In many contexts where a quite important distinction between two terms exists, it is helpful to say what it is, rather than simply assert that there is one.
Admittedly, I have no reason to believe this is one such context.
I’m pretty sure the distinction Will was making was as follows.
A “god” is a being with superhuman powers and so forth, possibly existing somehow “on another plane of existence”, but still in some sense the same kind of thing as us: another thing among all the things there are.
“God” is not in any way the same sort of thing as we are. God is not just “another thing” but, in theologian-speak, the Ground Of All Being, a sort of precondition for everything else.
However, it’s possible that he’s making a different distinction, wherein “God” means a unique divine being of infinite power who created everything and “god” means lesser beings like the Greek gods.
(If he’s making the first distinction, I would remark that (1) most theists’ notions of God do in fact fall under the description of “god”, and (2) the radically different notion of “God” is of very doubtful coherence. If he’s making the second, I’m unconvinced that the distinction is as important as he suggests it is.)
(Hastily written:) I agree with your (1), but think that’s all the more reason to make clear distinctions instead of further muddying the epistemic waters; it’s much as if creationists didn’t bother to distinguish between something like Pokemon evolution and actual evolutionary biology, because after all most evolutionists can’t tell the difference.
Mildly disagree with your (2): I can see how the coherence of the God idea is somewhat doubtful, but there aren’t actually any overwhelmingly strong arguments in terms of metaphysics that that is the case, and most atheists take a different route by more or less rejecting all of metaphysics and instead placing emphasis on epistemology. (Then there are weaksauce theists like Kant and William James to argue with but I don’t think that’s as challenging.) Although I’m sympathetic to skepticism of metaphysics we should keep in mind that the obvious attempts to banish it have failed (e.g. logical positivism), and we should also keep in mind that though LessWrong is (somewhat justifiably) allergic to the word “metaphysics”, metaphysics actually shows up here quite a bit in the guise of computationalism/simulationism and in some semi-epistemic rules like Eliezer’s GAZP. So to reject metaphysics entirely would be inconsistent; from there, charitably engaging the actual metaphysical arguments of philosophical theists would be necessary, and I see this done very rarely.
In the meantime I think assigning probabilities below, say, 1% to philosophical theism would be premature, especially when the motivations for doing so seem largely to be desires to reverse the stupidity of religious thinking, when philosophical theism stems from Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and isn’t easily dismissed as the rationalizations of a Christian hegemony the way that most atheists seem to assume in practice.
(ETA: It occurs to me that David Chalmers, who is LW-friendly and the editor of Metametaphysics, would be a good person to ask about the tenability of philosophical theism, from a metaphilosophical perspective. I might send him an email / LW message.)
(ETA: It occurs to me that David Chalmers, who is LW-friendly and the editor of Metametaphysics, would be a good person to ask about the tenability of philosophical theism, from a metaphilosophical perspective. I might send him an email / LW message.)
Did you ever end up doing this, and if so, would you mind sharing the response?
In many contexts where a quite important distinction between two terms exists, it is helpful to say what it is, rather than simply assert that there is one.
Admittedly, I have no reason to believe this is one such context.
I’m pretty sure the distinction Will was making was as follows.
A “god” is a being with superhuman powers and so forth, possibly existing somehow “on another plane of existence”, but still in some sense the same kind of thing as us: another thing among all the things there are.
“God” is not in any way the same sort of thing as we are. God is not just “another thing” but, in theologian-speak, the Ground Of All Being, a sort of precondition for everything else.
However, it’s possible that he’s making a different distinction, wherein “God” means a unique divine being of infinite power who created everything and “god” means lesser beings like the Greek gods.
(If he’s making the first distinction, I would remark that (1) most theists’ notions of God do in fact fall under the description of “god”, and (2) the radically different notion of “God” is of very doubtful coherence. If he’s making the second, I’m unconvinced that the distinction is as important as he suggests it is.)
(Hastily written:) I agree with your (1), but think that’s all the more reason to make clear distinctions instead of further muddying the epistemic waters; it’s much as if creationists didn’t bother to distinguish between something like Pokemon evolution and actual evolutionary biology, because after all most evolutionists can’t tell the difference.
Mildly disagree with your (2): I can see how the coherence of the God idea is somewhat doubtful, but there aren’t actually any overwhelmingly strong arguments in terms of metaphysics that that is the case, and most atheists take a different route by more or less rejecting all of metaphysics and instead placing emphasis on epistemology. (Then there are weaksauce theists like Kant and William James to argue with but I don’t think that’s as challenging.) Although I’m sympathetic to skepticism of metaphysics we should keep in mind that the obvious attempts to banish it have failed (e.g. logical positivism), and we should also keep in mind that though LessWrong is (somewhat justifiably) allergic to the word “metaphysics”, metaphysics actually shows up here quite a bit in the guise of computationalism/simulationism and in some semi-epistemic rules like Eliezer’s GAZP. So to reject metaphysics entirely would be inconsistent; from there, charitably engaging the actual metaphysical arguments of philosophical theists would be necessary, and I see this done very rarely.
In the meantime I think assigning probabilities below, say, 1% to philosophical theism would be premature, especially when the motivations for doing so seem largely to be desires to reverse the stupidity of religious thinking, when philosophical theism stems from Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and isn’t easily dismissed as the rationalizations of a Christian hegemony the way that most atheists seem to assume in practice.
(ETA: It occurs to me that David Chalmers, who is LW-friendly and the editor of Metametaphysics, would be a good person to ask about the tenability of philosophical theism, from a metaphilosophical perspective. I might send him an email / LW message.)
Did you ever end up doing this, and if so, would you mind sharing the response?