If these people, who always say I should trust them, already want to control me, they’d probably be willing to lie to me. Once I saw that, the lie was plain.
Of course they’re willing to lie to you, your immortal soul is on the line. If they believed their lies were true then that says something about their epistemology, which could count as evidence against their beliefs, but you’d need to make that argument. Either they were lying and thus you don’t have strong evidence that their actual beliefs are also unreasonable, or they were honestly describing their beliefs in which case they’re not just trying to control you and thus you can’t use that as evidence that they’d be willing to lie to you.
What became clear to me was that it could be turtles all the way down. That if I’m being lied to, that perhaps the liars were lied to and came to see that as the appropriate way of getting people to do the things they “ought” to do. In fact, if you read the Old Testament of the Bible, lying for your belief system is quite highly valued. I didn’t bring that up here because I hadn’t read the Old testament at that point.
I guess my goal here was to recall what rejecting control by lies was like for me.
Where you quote the name “Yudkowski” and say “Why?”, are you objecting to my misspelling of Yudkowsky, or annoyed that I dropped his name?
Where you quote the name “Yudkowski” and say “Why?”, are you objecting to my misspelling of Yudkowsky, or annoyed that I dropped his name?
Objecting to the misspelling. It might have been an honest mistake in your case but it happens enough that I reckon it must be purposeful, and if it is, I don’t know why.
Your post was a good story, by the way. I’m just wary of reaching correct conclusions via potentially incorrect means. It might not apply in this case.
That these people are bothering to establish a church and meet regularly is evidence that they believe something about their beliefs is very important. That they’d lie about heaven and hell is evidence that they think their actual beliefs are very important indeed. Thus figuring out that they’d lied about heaven and hell would be some evidence that you can’t trust anything they’re saying, but also evidence that you should be very careful not to dismiss the entirety of their beliefs.
I’m saying that the arguments given in the OP are not nearly enough to justifiably break from Christianity if one previously believed in it.
Of course they’re willing to lie to you, your immortal soul is on the line. If they believed their lies were true then that says something about their epistemology, which could count as evidence against their beliefs, but you’d need to make that argument. Either they were lying and thus you don’t have strong evidence that their actual beliefs are also unreasonable, or they were honestly describing their beliefs in which case they’re not just trying to control you and thus you can’t use that as evidence that they’d be willing to lie to you.
Why must people do this? Really, why?
What became clear to me was that it could be turtles all the way down. That if I’m being lied to, that perhaps the liars were lied to and came to see that as the appropriate way of getting people to do the things they “ought” to do. In fact, if you read the Old Testament of the Bible, lying for your belief system is quite highly valued. I didn’t bring that up here because I hadn’t read the Old testament at that point.
I guess my goal here was to recall what rejecting control by lies was like for me.
Where you quote the name “Yudkowski” and say “Why?”, are you objecting to my misspelling of Yudkowsky, or annoyed that I dropped his name?
Objecting to the misspelling. It might have been an honest mistake in your case but it happens enough that I reckon it must be purposeful, and if it is, I don’t know why.
Your post was a good story, by the way. I’m just wary of reaching correct conclusions via potentially incorrect means. It might not apply in this case.
The misspelling was accidental—I have several friends with the -ski name ending and so I botched the spelling.
I did simplify my story. When I write about myself, I usually tend to go on WAAAAAY too long, so I tried to be succinct here.
If some of the evidence for the original belief was statements by people presumed to be honest....
That these people are bothering to establish a church and meet regularly is evidence that they believe something about their beliefs is very important. That they’d lie about heaven and hell is evidence that they think their actual beliefs are very important indeed. Thus figuring out that they’d lied about heaven and hell would be some evidence that you can’t trust anything they’re saying, but also evidence that you should be very careful not to dismiss the entirety of their beliefs.
I’m saying that the arguments given in the OP are not nearly enough to justifiably break from Christianity if one previously believed in it.
Of course not. I understood that as calling attention to the possibility, getting over the stopsigns and looking around.