I consider myself both a Christian and a rationalist, and I have read much of the sequences and mostly agree with them, albeit I somewhat disagree with the metaethics sequence and have been working on a lengthy rebuttal to it for some time. I never got around to completing it though, as I felt I needed to be especially rigorous and simply did not have the time and energy to make it sufficiently so, but the gist is that Eliezer's notion of fairness is actually much closer to what real morality is, which is a form of normative truth. In terms of moral philosophy I adhere to a form of Eudaimonic Utilitarianism, and see this as being consistent with the central principles of Christianity. Metaethically, I am a moral universalist.
Aside from that, I don't consider Christianity and rationality to be opposed, but I will emphasize that I am a very much a liberal Christian, one who is a theistic evolutionist and believes that the Bible needs to be interpreted contextually and with broad strokes, emphasizing overarching themes rather than individual cherry-picked verses. Furthermore, I tend to see no contradiction in identifying the post-Singularity Omega as being what will eventually become God, and actually find support from scriptures that call God, "the Alpha and Omega", and "I AM WHO I WILL BE" (the proper Hebrew translation of the Tetragrammaton or "Yahweh").
I also tend to rely fairly heavily on the idea that we as rational humans should be humble about our actual understanding of the universe, and that God, if such a being exists, would have perfect information and therefore be a much better judge of what is good or evil than us. I am willing to take a leap of faith to try to connect with such a being, and respect that the universe might very well be constructed in such a way as the maximize the long run good. It probably goes without saying that I also reject the Orthogonality Thesis, specifically for the special case of perfect intelligence. A perfect intelligence with perfect information would naturally see the correct morality and be motivated by the normativity of such truths to act in accordance with them.
This justifies the notion of perhaps a very basic theism. The reason why I accept the central precepts of Christianity has more to do with the teachings of Jesus being very consistent with my understanding of Eudaimonic Utilitarianism, as well as the higher order justice that I believe is preserved by Jesus' sacrifice. In short, God is ultimately responsible for everything, including sin, so sacrificing an incarnation of God (Jesus) to redeem all sentient beings is both merciful and just.
Also, I consider heaven to be central to God being a benevolent utilitarian "Goodness Maximizer". Heaven is in all likelihood some kind of complex simulation or positronium-based future utopia, and ensuring that nearly all sentient beings are (with the help of time travel) mind-uploaded to it in some form or state is very likely to bring about Eudaimonia optimization. Thus, the degree of suffering that occurs in this life on Earth, is in all likelihood justifiable as long as it leads to the eventual creation of eternal life in heaven, because eternal life in heaven = infinite happiness.
As to the likelihood of a God actually existing, I posit that with Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, a benevolent God is more likely than not going to exist somewhere. And such a God would be powerful and benevolent enough to be able to and also want to expand to all universes across the multiverse in order to establish as heaven maximally inclusively as possible, if not also create the multiverse via time travel.
As to evidence for the existence of a God... were you aware that the ratio of sizes between the Sun and the Moon just happen to be exactly right for there to be total solar eclipses? And that this peculiar coincidence was pivotal to allowing Einstein's Theory of Relativity to be proven in 1919? How about the odd fact that the universe seems to be filled with giant burning beacons called stars, that simultaneously provide billions of years of light energy, and basically flag the locations of potentially habitable worlds for future colonization? These may seem like trivial coincidences to you, but I see them as rather too convenient to be random developments, given the space of all possible universe configurations. They are not essential to sapient life, and so they do not meet the criteria for the Anthropic Principle either.
Anyways, this is getting way beyond the original scope or point of this post, which was just to point out that Christian rationalist Lesswrongers do exist more or less. I'm pretty sure I'm well in the minority though.
Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, a benevolent God is more likely than not going to exist somewhere.
I would urge you to go learn about QM more. I'm not going to assume what you do/don't know, but from what I've learned about QM there is no argument for or against any god.
were you aware that the ratio of sizes between the Sun and the Moon just happen to be exactly right for there to be total solar eclipses?
This also has to due with the distance between the moon and the earth and the earth and the sun. Either or both could be different...
I’m currently atheist; my deconversion was quite the unremarkable event. September 2015 (I discovered HPMOR in February and RAZ then or in March), I was doing research on logical fallacies to better argue my points for a manga forum, when I came across Rational Wiki; for several of the logical fallacies, they tended to use creationists as examples. One thing lead to another (I was curious why Christianity was being so hated, and researched more on the site) I eventually found a list of how the bible outright contradicts Science and realized the two were mutually incompatible—fundamentalist Christianity at least. I faced my first true crisis of faith and was at a crossroads: “Science or Christianity”? I initially tried to be both a Christian and an atheist, having two personalities for my separate roles, but another Christian pointed out the hypocrisy of my practice, so I chose—and I chose Science. I have never looked back since, though I’ve been tempted to “return to my vomit” and even invented a religion to prevent myself from returning to Christianity and eventually just became a LW cultist. Someone said “I’m predisposed to fervour”; I wonder if that’s true. I don’t exactly have a perfect track record though…
In the times since I departed from the flock, I’ve argued quite voraciously against religion (Christianity in particular (my priors distribute probability over the sample space such that P(Christianity) is higher than the sum of the probabilities of all other religions. Basically either the Christian God or no God at all. I am not entirely sure how rational such an outlook is, especially as the only coherent solution I see to the (paradox of first cause)[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument] is an acausal entity, and YHWH is not compatible with any Demiurge I would endorse.)) and was disappointed by the counter-arguments I would receive. I would often lament about how I wish I could have debated against myself before I deconverted (an argument atheist me would win as history tells). After discovering the Rationalist community, I realised there was a better option—fellow rationalists.
Now this is not a request for someone to (steel man)[https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Steel_man] Christianity; I am perfectly capable of that myself, and the jury is already in on that debate—Christianity lost. Nay, I want to converse and debate with rationalists who despite their Bayesian enlightenment choose to remain in the flock. My faith was shattered under much worse epistemic hygiene than the average lesswronger, and as such I would love to speak with them, to know exactly why they still believe and how. I would love to engage in correspondence with Christian rationalists.
1. Are there any Christian lesswrongers?
2. Are there any Christian rationalists?
Lest I be accused of no true Scotsman fallacy, I will explicitly define the groups of people I refer to:
I think my definitions are as inclusive as possible while being sufficiently specific as to filter out those I am not interested in. If you do wish to get in contact with me, you can PM me here or on Lesswrong, or find me through Discord. My user name is “Dragon God#2745”.
Disclaimer: I am chronically afflicted with a serious and invariably fatal epistemic disease known as narcissist bias (this is a misnomer as it refers a broad family of biases). No cure is known yet for narcissist bias, and I’m currently working on cataloguing and documenting the disease in full using myself as a test case. This disease affects how I present and articulate my points—especially in written text—such that I assign a Pr of > 0.8 that a somebody would find this post condescending, self-aggrandising, grandiose or otherwise deluded. This seems to be a problem with all my writing, and a cost of living with the condition I guess. I apologise in advance for any offence received, and inform that I do not intend to offend anyone or otherwise hurt their sensibilities.
I think I’ll add this disclaimer to all my posts.