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lisper comments on Is Spirituality Irrational? - Less Wrong
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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.
For a mere mortal you seem to be very sure of what God will or will not ever do.
I am indeed quite confident in my prediction that God will never again make the sun stand still. I'm a little surprised that anyone here on LW would find this remarkable.
On the basis of what? (no, I'm not asking you to quote me the appropriate chapter and verse)
There is an old theological debate about constraints on God. Is He really omnipotent, literally, or there are things He is unable to do? I don't think this debate has a satisfactory resolution.
Why are you surprised about finding this attitude on LW?