you seem to fail to understand important things about christianity. I can come up with much better counter arguments myself, but I really appreciate the honest try. If you would like me to tell you about what I think might be wrong in your picture of what christianity is about, you can PM me or ask me to answer here.

Comment author: Jiro 07 April 2015 09:48:17PM 0 points [-]

you seem to fail to understand important things about christianity

Really? Name the two best examples of people here misunderstanding.

Comment author: [deleted] 07 April 2015 10:09:01PM 0 points [-]

I don´t understand what you mean. Examples of people?

Comment author: Jiro 07 April 2015 10:23:03PM 1 point [-]

Examples of misunderstandings by people.

Comment author: gjm 07 April 2015 11:19:45PM 2 points [-]

Examples of misunderstanding. (Though I think Jiro may have misunderstood your statement that I fail to understand important things about Christianity as saying that the LW population at large fails to understand important things about Christianity.)

Comment author: polymathwannabe 07 April 2015 10:18:50PM 0 points [-]

Besides the entire Old Testament, do you also disregard the books of Acts, Epistles and Apocalypse?

Comment author: [deleted] 07 April 2015 10:20:56PM *  1 point [-]

They have lower priority than what could be the words of God. I do not disregard the New testament, I just "like" the gospels more than the rest of it.

Comment author: polymathwannabe 07 April 2015 10:23:24PM 0 points [-]

Do you agree completely with the Church's opinion on which books should be part of the Bible and which books shouldn't?

Comment author: [deleted] 07 April 2015 10:36:43PM 0 points [-]

I take it you refer to christian churches. No. But I haven't fully read any non-canon gospels yet. Do note this is off topic, PM me or continue our old chat instead, you have not answered there yet :)

Comment author: gjm 07 April 2015 11:18:48PM *  6 points [-]

I am an evangelic Christian and within my belief the gospels override everything else [...]

I take it "evangelic", as you're using it, is not identical to the fairly common term "evangelical" despite its obvious shared etymology? Evangelicalism as generally understood is hard to reconcile with calling the OT "old rubbish". I guess you're using it to mean something like "centred on the gospels".

I'd have a pretty good idea of your likely position on lots of things if you were an evangelical in the usual sense (inerrancy of scripture or something close to it, salvation sola fide, strongly substitutionary theory of the atonement, relatively more stress on personal faith and relationship-with-God rather than more corporate things, inclined to skepticism about anything that could be labelled "tradition" or "ritual", etc., etc., etc., etc.) but unfortunately what you've said here isn't terribly indicative.

your answers do not impress me

They weren't answers, they were (as I said in so many words) brief gestures in the direction of possible answers. If you think I would think half a dozen words would convince you of anything, then I think you must think I think you're either much cleverer or much stupider than is at all plausible.

you seem to fail to understand important things about christianity

I honestly do not know how you could possibly be justified in leaping to such a conclusion from what I have written here. I wonder whether you have perhaps misunderstood the nature of my response.

Perhaps it is necessary to say some of the following things explicitly. 1. Christianity -- like any religion -- is not simply a body of propositions; it is also a community, a way of life, a set of attitudes, allegedly a personal and/or corporate communion with God, a rich stream of traditions of many kinds, etc., etc., etc. My comments are addressing some of the propositions because that is what you appeared to be interested in (e.g., talking about "arguments for God") but that doesn't mean I am unaware of the other things. 2. To any simple argument, whether good or bad, there is generally an almost-as-simple counterargument, to which in turn there is generally a counter-counter-argument one notch less simple again, etc. Of course when I say e.g. "argument from evil" I am not suggesting that on hearing the words "argument from evil" a Christian should deconvert on the spot. I am suggesting that there are lines of argument, briefly alluded to by that term, for which at any given level of sophistication the atheist has the better case. I have not actually made any such argument here, and of course I do not expect anyone to be convinced by the mere mention of a family of arguments. Similarly for all the other things I mentioned. 3. I am well aware that there are varieties of Christian thinking that attempt to sidestep some of the arguments I mention -- e.g., denying that introducing God into your understanding of the world makes it more complex, because by definition God is supremely simple. For each such, though, (a) there are other varieties that don't attempt the sidestep, and further (b) disagreeing with something is not the same as failing to understand it.

Or perhaps none of that helps. Who knows? Anyway, I would be interested to know a few examples of things you believe I fail to understand about Christianity. I think it would be more productive to tell me here out in the open, but if you prefer to PM me then feel free.

(I was a Christian for -- depending on exactly how you count -- at least twenty years. I have held (minor) leadership roles in Christian organizations. I have a few shelves of theology books, maybe 90% of which I have read. My wife is still an active Christian. It is of course possibly that I completely fail to understand fundamental things about the religion that was central to my life for decades (either because I never did, or because abandoning the faith exposed me to some kind of demonic possession, or whatever) but I would suggest that you consider the possibilities (1) that you have arrived at your conclusion prematurely and/or (2) that you would consider that, say, 80% or more of serious Christians fail to understand important things about Christianity. Which, of course, might be true.)

[EDITED to clarify a sentence in which I inadvertently used the word "common" with two quite different meanings.]

Comment author: [deleted] 08 April 2015 10:50:46AM *  -1 points [-]

I take it "evangelic", as you're using it, is not identical to the fairly common term "evangelical" despite its obvious shared etymology? Evangelicalism as generally understood is hard to reconcile with calling the OT "old rubbish". I guess you're using it to mean something like "centred on the gospels".

Wikipedia Yes, it may be confusing but I tend to use words in their original meaning. It is good to check anyway, since english is not my native language.

I honestly do not know how you could possibly be justified in leaping to such a conclusion from what I have written here. I wonder whether you have perhaps misunderstood the nature of my response.

Perhaps I arrived prematurely at the conclusion, but as I said, I think you might have misunderstood, I didn´t say you actually had. If I mean to say that you are wrong, I say that you are wrong. Okey, so you only hint at stuff. Well that don´t help me, is that a more political azccurate term?

Anyway, I would be interested to know a few examples of things you believe I fail to understand about Christianity. I think it would be more productive to tell me here out in the open, but if you prefer to PM me then feel free.

Okey, I will point out the hings I saw as weird. 1. "Hardcore inerrantist fundamentalism: internal inconsistencies in the Bible." Why would a christian need to be a hardcore fundamentalist and interpret the whole Bible literal? You don´t interpret science fiction literal. I guess you mean that this only apply to SOME christians. 2. "the fact that Christians are not spectacularly better morally than everyone else." Well, this seems like an ambitious statement in my eyes. Compare all the countries with a cross in their flag with countries that don´t have it. Compare BNP and corruption, crime rate and wellfare etc etc. Now think about this: Why WOULD christians need to have higher moral? Where do you find that premise in the NT? It seems to me like that isn´t based in christian theology at all, but if you have 20 years experience as an active christian maybe you know something I don´t. 3. "Highly sophistimacated apophatic theology that refuses to say anything definite about God." Hah! Like we have been very successful at definitely defining the universe for hundreds of years of scientific struggle. Anyhow, here are something to consider; * The holy trinity * Jesus saying: I am the way and the life * The statement that Jesus is the son of God and God and all his teachings showing what he valued and who he was and how he acted, which is kind of the whole point of christianity. * First Epistle to the Corinthians, verse (?) 13

Now if we compare this with other religious teachings, I think we will find that we can see differences between the deities.

Comment author: gjm 08 April 2015 05:51:10PM *  4 points [-]

I tend to use words in their original meaning.

Not a bad policy. The trouble is that saying "my version of Christianity is rooted in the gospels" doesn't really do much to distinguish you from everyone else, because pretty much all Christians consider that their version of Christianity is rooted in the gospels. So describing your variety of Christianity as "evangelic" tells me rather little.

as I said, I think you might have misunderstood

Well, your actual words were "you seem to fail to understand important things about christianity". But it's OK; I'm not offended.

so you only hint at stuff

Well, you know, I did consider just asking you "so what kind of Christian are you?" and refusing to say anything about what might be the strongest arguments against any kind of Christianity until the kind is precisely specified. I thought it might help us move forward a bit quicker if I gave some indication of the kinds of arguments that might be appropriate, so that we could work in parallel on figuring out (1) what kind of Christianity to look for good arguments against and (2) what those arguments actually are.

Why would a christian need to be a hardcore fundamentalist and interpret the whole Bible literal?

They wouldn't. My whole point was that there are different kinds of Christians with different kinds of Christianity. One kind -- by no means the only kind -- is the hardcore fundamentalist who claims to believe everything in the Bible (not necessarily literally, but I never claimed otherwise). If I were looking for good arguments against that kind of Christianity, one thing I'd look at is inconsistencies between different bits of the Bible (that appear to be intended as straightforward history or doctrinal teaching rather than any kind of metaphor).

I guess you mean that this only apply to SOME christians.

Yes. If I hadn't already made that clear enough, I apologize. (I thought I had.)

Well, this seems like an ambitious statement in my eyes.

Really? You think a good default position is that Christians are spectacularly better than everyone else, morally? OK.

(I think the cross-country comparison you suggest is totally invalidated by lots of other things that historically happen to correlate a bit with Christian heritage.)

Why WOULD christians need to have higher moral? Where do you find that premise in the NT?

Christians are supposed (at least according to some varieties of Christianity, the ones I'd be taking aim at if I were making that kind of argument) to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, who is the source of all goodness and value in the world.

Christians typical pray frequently (both individually and if following standard liturgies of various churches that have them) for their hearts to be purified, to be cleansed from sin, to be enabled to live righteously. This seems like very much the kind of prayer that the Christian god might be expected to grant, if he were real (it is clearly in line with his stated goals; it doesn't require "interference" with the world beyond people's minds; the minds in question are of people who have already declared themselves willing for him to change them, and are specifically asking him to do it.)

Like we have been very successful at definitely defining the universe for hundreds of years of scientific struggle.

Well, actually, we have. Spectacularly so. Do you really disagree?

[EDITED to add a few other things since I had to write the above in a bit of a rush, which is one reason why it's too long:]

Some suggestions in the NT that Christians should be much better morally than they generally are: 1 Peter 2 says that Jesus "bore our own sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin but live to righteousness"; one can read that as talking about some kind of "imputed righteousness" that doesn't actually involve acting righteously, but I think it's a stretch and more to the point a Christian of the particular kind I said this might be a good response to wouldn't take that position. 1 John 1 and 2 similarly talk of being "cleansed from all unrighteousness" and again I don't think it's likely that the author means some purely formal transaction that doesn't involve actually becoming morally better. He seems to admit only reluctantly that genuine Christians might continue to commit sins at all. In chapter 3 he goes further: "No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him." Now of course 1 John paints with a very broad brush, but there it is in the New Testament and even if the author is overstating his case he must mean something by it. That famous chapter that you recommended I should consider, 1 Corinthians 13: read it in its context; it is saying that love (with that whole extravagant litany of virtues it brings along with it) is the most important gift of the Holy Spirit that is supposed to be present and active within every Christian's heart. Galatians 5 has a lengthy list of "fruits of the Spirit" (which Christians are supposed to exhibit) and most of them are moral virtues (and the corresponding "works of the flesh" opposed thereto are mostly moral vices).

here are something to consider

I'm afraid it's not obvious what sort of conclusion you're hoping I'll draw from your list. Rather than guessing, I'll comment briefly on the individual items in it. I may very well be missing your point, though.

  • The holy trinity ... seems to me a doctrine of doubtful coherence and at best ambiguous support in the NT documents that are generally reckoned the foundation of Christian doctrine. Some Christians contemplating it have had neat ideas (e.g., the idea that the love Christianity makes a big deal of is found within, so to speak, the very structure of the Deity). I don't see that Christianity is any more likely to be right, or beneficial, on account of having this idea in it.
  • Jesus saying: I am the way and the life ... and the truth; don't forget the truth. Anyway, again I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be being impressed by here. There's a fair chance that Jesus's grand-sounding "I am ..." sayings, found only in John's gospel, were in fact made up by the author of that gospel -- don't you think they're the sort of things that the authors of the synoptic gospels might have been expected to record? So if you're working towards a "lord, liar or lunatic" argument then I don't think this is a great place to start. (Such arguments have other weaknesses, but I won't belabour them unless it turns out you really are making one.)
  • The statement that Jesus is the son of God and [etc.] ... well, it's a statement. I don't find that contemplating it fills me with awe or certainty that he must have been who the NT writers say he said he was. Many other religions don't make similar claims about their founders; I guess that's part of your point; but I'm not sure where you're going from there. (Lord/liar/lunatic again?)
  • First Epistle to the Corinthians, [chapter] 13 ... yeah, it's a fine piece of writing. So are some other things in the Bible. I don't see that they're supernaturally good, though, if that's where you're heading; I'm not familiar enough with other religions' scriptures to know how good their Best Bits are (though I know Muslims sometimes say that the sublimity of the Qur'an is evidence of its divine origin).
Comment author: gjm 08 April 2015 10:29:29PM 0 points [-]

Just a note: I see your comments in this thread are getting downvoted, but it's not by me.

Comment author: [deleted] 09 April 2015 05:57:57PM 0 points [-]

I know.

Comment author: gjm 09 April 2015 10:02:00PM 1 point [-]

Just out of curiosity: How? Has someone else been boasting of doing it?

Comment author: hairyfigment 08 April 2015 01:37:33AM 0 points [-]

You have yet to tell us what you believe, apart from the tribal/political reassurance about evolution. What do you mean by "divine" (this is important for prior probability), and what evidence do you believe you have for this variety of Jesus?

I assume you know that scholars largely consider the Gospels unreliable. The earliest one dates from during or after the war that destroyed the 'Second Temple', and we know of no Christian leader in Jerusalem who survived it. Shortly before this Nero supposedly persecuted the Christians in Rome. We know nothing about the history of Christianity at the time when the Gospel of Mark likely appeared, which weakly supports the claim that all the leaders were dead. We can't name anyone who definitely had the power to insist on points of doctrine or prevent innovation.

On the assumption most favorable to the reliability of the early Gospels - that someone in the know wrote them to preserve original Christianity in this difficult time - we should still conclude that they have a lot to do with theological/political disputes of the time which we know nothing about. We should expect to misinterpret something in the text through not knowing this context.

Comment author: Wes_W 07 April 2015 02:11:40AM *  4 points [-]

I don't know if this will feel relevant to you, but a big one for me in retrospect is that the concept of "faith" is really suspicious. When someone says "no, trust me unconditionally on this, I know you have doubts but just ignore them even though I will never address them in any concrete way," that person is lying to you.

I always thought of God as truth-loving. If faith is a virtue, then God's own commands undermine and obscure the truth, while making all sorts of lies equally defensible. The whole structure of the need for faith is just really weird if Christianity is true - but perfectly logical if Christianity is false.

Comment author: [deleted] 07 April 2015 10:06:03PM *  0 points [-]

A good point. I considered this when I was younger and still hadn´t fully turned my head towards christianity. (I still have a long way to go but I now consider myself christian.)

As I see it, we all have our basic premises. Just how much we depend on them differs. We all make fundamental choices. (In case you have read hpmor; Like Harry did when the sorting hat warned him about how unlogic it was for him to hope and risk that he would not turn into a dark wizard if he was sorted to any house but hufflepuff. He knew he was going to choose rawenclaw, but he couldn´t put words on WHY, and yes, that may be seen as suspicious.)

I think it is all about WHAT you put your faith in. Yes, you are allowed to doubt anything. And you should not blindly believe in something until you are ready to actually put your faith in it. It is a risk you take. Willingly. Kierkegaard once said something along the lines: "To have faith is to throw yourself out over a seventy thousand fathoms deep and hope that someone catches you." I don´t respect stupidity, as in suiciding by jumping off a cliff. But I do respect Kierkegaard. When you have found something you are willing to put your faith in, you need that bravery.

The need of faith (in christianity) may seem weird, if you do not know what you are supposed to have faith in. It is an important part of christianity to realize this. Many fail to draw any useful conslusion from the fact that Jesus says that we will be saved if we believe. And I do consider the conclusion that there is no god to be a useful conclusion if that is the best answer that mind can produce. Everyones way is their own making and should be respected. Those who "believe" in something just for the sake of it are not doing it right as far as I can see.

Comment author: polymathwannabe 07 April 2015 10:38:41PM 1 point [-]

To me the weakest points of Christianism are two:

  • The lack of evidence for the existence of its deity. Even proving that a deity exists is not enough; you would still need to prove that the deity you found is the one described by the Bible. And proving that the Christian deity exists would still not be enough; you would also need to prove that the Bible describes it accurately. And even then you would need to prove monotheism, i.e. that other possible gods aren't real too.

  • The internal inconsistencies and factual errors in the Bible. Specialized websites like IronChariotsWiki and RationalWiki can give better descriptions of this problem than I could.

Comment author: Persol 07 April 2015 11:27:14PM *  0 points [-]

I'm not quite sure what you want to see when you ask for the 'weakest point in Christianity'. I thought the easily found arguments and frequently discussed arguments were compelling enough by themselves. I was a regular Sunday school attendee, continued to go to church (for social reasons) even after I started to think the whole thing was random, and genuinely enjoy having these sorts of discussions

The main things that I found had weight is that it's taking the numerous world religions and saying 'this one' without any great reason. When the correct selection may damn you for eternity, it's worthy of considering the alternatives.

  • From an outside view, I see no reason to privilege the supernatural portions of Christianity over other religions. Rhetorically, what do you find as the weak points of every other religion? Don't many of these apply to Christianity?
  • Generic inconsistencies - having read all the Biblical texts (some multiple times), and referencing databases for discussions of the original pre-translated text, the number of straightforward contradictions is outstanding. If we just assume for a second that some of the text was effectively the word of god, you still don't know which parts. And that's disregarding every other religion's text, seemingly without justification.
  • Inconsistencies in practice - some branches of Christianity heavily discount the Bible due to the above.... but this makes the problem WORSE. It just dilutes the 'god content' even further. Arguments of your specific practitioners being 'inspired by god' needs to address all the people who disagree with you but say the same thing.

The specific details about Christ, and your 'flavor' of Christianity, are besides the point in light of the above. Other than popularity, Christianity still has the same problems as Zeus and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

All that said, the best argument for Christianity seems to be as a placeholder belief and social system. For some people it's better just to pick a set of beliefs and go with it (IE: it's a complex/unknowable local minima problem that's 'good enough').

P.S. - I'd be interested in hearing your arguments 'for' God. I've yet to see one that isn't so broad to be effectively meaningless. You might want to just google your argument for God and see if there aren't already identified issues.

Comment author: dxu 07 April 2015 11:49:23PM 5 points [-]

The main things that I found had weight is that it's taking the numerous world religions and saying 'this one' without any great reason.

In fact, it's even worse than that. You're not selecting from the set of all existing religions in the world today, but rather from the set of all possible religions, even those that haven't been invented.

Comment author: Persol 08 April 2015 12:21:48AM 0 points [-]

True and I didn't consider that... but assuming a supreme being had any impact in humanity, it is reasonable to assume that the set of practiced religions are more likely to be true than the set of not discovered religions.

I was trying to minimize the possible tangential arguments. I think trying to expand from 1 religion to 19 major religions is enough to show the problem without going to ~200 religions, which allows room to argue about applicabiliy/similarity of subtypes. Going to all possible religions allows room to argue about applicability of set theory.

Comment author: hairyfigment 08 April 2015 12:51:28AM 1 point [-]

I don't know the best approach for convincing flawed humans, and I would certainly start with the argument from other existing religions (rather than the world-creating cheese sandwich someone came up with). But objectively, given the vast set of possible alternatives that religions ignore, the only real significance to Hinduism or whatever vs Christianity is that it helps show belief is not much evidence for truth. It gives us some evidence (at least in many cases) but not necessarily a significant amount compared to the complexity penalties involved with detailed religious claims. And even an Abrahamic God (or a divine Gospel Jesus, if we treat that as overlapping rather than a proper subset) is pretty detailed if we combine historical claims with some meaningful traits of divinity.

Comment author: Persol 08 April 2015 01:02:49AM 0 points [-]

I know this has been discussed before, but I'm not convinced that complexity penalties should apply to anything involving human witnesses.

Suppose someone theorizes that the sun is made of a micro black hole covered in lightbulbs, and there is no obvious physics being broken.... this is an obvious place to use complexity penalties. Simpler models can explain the evidence.

With the Bible though, we have witnesses that presumably entangle the Bible with a divine being. Complexity penalty in this case shouldn't penalize for extra details. (Considering complexity penalties may still point to "this story is made up for social reasons, and here are some prior sources" instead of "god did it"... but this isn't due to the amount of detail provided.)

Comment author: hairyfigment 08 April 2015 01:22:50AM 1 point [-]

...What? As a technical matter, the laws of probability say that evidence (eyewitness or otherwise) tells us how to update a prior probability, and ultimately a complexity penalty seems like the only way to get sensible priors.

I take you to mean that in a real eyewitness account, we should expect details. That seems more or less right, but largely irrelevant to what I'm saying - even the idea of a human-like mind is more complicated than it appears. That's before we get to the details of the story (which we might doubt to some degree, in more trustworthy cases, even while paradoxically taking those details as evidence for some core claim).

Even the bare claim that God was involved with certain historical figures is another logically distinct detail we need to penalize before we get to the specifics of any one Gospel or source for the Torah. So the evidence of witnesses would need to overcome this penalty. And of course, in order for them to justify the beliefs about God, we would need to understand what that word means and how someone could directly or indirectly observe its object.

Comment author: Persol 08 April 2015 02:13:42AM 0 points [-]

I may have misread your initial comment. To paraphrase to check my reading: you are penalizing due to complexity of a 'god' prior but, on the balance, eyewitness details should increase your estimate of the claimed witnessed set being true. More details from eyewitnesses do not then penalize further. The complexity of the god models are just so complex in the first place, that eyewitness details don't increase your estimate much.

What I'm not grasping is what this sentence meant:

And even an Abrahamic God (or a divine Gospel Jesus, if we treat that as overlapping rather than a proper subset) is pretty detailed if we combine historical claims with some meaningful traits of divinity.

Functionally, we're talking about the set of vaguely Bible shaped gods... not all the details would need to be true. Eyewitness claims that this bible shaped god interacted with a historical figure should STILL increase your estimate of it happening.... even though that increase may still be infinitesimal.

Excepting things like "the following sentence is false", eyewitness details should always increase the chance of something like the referenced object existing. It may in parallel also provide evidence that the 'custody chain' is faulty or faked... but that's a different issue.

Comment author: hairyfigment 08 April 2015 09:23:21AM 1 point [-]

Pretty much. I'm saying that "vaguely Bible shaped," rather than "touched down only in Jackson County, Missouri in 1978," is itself a detail to be justified.

Comment author: MarkusRamikin 09 April 2015 06:43:29AM 0 points [-]

Wait, why? If God existed, I'd expect the true religion to be among actually existing ones.

Comment author: Wes_W 09 April 2015 07:18:17AM 2 points [-]

As long as it's a god with a Big Divine Plan in which humans play a role, sure.

If the gods created the universe so they could watch the big shiny hydrogen balls, and don't care about the emergent properties of complex proteins on that one planet in that one galaxy, we wouldn't necessarily know about it.

Comment author: MarkusRamikin 09 April 2015 10:19:32AM *  0 points [-]

Well crap.

I guess that when I thought "religion", I thought "system of worship", not "system of belief". To me the a religion would be "true" if it accurately responded to a demand for worship or obedience or such. If the creators of the Universe have no preferences over our actions, then at most you could have a, well, description of them, but not much of a religion thus defined. Discovering such beings would not make me a religious person.

Of course now that I thought of it explicitely, I realize this is a rather narrow definition.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 08 April 2015 07:14:53PM 2 points [-]

From my point of view the most hazardous thing about Christianity (this may also be the weakest point logically, but that's a different claim) is that Christianity posits a realm which is different from and superior to what can be perceived directly and thought about logically. This makes it rather easy to treat people very badly, both other people and oneself.

Comment author: [deleted] 08 April 2015 11:05:07PM 6 points [-]

After reading a sizable amount of your responses, I have to ask if your interest is truly in finding weak points of your religion, or if you are merely trying to defend your beliefs to a (largely) atheist audience--possibly hoping to win a few converts, or at the very least trying to reassure yourself of your beliefs.