Captain_Obvious comments on Is Humanism A Religion-Substitute? - Less Wrong

27 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 26 March 2008 04:18AM

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Comment author: Captain_Obvious 27 March 2008 06:17:02PM 0 points [-]

Space shuttles weren't present in our era of evolutionary adaptedness, neither was science.

OK, but neither was anything like our modern forms of religion. Just because you don't have something to fit a given hole doesn't mean the hole couldn't exist (and of course I'm kidding about the specifics of the shuttle-launch-shaped-hole)

Besides, while "modern" science wasn't present, the overall goal (trying to understand the world we find ourselves in) certainly was. Lacking anything like modern science, people had to "fill in the hole" (in their understanding of their world) with religion.

Regardless of whether that's actually true or not (and I'm certainly no anthropoligist!), my real point is that it's incredibly presumptuous of the religionists to assume that just because thing A causes person 1 to feel similar to how thing B causes person 2 to feel, that person 1 is obviously trying to fill an B-shaped hole with A, which is merely a pale substitute for B, whereas B is "clearly" the genuine article. They don't even consider for a second that person 2 might be filling an A-shaped hole with B!