= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
I feel I should also point out that I was, and am, well aware that Sam Harris is an anti-theist in philosophy, and my indicated source was supposed to be Harris's "Letter To a Christian Nation," indicated by my use of his name and Letter. The source I provided might cause confusion, but the Letter is provided in full and was the source I meant to indicate. There's no mistake that it's meant to be an atheist perspective, but if I somehow implied otherwise instead of leaving the point unaddressed as I thought than that's my fault as an inexperienced writer. If there are any more structure, grammar, spelling, or syntax errors, I can only hope it doesn't hopelessly obscure the actual point I was trying to make.
Rudeness
Really new to this site, I'm hitting a problem I've experienced in other aspects of my life as a student, employee and comedic performer: I'm extremely rude. I don't realize it at the time, thinking that I'm just being blunt, forceful and direct. In the sense that those can all be definitions of similar concepts, then yeah! Well, confidence in myself is a great asset, and I've turned it to positive effect, especially when I need to intimidate someone with a roguish smile and a calm, iron-hard assertion backed up by a blistering intensity (I sound like a Marty-Stu right now. Draco will want his leather pants back.)
But making rationally sound argument should not be about winning. It should be about accuracy, clarity and sanity. If you disagree with me on something I need to remind myself not to automatically fight. What good is being alpha when I'm ignoring my confusion and avoiding my embarrassment at possibly being mistaken. Not to mention that this is an internet forum, so limitations of the medium means attempting to look like a tough guy winds up hollow and sad, like a chocolate Easter bunny that's gone off.
Okay, I'm not one for similes, but I am one for trying to make myself more sane.
I'm pretty sure it's because nominally the article is a review of Harris's Letter to a Christian nation -- though, like many book reviews of the more intellectual sort, the book ostensibly being reviewed serves more as an excuse for the author to write about things he wants to write about than as an actual object of review.
Admittedly accurate. I was reading the letter and re-imagined Russell's teapot thought experiment and thought I would share my source.
In response to
Teapots and Soda Cans
The trouble is, the soda can people are clearly physical. God is somehow simultaneously spiritual and capable of bending the physical to his will. The Soda can people seems like a more philosophically sound (and less trollish) version of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. No theologian with any credentials is going to argue that we could find God with a telescope, other than a few who are only taken seriously when they show a church mailing list a pretty picture of the Hubble Deep Field and write some religious poetry on it.
Theism nowadays is mostly like the philosophical zombies concept, except the claim is that God actually does things and hides them to test everyone's faith. (Based on my extremely loose reading of the obscure elements of theology, this implies that there was a backstory where God went through a lot of suffering to become wise, which probably drove him insane. So basically, God is MoR Dumbledore, but also nonphysical somehow.)
"Spiritual" in this case is, of course, a semantic stopsign. I suppose if one wrote a very contrived map of the universe, it could include God without contradicting reality, but I'd only be impressed if it offered more predictive power than Traditional Chinese Medicine. (I think of TCM as where spiritualism and science meet without one annihilating the other; the qi concept has gone through variations that are sorta-kinda loose approximations of some concepts like thermodynamics and conservation of energy, vaguely like alchemy, which makes it subject to refinement through experimentation, until we get to today and the people who use the concept predictively admit that there's no magic and it's a way of modeling reality that just uses pretty semantic shortcuts. God appears to be a purely psychosocial concept; maybe a scientific study of tulpas can dissolve it?)
ETA: This does not go against the core of your argument, though--the God concept proposes something complex that hasn't been observed ever, and treats it as not only as valid as things that have been observed, but many times more so.
Consider whether your belief is making things clearer for you, or if you're stuck on point Z in an "A->B" discussion. Start by asking yourself, since God in your proposed philosophy is nonphysical, comprised of no readable patterns or energies and exerts no predictable, tangible effect on reality; What is the ontological difference between a universe WITH this strictly conceptual god and a universe with no god at all. Think about it for at least a minute... Okay, you're back? Now, if your answer is anything like "Well, there wouldn't be any difference we could see" then you might have to wonder who you're really arguing against, why you're arguing it and whether you're willing to give your perspective a real new start. Eliezer Yudkowsky's resources cover all of that much more eloquently, including an editorial that essentially gets across that sometimes agreeing to disagree is just a way to avoid having to reexamine one's beliefs, so just a pat reminder to review the sequences if needs be. I'll do my part by entertaining the idea of a non-physical form for a god: We should still be able to observe some kind of pattern that could indicate an outside influence, like binary flashes from the stars that contain all of god's blueberry tart recipes, or predictable and repeatable inspirations in at least one person claiming to be a prophet, or some statistically or psychologically significant distinction between the health, sanity or safety of practitioners of different faiths and similar living conditions. Lacking this, I can still see how my aluminum can people are argumentum ad absurdium, but that was sort of the whole original point of the thought experiment by my interpretation.
In response to
Teapots and Soda Cans
He claims that God, so much grander and more complex than a teapot, cannot be banished with such a simplistic comparison,
I think Sam has changed his mind on how "grand" the Almighty is, and has largely become an antitheist in Hitchens' sense.
See his comments from his debate with Craig. Terms like "evil" and "psychopathy" get thrown about, justifiably, IMO.
Yes, I didn't mean to imply that Harris was purposefully writing as a theist, but rather that he seemed to be trying to defend the position of a theist due to some cached thoughts and possibly a jealous desire to believe despite not actually believing... It seems like a headache inducing way to think, and I just wanted to remark on the apparent cognitive dissonance in his article.
Teapots and Soda Cans
Reading an earnest and thought provoking editorial1 from one James Wood, reviewing 'Letter To a Christian Nation' by Sam Harris. Though atheist himself, he admits a flagging patience with certain attitudes of atheists. I can concede that an atheist's superior and glib demeanor may be due to frustration and no small amount of pessimistic inference about the human condition, though I had to comment about a rebuttal he gives regarding Bertrand Russell's celestial teapot2.
He claims that God, so much grander and more complex than a teapot, cannot be banished with such a simplistic comparison, when I would insist that God is actually much less believable than the teapot for that exact reason. I think Russell's teapot is due for an update which is more approachable and grounded. Here goes:
I claim that there is a discarded Coke can somewhere in the vastness of the Sahara, but I will brook absolutely no discussion about doubting my claim or investigating it for veracity. "Okay," you think, "I suppose I can assume that much to be true. Whatever this man's sources, the odds of a Coke can being somewhere in the desert must be considerable." But I then elaborate with claims that it's actually many, many cans, folded into glorious and artistically pleasing forms, and my obdurate refusal to discuss how it can be proved continues. At this point even the most generous theists would likely start getting annoyed with my odd behavior, yet at the very least what I'm asking you to believe isn't outside the realm of possibility. For all you know (though I refuse to allow you to check) there could be a folk art bazaar currently set up in the Sahara, so really it costs you very little to entertain my view.
And then I say that the cans have taken on beautiful, shimmering consciousness and are forming a society which hides from humanity, burying their chrome castles beneath the sand and moving their aluminum cities whenever we get too close to discovering them. "But..." you try to cut in. Before you can even begin to tell me what you find odd about my fantasy, I'm on the next detail. I claim that all of our major technological achievements of the last several hundred years are all thanks to the secret influence of the Shiny Can People.
Now you have countless legitimate doubts, but every time you try to tell me that, for starters, soda didn't even come in aluminum cans several hundred years ago, I insist that you weren't there so you can't be sure, and how could a mere burden of proof destroy the mighty empire of the Shiny Cans?
I like the utility of the can people because it doesn't start with an outlandish proposition, but if you stick around it gets absolutely ridiculous. Not only does that remind me more of how religion is actually sold, but it also serves to strengthen the original analogy of the teapot by reminding the curious mind that Russell's teapot is infinitely smaller and less complex than God, making it much less embarrassing to genuinely believe in since it would have so much more room to hide.
Odinn Celusta
Planets capable of interstellar travel form an accord that treats less advanced civilizations as nature preserves and agree not to contact or help them.
Sounds similar to the Federation's Prime Directive in Star Trek.
Most rationalists will likely agree that we would trade slightly more homogenized art and culture for cures to disease and death
I'm uncomfortable with the resemblance of this to an argument by definition. It also ignores the more reasonable view that "slightly more homogenized art and culture" isn't usually the worst consequence of more a powerful (I won't say "advanced") society trying to "help" a less powerful one. (Not that that increases the prior probability of space aliens.)
Glad you called me out. There are much worse possible outcomes for encountering advanced intelligence, or at least more varied possibilities, and I note that I need to work on adjusting my expectations down. Still, I suppose what I should have stated is, if there are benevolent aliens out there that are aware of us I'd sure like them to make with the "we come in peace" already and just cross my fingers that their first contact doesn't play out like The Day The Earth Stood Still. But then I have to follow my own advice from the beginning of this comment and be more pessimistic, so it would be exactly like TDTESS, except that Gort would just follow through and blow us up. Hmm... Okay, the Prime Directive (or Underdeveloped Planet Preservation Pact as in my original example) makes much more sense to me now. Thank you for helping me notice my confusion, Document!
In response to
Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Absence
The video game Star Ocean: Til The End Of Time has a model of interstellar society that tries to solve Fermi's conundrum. Planets capable of interstellar travel form an accord that treats less advanced civilizations as nature preserves and agree not to contact or help them. This model does have several problems, such as communication wavelengths would still be visible to us (they have some undiscovered form of communication?) and sufficiently advanced societies should have an ethical dilemma with allowing intelligent species to go through dark ages and protracted suffering for the sake of "not interfering in the development of their unique culture." Most rationalists will likely agree that we would trade slightly more homogenized art and culture for cures to disease and death. an absence of evidence is still stronger evidence of absence, with the only alternative being a series of suspiciously convenient excuses.
In response to
Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs
This reminds me of a thought experiment where perfect averages skew towards one extreme when you eliminate one radical. It makes mathematical sense. Apparently, a village can come extremely close to guessing the weight of an ox by taking all of their guesses and averaging them, even if some indivuals are radically under or over. But change the scope and you may change the median's accuracy (or sanity, as the articles metaphor) Lock the village in a room with no clocks or windows and wait until 6 am, just before any hint of sunlight, then show them the sky and take their guesses. The radicals that guess 'midnight' won't change, but the ones who would have said 'noon' will, so your average would slide to ever more inaccurately early. Just a thought model though, I've never read this precise test being done.
= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d){kind=logo}
Can you be more specific about the behaviors that come off as rude? It looks like you've identified an important problem (and one that many people fail to notice-- congratulations!), but in a very abstract way.
Yes, I made another short post which was about Russell's teapot, but was ostensibly framed around a letter by Sam Harris, and I was more snarky than cooperative with the comments. Well, recognize your errors and move forward, yeah? Thank you for asking for clarification.