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CCC comments on Is Spirituality Irrational? - Less Wrong
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Yes, but if the universe is an intentional simulation, then someone is running it. (I haven't seen the film myself, but I understand that someone was actually running the Truman Show). The atheist hypothesis is that there is no-one running the universe - claiming that the universe has been designed, by someone, to give the impression of having been designed by someone when, in actuality, there was no designer of the universe is somewhat self-contradictory.
Not quite the same thing. There's no debate on whether or not those trees exist, there's merely debate on exactly what those trees are.
Yes, the type where you look along a long, straight road on a hot day and the more distant portion of the road appears to vanish, leaving the sides of the road apparently delimiting a patch of sky. Mirages can be convincing, but they can't look like anything, and they're very dependent on where the observer stands and the air temperature on the day, so they can be tested for.
I think you're conflating the features of a hypothetical universe that I conjured up to make a point with what I believe to be the case in the world we live in. In the world we live in, there is no evidence that we are in an intentional simulation. All the evidence is that everything we can see arises from simple processes (where "simple" is meant in the technical sense of having low Kolmogorov complexity ).
I'm not sure that's really what you meant to say, but that is not the "atheist hypothesis." The atheist hypothesis is that the appearance of design can come about in ways other than having a designer (like natural selection or anthropic bias), and so the appearance of design is not slam-dunk proof of the existence of a Designer.
Of course. Analogies are never perfect.
Okay, I can see that I was unclear. Let me clarify my point. Well, two points and a conclusion.
Point 1) The Truman Show Hypothesis is that the world has been intentionally designed to appear, in some way, to be something that it is not, and any new attempts to discover the true nature of the universe will be foiled by an active opposing intelligence which is running said universe.
Point 2) The "atheist hypothesis" is that there is no-one running the universe.
Conclusion, taking both point 1 and point 2 into account: Claiming that the universe has been designed, by someone, to give the impression of having been designed by someone when, in actuality, there was no designer of the universe is somewhat self-contradictory.
This does not imply that the universe could appear to be different to how it is. It merely states that if there is no-one running the universe, then the universe can not be run in such a way as to actively prevent every possible means to find its true nature - the universe, in that case, must be running entirely on natural laws without an active intelligence behind them.
...I hope that's clearer.
Now, if we are living in a universe that we merely fail to properly understand, then eventually someone will figure it out, because there is not an active intelligence preventing that figuring out.
Oh, I see. When I brought up the Truman Show I didn't mean for the intentionality of it to be relevant. I just brought it up as an illustrative example of how distant things could have a fundamentally different cause (not necessarily an intentional one) than nearby things.
Let me try this again: there are subjective experiences that some people have and other people don't (seeing trees, hearing the Voice of God). To those who have them, those subjective experiences feel like they are caused by external factors (real trees, actual deities). For various reasons (canyons, the desire of deities to preserve human free will or whatever) the question of whether those subjective experiences are actually caused by trees or deities, or whether they are simple neurobiological phenomena (i.e. illusions), resists experimental inquiry. Under those circumstances, how do you decide whether these subjective experiences are actually evidence of trees or deities, or whether they are illusions?
The point is that this is not necessarily an easy question to answer. The fact that God doesn't talk to you is not slam-dunk evidence that God does not exist, just as the fact that the blind people can't see the tree on the other side of the canyon is not slam-dunk evidence that the tree isn't real. Likewise, the fact that many people hear the Voice of God is not slam-dunk evidence that He does exist, just as the fact that you can see the tree is not slam-dunk evidence that the tree exists.
...oh, right. My apologies for misunderstanding you, then. So, what you were suggesting was basically some form of mirage, then.
Completely agreed. If it was an easy question to answer, then there would not be nearly so many debates about it.
Mind you, in the case of the tree, there is an experiment that can prove its existence, or lack thereof - one merely needs to find a way to get close enough to touch it. (Similarly, it is possible to prove God exists, if He agrees - if He pushes some clouds aside and says "Look, everybody, here I am!", then that'll be pretty convincing evidence, for anyone who happens to see it at least). Of course, these experiments are at least difficult and perhaps impossible to set up...
It was supposed to be ambiguous, that's the whole point. It's a thought experiment designed to get a non-believer to understand what it's like to be someone who believes in God because they have had a subjective experience that, to them, is indistinguishable from hearing the Voice of God. Non-believers seem to have a really hard time imagining that (outside the context of mental illness), so I thought it might be easier to imagine being someone who believes in trees because you have had a subjective experience that is indistinguishable to you from seeing a real tree, but under circumstances where you cannot share that experience with anyone else except through testimony.
Yes. Hence the canyon.
Yes, if God wanted to prove Her existence She certainly could. But the theory is that She chooses to remain hidden because She wants us to make up our own minds about whether or not to believe. (Unless you're a Calvinist, in which case you deny that humans have free will and things get rather bizarre.)
Quite, yes. The thought experiment was that I saw what looked like a tree on the other side of the canyon. It could be a tree, it could be a mirage - my sight is telling me it's a tree, but there are a lot of blind people around who are telling me there's no such thing as trees, and I have no evidence beyond that of my sight.
It's a really good analogy, and I like it very much.
Well - we know that She (male pronouns are often used, but I'm pretty sure God is genderless) chooses to remain hidden - currently, at least. (Interestingly, if one looks at certain parts of the Old Testament - particularly much of Exodus - it seems that God wasn't always so cagey. Parting the Red Sea and dropping it on Pharoah's army was hardly a subtle miracle. And then there was the manna in the desert...)
But whether that's because She wants us to make up our own minds about whether or not to believe or for some other reason, I can't really offer an opinion on. It's possible that She'd be willing to cooperate in an experiment if we could find the right experiment, for whatever reason - but it's also possible, given current behaviour, that God will simply refuse to cooperate with any experiment intended to prove Her existence beyond doubt...
Thank you! You just made my day.
Yeah, but those good old days are apparently behind us. It's a shame that God didn't think to make a video. Now that would have been cool!
One of the things that I've often heard Christians say is, "God could do X and Y and Z (because He (they never refer to God as She) is omnipotent) but He chooses not to." The idea of an omnipotent deity whose behavior is reliably predictable by mere mortals has always struck me as logically incoherent. But what do I know? ;-)
It would have, yes!
...probably wouldn't have survived long enough to be usable in modern video players, though. I don't think there's many physical media that can manage a few thousand years in the desert, short of a miracle.
Well, the argument goes that "God could do X and Y and Z, and no other force could prevent God from doing X and Y and Z, because omnipotence. Yet I observe that X and Y and Z are not, in fact, done. Assuming that my observations are not in error, this means that X and Y and Z were not done; I know that the only reason why God might not do X and Y and Z is by choosing not to, since no force can stop God. Therefore, God must have chosen not to do X and Y and Z."
So it's not really prediction as much as it is observation (and fitting those observations into existing ideas about reality).
The desert is actually quite good at preserving all manner of things. But this is neither here nor there. If God had wanted a video of the parting of the Red Sea so survive to modern times He could surely have arranged it because, well, that's kind of what it means to be omnipotent.
No, it really is prediction: God will never again reveal Himself unambiguously the way he once did. He will forever be the god of the gaps, hiding in the fringes of statistical distributions and the private subjective experiences of believers.