Not everyone agrees with Eliezer on everything; this is usually not that explicit, but consider e.g. the number of people talking about relationships vs. the number of people talking about cryonics or FAI—LW doesn’t act, collectively, as if it really believes Eliezer is right. It does assume that there is no God/god/supernatural, though.
(Also, where does this idea of atheists hating God come from? Most atheists have better things to do than hang on /r/atheism!)
I got the idea from various posts where people have said they don’t even like the Christian God if he’s real (didn’t someone say he was like Azathoth?) and consider him some kind of monster.
I can see I totally got you guys wrong. Sorry to have underestimated your niceness.
For my own part, I think you’re treating “being nice” and “liking the Christian God” and “hating Christians” and “wanting other people to hate God” and “only wanting other people to hate God” and “forcibly exterminating all morality” and various other things as much more tightly integrated concepts than they actually are, and it’s interfering with your predictions.
So I suggest separating those concepts more firmly in your own mind.
To be fair, I’m sure a bunch of people here disapprove of some actions by the Christian God in the abstract (mostly Old Testament stuff, probably, and the Problem of Evil). But yeah, for the most part LWers are pretty nice, if a little idiosyncratic!
Azathoth (the “blind idiot god”) is the local metaphor for evolution—a pointless, monomaniacal force with vast powers but no conscious goal-seeking ability and thus a tendency to cause weird side-effects (such as human culture).
Not everyone agrees with Eliezer on everything; this is usually not that explicit, but consider e.g. the number of people talking about relationships vs. the number of people talking about cryonics or FAI—LW doesn’t act, collectively, as if it really believes Eliezer is right
Well, I personally am one of those people who thinks that cryonics is currently not worth worrying about, and that the Singularity is unlikely to happen anytime soon (in astronomical terms). So, there exists at least one outlier in the Less Wrong hive mind...
Judging by the recent survey, your cryonics beliefs are pretty normal with 53% considering it, 36% rejecting it and only 4% having signed up. LW isn’t a very hive-mindey community, unless you count atheism.
(The singularity, yes, you’re very much in the minority with the most skeptical quartile expecting it in 2150)
Regarding cryonics, you’re right and I was wrong, so thanks !
But in the interest of pedantry I should point out that among those 96% who did not sign up, many did not sign up simply due to a lack of funds, and not because of any misgivings they have about the process.
Also, where does this idea of atheists hating God come from?
If one reads the Bible as one would read any other fiction book, then IMO it’d be pretty hard to conclude that this “God” character is anything other than the villain of the story. This doesn’t mean that atheists “hate God”, no more than anyone could be said to “hate Voldemort”, of course—both of them are just evil fictional characters, no more and no less.
Christians, on the other hand, believe that a God of some sort actually does exist, and when they hear atheists talking about the character of “God” in fiction, they assume that atheists are in fact talking about the real (from the Christians’ point of view) God. Hence the confusion.
In my own experience, one hears the claim more often as “atheists hate religion” rather than “atheists hate god”. The likelihood of hearing it seems to correlate with how intolerant a brand of religiosity one is dealing with (I can’t think of an easy way to test that intuition empirically at the the moment), so I tend to attribute it to projection.
Not everyone agrees with Eliezer on everything; this is usually not that explicit, but consider e.g. the number of people talking about relationships vs. the number of people talking about cryonics or FAI—LW doesn’t act, collectively, as if it really believes Eliezer is right. It does assume that there is no God/god/supernatural, though.
(Also, where does this idea of atheists hating God come from? Most atheists have better things to do than hang on /r/atheism!)
I got the idea from various posts where people have said they don’t even like the Christian God if he’s real (didn’t someone say he was like Azathoth?) and consider him some kind of monster.
I can see I totally got you guys wrong. Sorry to have underestimated your niceness.
For my own part, I think you’re treating “being nice” and “liking the Christian God” and “hating Christians” and “wanting other people to hate God” and “only wanting other people to hate God” and “forcibly exterminating all morality” and various other things as much more tightly integrated concepts than they actually are, and it’s interfering with your predictions.
So I suggest separating those concepts more firmly in your own mind.
Sort of related: The Two-Party Swindle and the concept of belief-as-identity.
To be fair, I’m sure a bunch of people here disapprove of some actions by the Christian God in the abstract (mostly Old Testament stuff, probably, and the Problem of Evil). But yeah, for the most part LWers are pretty nice, if a little idiosyncratic!
Azathoth (the “blind idiot god”) is the local metaphor for evolution—a pointless, monomaniacal force with vast powers but no conscious goal-seeking ability and thus a tendency to cause weird side-effects (such as human culture).
Azathoth is how Eliezer described the process of evolution, not how he described the christian god.
She’s possibly thinking about Cthulhu.
She’s talking about TGGP. (Edited to change the link from this one.)
As far as I can tell, that post also uses ‘Azathoth’ for evolution.
Edited; thanks.
Well, if there were an omnipotent Creator, I’d certainly have a few bones to pick with him/her/it...
Classic example of bikeshedding.
Well, I personally am one of those people who thinks that cryonics is currently not worth worrying about, and that the Singularity is unlikely to happen anytime soon (in astronomical terms). So, there exists at least one outlier in the Less Wrong hive mind...
Judging by the recent survey, your cryonics beliefs are pretty normal with 53% considering it, 36% rejecting it and only 4% having signed up. LW isn’t a very hive-mindey community, unless you count atheism.
(The singularity, yes, you’re very much in the minority with the most skeptical quartile expecting it in 2150)
Regarding cryonics, you’re right and I was wrong, so thanks !
But in the interest of pedantry I should point out that among those 96% who did not sign up, many did not sign up simply due to a lack of funds, and not because of any misgivings they have about the process.
It sounds like 96% did not sign up.
Er, right, sorry, pasted the wrong thing. Editing to fix.
I guess that’s what bikeshedding feels like.
If one reads the Bible as one would read any other fiction book, then IMO it’d be pretty hard to conclude that this “God” character is anything other than the villain of the story. This doesn’t mean that atheists “hate God”, no more than anyone could be said to “hate Voldemort”, of course—both of them are just evil fictional characters, no more and no less.
Christians, on the other hand, believe that a God of some sort actually does exist, and when they hear atheists talking about the character of “God” in fiction, they assume that atheists are in fact talking about the real (from the Christians’ point of view) God. Hence the confusion.
In my own experience, one hears the claim more often as “atheists hate religion” rather than “atheists hate god”. The likelihood of hearing it seems to correlate with how intolerant a brand of religiosity one is dealing with (I can’t think of an easy way to test that intuition empirically at the the moment), so I tend to attribute it to projection.