= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Unknowns comments on Questions on Theism - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (188)
I have already read the Mormonism essay and mostly agreed with it.
However, I disagree that you would be using the same standard of evidence in this case. For example, all of the witnesses for Mormonism had readily understandable motives such as not breaking up the group or offending their leader. Something similar may be true about the boy and his parents, but it isn't true e.g. of the doctors who testified to amputating the boy's leg. They were from a different town, were not there when the supposed restoration happened, and had nothing to gain by agreeing with a made up story. Calanda could become famous by such a story, but the doctors would get nothing out of it.
That is only one out of a number of substantial differences.
As C.S. Lewis would say-are they lying, are they mad, or are they telling the truth? People do lie sometimes, and perhaps my difficulty in letting go of Christianity despite a mountain of evidence against it is that my prior on people making up stories is too low. It would take an awful lot of psychosis to make someone believe that a leg had regrown, but again, people do go insane. But is there a way to get a sense of how likely/unlikely this is? With Pascal's Wager on the table, it's not enough to say there's ~40% chance Christianity is true, that's less than half, it's probably wrong. Rejecting it without constant fear would take near certainty that accounts like this one are fraudulant or deceived.
Regarding your priors, I think this case is actually just like the other cases where you said you disagreed with Less Wrong; it is always a question of priors. The prior regarding people making things up is one of them. Similarly, I think your prior on the actual occurrence of extraordinary events is much higher than for the typical Less Wronger, and closer to the prior that ordinary human beings have.
So you could just assume that since Less Wrong is made up mostly of smart rational people who have thought carefully about their epistemology, it is more likely their prior is right, and so conclude that Christianity is false.
However, personally I think it is not that simple. When Eliezer said that he would prefer a machine that would destroy the world if God existed than one which would destroy the world at odds of a billion to one (I think it was a billion, not a trillion), I think that is extremely strong evidence that he is overconfident. So likewise I think it is clearly true that Less Wrong in general is overconfident that Christianity is false. Basically Less Wrong cannot avoid the standard pressures of a political community; just as Republicans are generally overconfident that it's ok to let people have guns, Less Wrongers are overconfident that God does not exist and that religion is false.
Generally speaking, in fact, Less Wrongers appear to have a prior regarding the occurrence of extraordinary events that is much like the prior scientists usually hold regarding such things. But that prior is in fact too low; this is why scientists took so long to admit the reality of meteorites and giant waves at sea, even after such things were sufficiently established by eyewitness testimony.
Of course, that does not mean that your prior is right; it just means the question is more difficult than simply accepting Less Wrong's priors.