About ten years late to the party here, but regarding Aumann, I think you do him an injustice—he is well aware of the conflict between rationality and God. Here is an interview with him that goes in depth into these issues:
He says: “Religion is an experience, mainly an emotional and aesthetic one. It is not about whether the earth is 5,765 years old. ” He goes into more detail. For him, the question of whether or not god really exists is almost irrelevant to his religion. He then delves into game theory and explains how religion and the idea of god allow for coordination among otherwise rational agents, leading to better outcomes for all.
Yep; in the time since this was written, the LW community has gone pretty heavily in the direction of “let’s figure out how to reclaim the coordination and community benefits of religion separately from the weird belief stuff”, and (imo) done pretty well at it.
About ten years late to the party here, but regarding Aumann, I think you do him an injustice—he is well aware of the conflict between rationality and God. Here is an interview with him that goes in depth into these issues:
http://www.ma.huji.ac.il/~hart/papers/md-aumann.pdf?
He says: “Religion is an experience, mainly an emotional and aesthetic one. It is not about whether the earth is 5,765 years old. ” He goes into more detail. For him, the question of whether or not god really exists is almost irrelevant to his religion. He then delves into game theory and explains how religion and the idea of god allow for coordination among otherwise rational agents, leading to better outcomes for all.
Yep; in the time since this was written, the LW community has gone pretty heavily in the direction of “let’s figure out how to reclaim the coordination and community benefits of religion separately from the weird belief stuff”, and (imo) done pretty well at it.