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I think there's a bug in your theist-simulation module ^^
I've yet to meet one that could have spontaneously come up with that statement.
Anyway, more to the point... in the definition of god you give, it seems to me that the "lives in sky with superpowers" part is sort of tacked on to the "creates morality" part, and I don't see why I can't talk about the "creates morality" part separate from the tacked-on bits. And if that is possible, I think this definition of god is still vulnerable to the dilemma (although it would seem clear that the second horn is the correct one; god contains a perfect implementation of morality, therefore what he says happens to be moral).
Hi there.
Are you a real theist or do you just like to abuse the common terminology (like, as far as I can tell, user:WillNewsome)? :)
A real theist. Even a Christian, although mostly Deist these days.
So you think there's a god, but it's conceivable that the god has basically nothing to do with our universe?
If so, I don't see how you can believe this while giving a similar definition for "god" as an average (median?) theist.
(It's possible I have an unrepresentative sample, but all the Christians I've met IRL who know what deism is consider it a heresy... I think I tend to agree with them that there's not that much difference between the deist god and no god...)
That "mostly" is important. While there is a definite difference between deism and atheism (it's all in the initial conditions) it would still be considered heretical by all major religions except maybe Bhuddism because they all claim miracles. I reckon Jesus and maybe a few others probably worked miracles, but that God doesn't need to do all that much; He designed this world and thus presumably planned it all out in advance (or rather from outside our four-dimensional perspective.) But there were still adjustments, most importantly Christianity, which needed a few good miracles to demonstrate authority (note Jesus only heals people in order to demonstrate his divine mandate, not just to, well, heal people.)
That depends on the Gospel in question. The Johannine Jesus works miracles to show that he's God; the Matthean Jesus is constantly frustrated that everyone follows him around, tells everyone to shut up, and rejects Satan's temptation to publicly show his divine favor as an affront to God.
He works miracles to show authority. That doesn't necessarily mean declaring you're the actual messiah, at least at first.
So you can have N>1 miracles and still have deism? I always thought N was 0 for that.
I think (pure) deism is N=1 ("let's get this thing started") and N=0 is "atheism is true but I like thinking about epiphenomena".
I'm not actually a deist. I'm just more deist than the average theist.
OK, you've convinced me you're (just barely) a theist (and not really a deist as I understand the term).
To go back to the original quotation (http://lesswrong.com/lw/fv3/by_which_it_may_be_judged/80ut):
So you consider the "factual question" above to be meaningful? If so, presumably you give a low probability for living in the "weird hybrid universe"? How low?
About the same as 2+2=3. The universe exists; gotta have a creator. God is logically necessary so ...
OK; my surprise was predicated on the hypothetical theist giving the sentence a non-negligible probability; I admit I didn't express this originally, so you'll have to take my word that it's what I meant. Thanks for humoring me :)
On another note, you do surprise me with "God is logically necessary"; although I know that's at least a common theist position, it's difficult for me to see how one can maintain that without redefining "god" into something unrecognizable.
Despite looking for some way to do so, I've never found any. I presume you can't. Philosophical theists are happy to completely ignore this issue, and gaily go on to conflate this new "god" with their previous intuitive ideas of what "god" is, which is (from the outside view) obviously quite confused and a very bad way to think and to use words.
This "God is logically necessary" is an increasingly common move among philosophical theists, though virtually unheard of in the wider theistic community.
Of course it is frustratingly hard to argue with. No matter how much evidence an atheist tries to present (evolution, cosmology, plagues, holocausts, multiple religions, psychology of religious experience and self-deception, sociology, history of religions, critical studies of scriptures etc. etc.) the theist won't update an epistemic probability of 1 to anything less than 1, so is fundamentally immovable.
My guess is that this is precisely the point: the philosophical theist basically wants a position that he can defend "come what may" while still - at least superficially - playing the moves of the rationality game, and gaining a form of acceptance in philosophical circles.
Oh, OK. I just meant it sounds like something I would say, probably in order to humour an atheist.
The traditional method is the Ontological argument, not to be confused with two other arguments with that name; but it's generally considered rather ... suspect. However, it does get you a logically necessary, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God; I'm still somewhat confused as to whether it's actually valid.
It is logically necessary that the cause of the universe be sapient?
Define "sapient". An optimiser, certainly.
So it is trivially likely that the creator of the universe (God) embodies the set of axioms which describe morality? God is not good?
I handle that contradiction by pointing out that the entity which created the universe, the abstraction which is morality, and the entity which loves genocide are not necessarily the same.
There certainly seems to be some sort of optimisation going on.
But I don't come to LW to debate theology. I'm not here to start arguments. Certainly not about an issue the community has already decided against me on.
"Creation must have a creator" is about as good as "the-randomly-occuring-totailty randomly occurred".
OK, firstly, I'm not looking for a debate on theology here; I'm well aware of what the LW consensus thinks of theism.
Secondly, what the hell is that supposed to mean?
And also, to occasionally demonstrate profound bigotry, as in Matthew 15:22-26:
Was his purpose in that to demonstrate that "his divine mandate" applied only to persons of certain ethnicities?
One, that's NOT using his powers.
Two, she persuaded him otherwise.
And three, I've seen it argued he knew she would offer a convincing argument and was just playing along. Not sure how solid that argument is, but ... it does sound plausible.
Deism is essentially the belief that an intelligent entity formed, and then generated all of the universe, sans other addendums, as opposed to the belief that a point mass formed and chaoticly generated all of the universe.
Yes, but those two beliefs don't predict different resulting universes as far as I can tell. They're functionally equivalent, and I disbelieve the one that has to pay a complexity penalty.