a darn good piece of evidence
that stuff like the argument from evil or argument from silence
weren’t why you were an atheist.
I don’t think my being an atheist has anything to do with the argument from evil or the argument from silence. (I can explain more if anyone’s interested.) I am an atheist because, based on my current knowledge, the hypothesis that God does not exist seems far more likely to be true than the hypothesis that God exists. That’s all there is to it.
you can test this with hallucinogens
I assume that hallucinogens cause hallucinations, that is, distort my perception of reality. Why should I want to do that?
they induce mystical or religious experiences and so there’s a good
shot they would do so for you. Have such an experience and still
maintain your atheism, and maybe I will credit your claims to be
atheistic based on purely rational grounds
If I were hallucinating and perceived something that convinces me that God exists, I would start believing that God exists. However, I assume that the effects of the drug would wear off sooner or later. When that occurs, I would recall the experience I had and give the “proof” I saw a serious thought. It is likely that I would realise that the perception was not real, I was merely hallucinating. So I would change my mind back to the belief that God doesn’t exist.
I am not atheist in the sense that I so badly want the God not to exist that should I see any evidence that He exists, I would reject it. I am an atheist in the sense that I consider it reasonable to base my actions on the assumption that God doesn’t exist, and I refuse to start believing in God without sufficient evidence that He exists.
The author of the article, though, seems to have some psychological problem with the possibility that God exists. That’s what my comment was about.
If I were hallucinating and perceived something that convinces me that God exists, I would start believing that God exists. However, I assume that the effects of the drug would wear off sooner or later. When that occurs, I would recall the experience I had and give the “proof” I saw a serious thought. It is likely that I would realise that the perception was not real, I was merely hallucinating. So I would change my mind back to the belief that God doesn’t exist.
That’s pretty much the question. Wright could have reasoned the exact same way… and he didn’t. Would you—really?
Wright’s pre-conversion writing gave me the impression of someone who really wants to base their life on unyielding and absolute moral axioms, so he’s not working that well for me as an ”it could happen to anyone” case. More as an example that the sort of people who like engineering and for some reason become dogmatic hardcore libertarians, communists or religious literalists can dramatically change allegiance after suitable neurological insult.
Mm, I’m not sure that group doesn’t embrace LWers as well. We may claim to be open-minded and uncertain, but are we? We have plenty of libertarians here, after all.
(I think that would be testable, though; IIRC, there are a number of psychological questionnaires measuring dogmatism or need for certainty/closure (from the old research into authoritarianism). Administer along with some sort of religious questionnaire before psychedelic use, see whether the high scorers on one become higher on religion afterwards as compared to the low scorers, and especially the high scorers who report a specifically religious psychedelic experience. Too bad the drugs are so controlled and there will probably never be any real studies on this...)
I’ve been wondering whether an unusual number of smart people these days are ones that were libertarians in their early twenties and have become less so later on. Possibly similarly as in an earlier generation an unusual number of smart people were communists in their early twenties and became less so later on.
There’s definitely a lot of background assumptions sympathetic to libertarianism on LW, but I haven’t seen much of the sort of absolutist first-principles stances I associate with the group of people I’m thinking of in grandparent comment. It’s the difference between thinking that free markets are a good starting metaphor for thinking about arranging human affairs and insisting that a strict adherence to a few easily listed axioms like absolute property rights can be pretty much the only thing you need to successfully run a human civilization.
I don’t think my being an atheist has anything to do with the argument from evil or the argument from silence. (I can explain more if anyone’s interested.) I am an atheist because, based on my current knowledge, the hypothesis that God does not exist seems far more likely to be true than the hypothesis that God exists. That’s all there is to it.
I assume that hallucinogens cause hallucinations, that is, distort my perception of reality. Why should I want to do that?
If I were hallucinating and perceived something that convinces me that God exists, I would start believing that God exists. However, I assume that the effects of the drug would wear off sooner or later. When that occurs, I would recall the experience I had and give the “proof” I saw a serious thought. It is likely that I would realise that the perception was not real, I was merely hallucinating. So I would change my mind back to the belief that God doesn’t exist.
I am not atheist in the sense that I so badly want the God not to exist that should I see any evidence that He exists, I would reject it. I am an atheist in the sense that I consider it reasonable to base my actions on the assumption that God doesn’t exist, and I refuse to start believing in God without sufficient evidence that He exists.
The author of the article, though, seems to have some psychological problem with the possibility that God exists. That’s what my comment was about.
That’s pretty much the question. Wright could have reasoned the exact same way… and he didn’t. Would you—really?
Wright’s pre-conversion writing gave me the impression of someone who really wants to base their life on unyielding and absolute moral axioms, so he’s not working that well for me as an ”it could happen to anyone” case. More as an example that the sort of people who like engineering and for some reason become dogmatic hardcore libertarians, communists or religious literalists can dramatically change allegiance after suitable neurological insult.
Mm, I’m not sure that group doesn’t embrace LWers as well. We may claim to be open-minded and uncertain, but are we? We have plenty of libertarians here, after all.
(I think that would be testable, though; IIRC, there are a number of psychological questionnaires measuring dogmatism or need for certainty/closure (from the old research into authoritarianism). Administer along with some sort of religious questionnaire before psychedelic use, see whether the high scorers on one become higher on religion afterwards as compared to the low scorers, and especially the high scorers who report a specifically religious psychedelic experience. Too bad the drugs are so controlled and there will probably never be any real studies on this...)
I’ve been wondering whether an unusual number of smart people these days are ones that were libertarians in their early twenties and have become less so later on. Possibly similarly as in an earlier generation an unusual number of smart people were communists in their early twenties and became less so later on.
There’s definitely a lot of background assumptions sympathetic to libertarianism on LW, but I haven’t seen much of the sort of absolutist first-principles stances I associate with the group of people I’m thinking of in grandparent comment. It’s the difference between thinking that free markets are a good starting metaphor for thinking about arranging human affairs and insisting that a strict adherence to a few easily listed axioms like absolute property rights can be pretty much the only thing you need to successfully run a human civilization.