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All of ZeroBlacktip's Comments + Replies

Navigating disagreement: How to keep your eye on the evidence
ZeroBlacktip00

Yes, but the point of this paper was rational discussion. People who refuse to research their own religion are not rational, yes? So why are we including them as candidates for rational debate? Call me a cynic, but I would rather debate with a reasonable Xtian that has a solid theological grounding than argue with an unreasonable one who hasn't bothered to learn his bible.

And rock is a metaphor, as well as a play on words for his name. Doesn't make him the pope, could just be saying that his faith needed to be emulated. Jesus was sort of known for metaphor, but not for supporting rigid belief structures designed to bilk their followers.

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6PhilGoetz
My original point was that atheists make one simple claim, without absolute certainty, and are accused of being overconfident; most varieties of Christian make many complex and a-priori unlikely claims, with certainity, and are not accused of being overconfident. I wasn't talking about what Jesus said. I was talking about what Catholics believe. (Not singling them out as any kind of implicit comparison to Protestants, BTW.)
7olimay
They had me for 20 years, and I can attest that except for the Young Earth Creationism, Phil is just about right. The position of Roman Catholic church, like that of other institutions, changes with times and with external politics and I notice that individual priests and religious education teachers often have widely divergent beliefs from what is supposedly the established party line. I agree with your overall point because the priors required for a beleif in a Flying Spaghetti Monster are in the same order of magnitude as, say, belief in a Flying Chow Fun monster. To avoid nitpicking and the appearance of attacking a strawman, we could have picked something like the Nicene Creed, which every Roman Catholic mumbles communally every Sunday. In an in-person conversation, we could ask our interlocutor directly what he or she believes and avoid the problem of research. If we were talking about the Great Schism, or ethno-religious tensions in 6th century Alexandria, what you just went on about would have been much more relevant. It's really very much a tangental point here. Can you see why?
6PhilGoetz
I went to church once or twice a week every week for 15 years, and I know what I'm talking about. Every belief I listed is a belief that most Catholics either believe, or are unaware of due to a poor theological education; and in each case you protest either on the basis of the few who disagree, or on the basis of ignorance (Peter is regarded as the first pope, "On this rock I build my church"; look up "apostolic succession", it's actually very important to Catholic doctrine), on the basis of not reading what I wrote (I specifically said "under certain conditions" because I am familiar with the rarely-invoked conditions for infallibility) or with irrelevance or incoherence (flood, disobedience to the Pope).
5thomblake
6000. The world was created in 2003 BC and destroyed in 1996 AD.
4thomblake
Since no one seems to have pointed you here, check out A Technical Explanation of Technical Explanation, and if necessary An Intuitive Explanation of Bayes's Theorem if you aren't familiar with these concepts. Slightly shorter, if you're familiar with the basics: 0 And 1 Are Not Probabilities.
6jimrandomh
No; P=1 has a very specific, slightly absurd technical meaning. If you believe any statement has a probability of exactly 1 or 0, and you obey the rules of probabilistic reasoning, then no finite amount of evidence can ever change your mind. This is why some argue that 0 and 1 should not be considered probabilities at all; they represent states of knowledge that require infinite evidence (and in some alternative representations of probability, are actually infinities). I am an atheist, but not with P=1. Saying that God does not exist with P=1 would mean that I should maintain that belief even if the stars suddenly rearranged themselves into English text that said otherwise, and that would be more than sufficient to change my mind.
PhilGoetz120

Because Atheist means P = 1. And isn't using the correct terms important?

I call myself an atheist, and I don't believe that P = 1.

"Atheist => P = 1" is a slander that theists seek to tar atheists with. The irony is that the situation is exactly opposite: P = 1 is not the atheist belief, but is the theologically required Christian belief.

Even if it were P = 1, why do you take atheists to task for claiming to be certain that there is no god; yet not take Catholics to task for claiming to be certain that there is one God who created the worl... (read more)

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Jack110

Welcome to Less Wrong. We don't like having definition debates so I won't tell you how to use "atheist" but you should know that anytime someone uses the word atheist here they mean someone who assigns a very low probability to the existence of God, not someone who assigns a probability of zero. There has been some discussion here over whether or not 0 and 1 should even be considered probability densities. If you're interested I can link you to that discussion.

He is wrong, but it is entirely possible you are biased, from the Dawkin's School of

... (read more)
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Peter_de_Blanc180

However, as an Atheist as opposed to an agnostic, you have declared there is absolutely no higher being. If you are every bit as unwilling to examine your own beliefs as he is, you are no less fundamentalist

Why is it that if you say it'll rain tomorrow, people assume you mean p=0.75 or something, but if you say there's no god, people assume you mean p=1? Are we supposed to answer every question with, "I'm agnostic about that"?

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2wnoise
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