I don’t see why. Non-agents simply don’t fit the definition of “god”, so equivocating on the definition of “god” from “world-changingly powerful agent” to “abstract personification of causality itself” does not really shed any light on anything.
Non-agents simply don’t fit the definition of “god”
This is false. Not only does the LW wiki have a definition of “god” that is a non-agent, the study of theology points one to numerous gods that people believe in that are non-agents. There’s a reason that many of the popular monotheisms refer to their god as a personal god; it stands in contrast to the heresy of a non-personal (i.e., non-agent) god.
Why are you arguing about taste? People adapt metaphors to help them think and act effectively. Human brains like agent-metaphors a lot: witness the popularity of the Moloch essay.
Your problem with classical religion might be that a lot of silly people are classically religious.
“But is the metaphor true” is kind of a silly question, imo.
Also, if there is an agenty God, it/she/he made sure to construct a world where nudges here and there are hard to trace.
Is that your line for good language use, prediction effectiveness? Do you have an issue with Scott’s Moloch metaphor also? What about poetic language more generally?
Look: I am not a major fan of using poetic language to describe real life. Really. Just don’t like it. And the problem with Scott’s “metaphor” is that it wasn’t a metaphor: he actually explicitly tagged the post as having an epistemic status of Fanciful Visionary Visions. It wasn’t supposed to be anything approaching a useful sociological analysis that cuts reality at the joints. It wasn’t supposed to be a rational way to think about the world.
But because it told a colorful story that stirs the emotions, people remember it far more prominently than any of Scott’s writing on mere statistics that actually addresses reality, and now I have to put up with people pretending there’s a demon at work in the world.
Let’s look at why are asking the question. The relevant property in this discussion is “will punish you for being ’uppity” ”. Being an agent isn’t directly relevant to that.
It isn’t meant to be some rigorous account of how the world works, it’s a deliberate mythology. I’m not entirely convinced as to whether it’s a good idea, but aspie criticisms that amount to “god don’t real” are missing the point entirely.
Actually, upon reading that article you’ve linked, I’ve found it to be cogent and well-written but emotionally toxic, tenuous in its connection to facts, and philosophically/existentially filled to the brim with lost purposes. To give examples, the obsession with preserving “European civilization” and the admiration for the internet’s cult of ultra-masculinity (which should really be called pseudo-masculinity since it so exaggerates the present day’s Masculinity Tropes that it dramatically missesothermodes of masculinity, despite their actual historicity) portray the writer as chiefly, bizarrely concerned with present-day cultural trends rather than with the kind of good-in-themselves terminal values around which one could design a society from scratch if necessary.
I mean, sorry to be uncharitable in my reading, but I just don’t see why I should want to build white European Christian or post-Christian society, in the first place. I know that reactionary and conservative communities give immense weight and worry to cultural goal-drift away from whatever weird version of white Christian/post-Christian society it is they actually like (derisive tone because it often seems they like The Silmarillion more than Actually Existing Europe), but it seems to me that the only way to really avoid random drift is to ground one’s worldview in things that are actually, verifiably, literally true. Only an epistemic thought process will obtain consistent, nonrandom, meaningful results.
And since there is a truth of the matter when it comes to human beings’ emotional and existential needs, it seems you couldn’t get anywhere by doing anything but anchoring yourself to that truth and drawing as close as possible. Any deviation into lost purposes, ill-posed questions, and fallacious reasoning will be punished.
If you attach yourself to some invented image of some particular time-period in European history and try to pump all the entropy out of it, try to optimize everything to forcibly fit that image you’ve got in your head, you will only succeed in destroying everything else that you aren’t acknowledging you care about. And since that image isn’t even a terminal goal, a good-in-itself, the everything else will just be more-or-less everything.
If you separate Myth from Truth, Truth will burn you in hellfire. There is no escape.
(Also, citing an imageboard as a source of information about mythology and religion is just embarrassingly bad scholarship.)
Fine, but Dungeons and Dragons is also a constructed, deliberate mythology, and you wouldn’t respond to a quote about “You haven’t met gods” by saying, “Actually, I role-played encountering Boccob the Uncaring, God of Magic, just last Tuesday.”
Well actually, I would respond that way, but as a joke. I would not expect to be taken seriously.
I think this is about the only scenario on LW that someone can be justifiably downvoted for that statement.
I up-voted it for dissenting against sloppy thinking disguised as being deep or clever. Twisting the word ‘god’ to include other things that do fit the original, literal or intended meaning of the term results in useless equivocation.
Whether or not gods “exist” is beside the point, I feel. Whatever it is that forms one’s basis of belief in the world serves the same role. We all “believe” in something that forms our worldview, even if it is a refusal to commit. I think it is being pitched into grief (essentially the membership card of humanity), that exposes our true god. If you believe in nothing, that is what you end up with.
There’s no such things as gods.
I think this is about the only scenario on LW that someone can be justifiably downvoted for that statement.
I don’t see why. Non-agents simply don’t fit the definition of “god”, so equivocating on the definition of “god” from “world-changingly powerful agent” to “abstract personification of causality itself” does not really shed any light on anything.
This is false. Not only does the LW wiki have a definition of “god” that is a non-agent, the study of theology points one to numerous gods that people believe in that are non-agents. There’s a reason that many of the popular monotheisms refer to their god as a personal god; it stands in contrast to the heresy of a non-personal (i.e., non-agent) god.
Why are you arguing about taste? People adapt metaphors to help them think and act effectively. Human brains like agent-metaphors a lot: witness the popularity of the Moloch essay.
Your problem with classical religion might be that a lot of silly people are classically religious.
“But is the metaphor true” is kind of a silly question, imo.
Also, if there is an agenty God, it/she/he made sure to construct a world where nudges here and there are hard to trace.
No, my actual problem here is that these metaphors are not useful for making predictions.
Is that your line for good language use, prediction effectiveness? Do you have an issue with Scott’s Moloch metaphor also? What about poetic language more generally?
Look: I am not a major fan of using poetic language to describe real life. Really. Just don’t like it. And the problem with Scott’s “metaphor” is that it wasn’t a metaphor: he actually explicitly tagged the post as having an epistemic status of Fanciful Visionary Visions. It wasn’t supposed to be anything approaching a useful sociological analysis that cuts reality at the joints. It wasn’t supposed to be a rational way to think about the world.
But because it told a colorful story that stirs the emotions, people remember it far more prominently than any of Scott’s writing on mere statistics that actually addresses reality, and now I have to put up with people pretending there’s a demon at work in the world.
Fair enough. Why insist others share this preference? I like poetry (T. S. Eliot for example).
A ton of math is about metaphors (Lakoff wrote a book about this).
Let’s look at why are asking the question. The relevant property in this discussion is “will punish you for being ’uppity” ”. Being an agent isn’t directly relevant to that.
But causality can’t punish you for being uppity. You basically just cannot be uppity against causality.
It isn’t meant to be some rigorous account of how the world works, it’s a deliberate mythology. I’m not entirely convinced as to whether it’s a good idea, but aspie criticisms that amount to “god don’t real” are missing the point entirely.
http://www.moreright.net/postrat-religion/
Actually, upon reading that article you’ve linked, I’ve found it to be cogent and well-written but emotionally toxic, tenuous in its connection to facts, and philosophically/existentially filled to the brim with lost purposes. To give examples, the obsession with preserving “European civilization” and the admiration for the internet’s cult of ultra-masculinity (which should really be called pseudo-masculinity since it so exaggerates the present day’s Masculinity Tropes that it dramatically misses other modes of masculinity, despite their actual historicity) portray the writer as chiefly, bizarrely concerned with present-day cultural trends rather than with the kind of good-in-themselves terminal values around which one could design a society from scratch if necessary.
I mean, sorry to be uncharitable in my reading, but I just don’t see why I should want to build white European Christian or post-Christian society, in the first place. I know that reactionary and conservative communities give immense weight and worry to cultural goal-drift away from whatever weird version of white Christian/post-Christian society it is they actually like (derisive tone because it often seems they like The Silmarillion more than Actually Existing Europe), but it seems to me that the only way to really avoid random drift is to ground one’s worldview in things that are actually, verifiably, literally true. Only an epistemic thought process will obtain consistent, nonrandom, meaningful results.
And since there is a truth of the matter when it comes to human beings’ emotional and existential needs, it seems you couldn’t get anywhere by doing anything but anchoring yourself to that truth and drawing as close as possible. Any deviation into lost purposes, ill-posed questions, and fallacious reasoning will be punished.
If you attach yourself to some invented image of some particular time-period in European history and try to pump all the entropy out of it, try to optimize everything to forcibly fit that image you’ve got in your head, you will only succeed in destroying everything else that you aren’t acknowledging you care about. And since that image isn’t even a terminal goal, a good-in-itself, the everything else will just be more-or-less everything.
If you separate Myth from Truth, Truth will burn you in hellfire. There is no escape.
(Also, citing an imageboard as a source of information about mythology and religion is just embarrassingly bad scholarship.)
Says the guy citing a deliberately informal wiki as a source of information about historical cultures :P
Fine, but Dungeons and Dragons is also a constructed, deliberate mythology, and you wouldn’t respond to a quote about “You haven’t met gods” by saying, “Actually, I role-played encountering Boccob the Uncaring, God of Magic, just last Tuesday.”
Well actually, I would respond that way, but as a joke. I would not expect to be taken seriously.
I up-voted it for dissenting against sloppy thinking disguised as being deep or clever. Twisting the word ‘god’ to include other things that do fit the original, literal or intended meaning of the term results in useless equivocation.
Whether or not gods “exist” is beside the point, I feel. Whatever it is that forms one’s basis of belief in the world serves the same role. We all “believe” in something that forms our worldview, even if it is a refusal to commit. I think it is being pitched into grief (essentially the membership card of humanity), that exposes our true god. If you believe in nothing, that is what you end up with.
What are you talking about?