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lisper comments on Is Spirituality Irrational? - Less Wrong
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Comments (429)
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?
Um... physics?
Really? If you are willing to seriously entertain the possibility that the answer could be "no", why is that not a satisfactory resolution? It seems to me to be consistent with all the data.
I guess I'm surprised to find religious people here. Pleasantly surprised, but surprised nonetheless. I've never understood how anyone can maintain faith in the face of rational scrutiny. Maybe someone here will be able explain it to me.
God is not constrained by physics, is He?
Which data?
I am not religious.
One obvious answer is reliance on personal experience.