Michael_Sullivan comments on Fake Morality - Less Wrong

46 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 November 2007 09:32PM

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Comment author: Michael_Sullivan 09 November 2007 06:36:56PM 0 points [-]

If I thought there were a God, then his opinions about morality would in fact be persuasive to me. Not infinitely persuasive, but still strong evidence. It would be nice to clear up some (not all) of my moral uncertainty by relying on his authority.

The problem (and this is coming from someone who *does* still believe in God, so yes, OB still has at least one religious reader left) is that for pretty much any possible God, we have only *very* weak and untrustworthy indications of God's desires. So there's huge uncertainty just in the question of "what does God want?". What we know about this comes down to what other people (both current and historically) tell us about what they believe god wants, and whatever we experience directly in our internal prayer life. All this evidence is fairly untrustworthy on it's own. Even with direct personal experience, it's not immediately obvious to an honest skeptic whether that's coming from God, Satan or a bit of underdone potato.