God’s non-existence isn’t predicated on any positive evidence for the proposition, but on lack of any evidence whatsoever, which was just as lacking in previous centuries as it is today.
FWIW, the thing that pushed me over into atheism vs. a vague agnostic “maybe there’s something” point of view was my study of the human mind. Nothing debunks the idea of a loving creator better than examining just how f*ed up he built his “children”. So for me at least, there was definitely positive evidence that wasn’t available in previous centuries.
(Technically, that’s not really rational, of course; lowering the probability of a creator deity really shouldn’t have affected my probability of “maybe there’s something”. I suppose it’s more that it confirmed for me the absence of the need for that “something” to exist, or at least the improbability of that “something” sharing human values in any relevant way.)
You know, before Darwin, the Argument from Design really was a good reason to accept some form of theism, although most versions of Christianity should still have been considered stupid. (To be blunt, the world looks more like it was designed by a group of assholes like the Greek gods than it would if it really was made by the single “loving God” of the New Testament.) People were only aware of one kind of optimization process—human intelligence—that was capable of creating complicated artifacts, so it was reasonable to believe that the optimized artifacts present in the natural world were also the product of an intelligent designer. Hence, the Deism of Thomas Jefferson and his contemporaries.
Then humans discovered the alien god and theism became much, much less rational.
Consider the hypothesis that religions represent paradigms for our relationship with the universe. Obviously, science is the best description of how the universe actually is, but religion may be a heuristic that achieves averaged results. Sort of like non-epistemic rationality taken to an extreme. Within this hypothesis, I think that the “loving god” is a more mature understanding of the universe than Greek polytheism, just like “turn the other cheek” is a more sophisticated sense of social justice than “an eye for an eye”. While counter-intuitive, life experiences of a certain kind (not all, surely) point to these paradigms as being more true than the intuitive ones. Religion biases thinking, but also your worldview creates your religion, which is why some people change religions or deconvert.
Consider the hypothesis that religions represent paradigms for our relationship with the universe.
I am confused by that sentence; I have no idea what that means.
Within this hypothesis, I think that the “loving god” is a more mature understanding of the universe than Greek polytheism, just like “turn the other cheek” is a more sophisticated sense of social justice than “an eye for an eye”.
I understand what “an eye for an eye” refers to (and, yes, “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” and all that), but I’m not sure how to interpret “turn the other cheek,” because the first one that comes to mind seems, well, stupid. Not being willing to use force, or have others use force on your behalf, simply leaves you at the mercy of those that are. Pacifism is especially stupid when someone like Charles Whitman decides to start shooting people until someone kills him. It’s absurd to “turn the other cheek” to the smallpox virus, or a hunting cougar that thinks you would make a good meal.
Gandhi got lucky that he was dealing with the British and not, say, the Mongols, who would just slaughter anyone who wouldn’t pay tribute. Indeed, Jesus himself wasn’t as fortunate—as everyone knows, the Romans had him crucified.
FWIW, the thing that pushed me over into atheism vs. a vague agnostic “maybe there’s something” point of view was my study of the human mind. Nothing debunks the idea of a loving creator better than examining just how f*ed up he built his “children”. So for me at least, there was definitely positive evidence that wasn’t available in previous centuries.
(Technically, that’s not really rational, of course; lowering the probability of a creator deity really shouldn’t have affected my probability of “maybe there’s something”. I suppose it’s more that it confirmed for me the absence of the need for that “something” to exist, or at least the improbability of that “something” sharing human values in any relevant way.)
You know, before Darwin, the Argument from Design really was a good reason to accept some form of theism, although most versions of Christianity should still have been considered stupid. (To be blunt, the world looks more like it was designed by a group of assholes like the Greek gods than it would if it really was made by the single “loving God” of the New Testament.) People were only aware of one kind of optimization process—human intelligence—that was capable of creating complicated artifacts, so it was reasonable to believe that the optimized artifacts present in the natural world were also the product of an intelligent designer. Hence, the Deism of Thomas Jefferson and his contemporaries.
Then humans discovered the alien god and theism became much, much less rational.
Consider the hypothesis that religions represent paradigms for our relationship with the universe. Obviously, science is the best description of how the universe actually is, but religion may be a heuristic that achieves averaged results. Sort of like non-epistemic rationality taken to an extreme. Within this hypothesis, I think that the “loving god” is a more mature understanding of the universe than Greek polytheism, just like “turn the other cheek” is a more sophisticated sense of social justice than “an eye for an eye”. While counter-intuitive, life experiences of a certain kind (not all, surely) point to these paradigms as being more true than the intuitive ones. Religion biases thinking, but also your worldview creates your religion, which is why some people change religions or deconvert.
I am confused by that sentence; I have no idea what that means.
I understand what “an eye for an eye” refers to (and, yes, “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” and all that), but I’m not sure how to interpret “turn the other cheek,” because the first one that comes to mind seems, well, stupid. Not being willing to use force, or have others use force on your behalf, simply leaves you at the mercy of those that are. Pacifism is especially stupid when someone like Charles Whitman decides to start shooting people until someone kills him. It’s absurd to “turn the other cheek” to the smallpox virus, or a hunting cougar that thinks you would make a good meal.
Gandhi got lucky that he was dealing with the British and not, say, the Mongols, who would just slaughter anyone who wouldn’t pay tribute. Indeed, Jesus himself wasn’t as fortunate—as everyone knows, the Romans had him crucified.