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Lumifer comments on Making My Peace with Belief - Less Wrong Discussion
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First, this is irrelevant to the question of who makes better predictions; and second, you might be able to show correlation but I have strong doubts you would be able to show causation.
Predictions for what makes for a good life?
I think that religions do not predict anything, but help people deal with their lot in life -- whatever it might be.
Religions predict a lot of things. Every commandment in the Bible is a prediction, a hypothesis. Every parable, likewise. Do this, not that; the prediction is that "this" is better than "that". If, on the whole, people who are strongly religious are more happy, those predictions hold true.
Maybe, but smushing together "making predictions" and "having a particular vision of the world" gets dangerously close to empty philosophising. Of course every worldview implies predictions, but "Jesus Loves You" isn't an exercise in forecasting.
Besides, consider evolution. "Do not kill" works because societies without this commandment disintegrate pretty rapidly and do not make it. That doesn't make it a prediction, just -- like in biology -- a change that's good enough to survive.
Every hypothesis is a "particular vision of the world", a particular idea about how the world works. Its usefulness is how well this idea translates to prediction.
Science is just as much an evolutionary process? I'm not sure what the criticism here is.