Group rationality diary, 1/9/13

cata

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of January 7th. It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

Established a useful new habit
Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief
Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations
Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior
Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something
Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life
Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you
Tried doing any of the above and failed

Or anything else interesting which you want to share, so that other people can think about it, and perhaps be inspired to take action themselves. Try to include enough details so that everyone can use each other's experiences to learn about what tends to work out, and what doesn't tend to work out.

Thanks to everyone who contributes! Happy New Year to folks; my resolution is to always post these on Monday evenings instead of letting them slip to Tuesday or Wednesday : >

Previous diary; archive of prior diaries.

This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for the week of January 7th. It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like:

Established a useful new habit
Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about some belief
Decided to behave in a different way in some set of situations
Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior
Consciously changed your emotions or affect with respect to something
Consciously pursued new valuable information about something that could make a big difference in your life
Learned something new about your beliefs, behavior, or life that surprised you
Tried doing any of the above and failed

Thanks to everyone who contributes! Happy New Year to folks; my resolution is to always post these on Monday evenings instead of letting them slip to Tuesday or Wednesday : >

Previous diary; archive of prior diaries.

Where did you get this idea?

First, I think Deism pre-Darwin more closely resembles atheism post-Darwin than Deism post-Darwin, and so it's more informative to modern readers to use the more similar reference point. Second, I don't see strong reason to believe the self-identification of historical figures in cases where the truth would damage their reputation. Franklin, in particular, gives many examples of bending his public conduct to maximize his reputation.

For example, I take this line from his autobiography to be more significant than the one where he calls himself a thorough Deist:

and farther, that my indiscrete disputations about religion began to make me pointed at with horror by good people as an infidel or atheist.

As for:

even thought organized religions, such as Christianity, were necessary to maintain morality amongst the common people.

I don't think he thought organized effort was just for the common people:

My arguments perverted some others, particularly Collins and Ralph; but, each of them having afterwards wrong'd me greatly without the least compunction, and recollecting Keith's conduct towards me (who was another freethinker), and my own towards Vernon and Miss Read, which at times gave me great trouble, I began to suspect that this doctrine, tho' it might be true, was not very useful.

I get the sense he would have happily attended church if the local pastors were as good at other-improvement as he was at self-improvement, but they weren't, and so going would be a misspent hour. He still paid the subscription for them his whole life (as far as I can tell, as another reputation-preserving measure), and the Junto is probably the closest thing to a religious organization that he actively participated in.