NancyLebovitz comments on The Puzzle of Faith and Belief - LessWrong

-11 [deleted] 28 September 2014 03:21PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (88)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 29 September 2014 02:18:25AM 0 points [-]

Anyone who believes in miracles doesn't believe the laws of physics are entirely reliable. This is most but not all religious people.

On the other hand, it's probably more important to find out how often, in what way, and under what circumstances someone believes the laws of physics break down rather than whether they believe the laws of physics are absolutely true all the time.

Comment author: Lumifer 29 September 2014 02:31:31AM 5 points [-]

Anyone who believes in miracles doesn't believe the laws of physics are entirely reliable.

Anyone who believes the laws of physics as currently understood are entirely reliable believes in miracles.

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 29 September 2014 03:23:28AM *  3 points [-]

Anyone who believes in miracles doesn't believe the laws of physics are entirely reliable.

Unless and until a ToE is found, nobody should believe the "laws of physics are entirely reliable".

Comment author: Kawoomba 29 September 2014 12:11:45PM 2 points [-]

Even with a ToE, a remnant of doubt always must remain, as required by the ToE being in principle open to being falsified / contradicted by future evidence.

However, that inherent lingering unreliability cannot be twisted into believing some "favorite miracle" to be more likely, e.g. unicorns.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 29 September 2014 09:07:22AM 1 point [-]

Anyone who believes in miracles doesn't believe the laws of physics are entirely reliable.

Yeah, but they may have the concept (not necessarily explicit) of separate magisteria... so they may believe that the laws of physics are entirely reliable when constructing a microwave oven and similar stuff, but unreliable when God purposefully decides to break them.

In other words, if you believe we live in the Matrix, but you also believe that the Lords of Matrix don't micromanage most of the stuff, you can still scientifically research the (default) rules of the Matrix.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 29 September 2014 11:53:30AM 1 point [-]

I also think the vast majority of religious people think large miracles are something that used to happen, but can't reasonably be expected any more.

Comment author: ShannonFriedman 29 September 2014 04:35:05AM 0 points [-]

Keep in mind that we live in a country with "One nation under God" written on the money supply - we're in a religious country, even though there is for the most part separation of church and state. Physics is taught in high schools in the same country, so odds are that the majority believe both in God and Physics.

Comment author: ShannonFriedman 29 September 2014 04:15:18AM 0 points [-]

The other two commenters who beat me to it named the most common logic I hear from people who believe in miracles. I have never heard anyone attribute it to the laws of physics being incorrect.