Is there a post in the Sequences about when it is justifiable to not pursue going down a rabbit hole? It’s a fairly general question, but the specific context is a tale as old as time. My brother, who has been an atheist for decades, moved to Utah. After 10 years, he now asserts that he was wrong and his “rigorous pursuit” of verifying with logic and his own eyes, leads him to believe the Bible is literally true. I worry about his mental health so I don’t want to debate him, but felt like I should give some kind of justification for why I’m not personally embarking on a bible study. There’s a potential subtext of, by not following his path, I am either not that rational, or lack integrity. The subtext may not really be there, but I figure if I can provide a well thought out response or summarize something from EY, it might make things feel more friendly, e.g. “I personally don’t have enough evidence to justify spending the time on this, but I will keep an open mind if any new evidence comes up.”
More concrete than your actual question, but there’s a couple options you can take:
acknowledge that there’s a form of social truth whereby the things people insist upon believing are functionally true. For instance, there may be no absolute moral value to criticism of a particular leader, but in certain countries the social system creates a very unambiguous negative value to it. Stick to the observable—if he does an experiment, replicate that experiment for yourself and share the results. If you get different results, examine why. IMO, attempting in good faith to replicate whatever experiments have convinced him that the world works differently from how he previously thought would be the best steelman for someone framing religion as rationalism.
There is of course the “which bible?” question. Irrefutable proof of the veracity of the old testament, if someone had it, wouldn’t answer the question of which modern religion incorporating it is “most correct”.
It’s entirely valid and consistent with rationalism to have the personal preference to not accept any document as fully and literally true. If you can gently find out how he handles the internal contradictions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_consistency_of_the_Bible), you’ve got a ready-made argument for taking some things figuratively.
And as unsolicited social advice, distinct from the questions of rationalism—don’t strawman him into someone who criticizes your atheism until he as an actual human tells you what if any actual critiques he has. That’s not nice. What is nice is to frame it as a harm reduction option, because organized religion can be great for some people with mental health struggles, and tell him the truth about what you see in his current behavior that you like and support. For instance if his church gets him more involved with the community, or encourages him to do more healthy behaviors or less unhealthy ones, maintain common ground by endorsing the outcomes of his beliefs rather than endorsing the beliefs themselves.
If the Utah mention means the Mormons in particular, their standard answer is that the Bible is only correct “as far as it is translated correctly” (that phrasing appears in their extended canon), which is a motte they can always retreat to if one presses them too hard on Biblical correctness generally. However, that doesn’t apply to the rest of their canon, so pressure may be more fruitful there. (If it’s not the Mormons, the rest of my comment probably isn’t relevant either.)
There is of course the “which bible?” question. Irrefutable proof of the veracity of the old testament, if someone had it, wouldn’t answer the question of which modern religion incorporating it is “most correct”.
The Book of Mormon would at least narrow it down to the LDS movement, although there have been a few small schisms in their relatively short history.
if he does an experiment, replicate that experiment for yourself and share the results. If you get different results, examine why. IMO, attempting in good faith to replicate whatever experiments have convinced him that the world works differently from how he previously thought would be the best steelman for someone framing religion as rationalism.
Disagree with this one. The experiment the Mormon missionaries will insist on is Moroni’s Promise: read the Book of Mormon and then pray to God for a spiritual confirmation. The main problem with this experiment should be obvious to any good scientist: no controls. To be fair, one should try the experiment on many other books (holy or otherwise) to see if there are any other hits. Also, a null result is invariably interpreted as failing to do the experiment correctly, because it’s guaranteed by God, see, it’s right there in the book. The inability to accept a negative outcome is also rather unscientific. And finally, a “spiritual confirmation” will be interpreted for you as coming from (their particular version of) God, rather than some other explanation for a human emotional response, which we all know, can be achieved in numerous other ways that don’t particularly rely on God as an explanation. Make the experiment fair before you agree to play with a stacked deck!
If your brother has a history of being rational and evidence driven, you might encourage them to spend some time lurking on /r/AcademicBiblical on Reddit. They require citations for each post or comment, so he may be frustrated if he tries to participate, especially if in the midst of a mental health crisis. But lurking would be very informative very quickly.
I was a long time participant there before leaving Reddit, and it’s a great place for evidence driven discussion of the texts. Its a mix of atheists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Norse pagans, etc. (I’m an Agnostic myself that strongly believes we’re in a simulation, so it really was all sorts there.)
Might be a healthy reality check to apologist literalism, even if not necessarily disrupting a newfound theological inclination.
The nice things about a rabbit hole is that while not always, it’s often the case that someone else has traveled down whatever one you aren’t up for descending into.
(Though I will say in its defense, that particular field is way more interesting than you’d ever think if you never engaged with the material through an academic lens. There’s a lot of very helpful lessons in critical analysis wrapped up in the field given the strong anchoring and survivorship biases and how that’s handled both responsibly and irresponsibly by different camps.)
Theism is a symptom of epistemic deficiency. Atheism follows from epistemic sufficiency, but not all atheists are rational or sane. The epistemically virtuous do not believe on insufficient evidence, nor ignore or groundlessly dismiss evidence relevant to beliefs they hold.
That goes for both of you. The Litany of Tarsky is the correct attitude for a rationalist, and it’s about not thumbing the scales. If your brother were sane (to rationalist standards), he would not hold such a belief, given the state of readily available evidence. If he hasn’t figured this out, it’s either because he’s put his thumb on the scales or refuses to look. Organized religions (that have survived) teach their adherents not to look (ironically), and that it is virtuous to thumb the scales (faith), and that is something they have in common with cults, although not always to the same degree. These tactics are dark arts—symmetric weapons, that can promote any other beliefs (false or otherwise) just as easily.
If you feel like talking to him about it, but don’t want it to devolve into a debate, Street Epistemology is a pretty good approach. It can help dislodge irrational beliefs without attacking them directly, by instead promoting better epistemics (by Socratically poking holes in bad epistemics).
Is there a post in the Sequences about when it is justifiable to not pursue going down a rabbit hole? It’s a fairly general question, but the specific context is a tale as old as time. My brother, who has been an atheist for decades, moved to Utah. After 10 years, he now asserts that he was wrong and his “rigorous pursuit” of verifying with logic and his own eyes, leads him to believe the Bible is literally true. I worry about his mental health so I don’t want to debate him, but felt like I should give some kind of justification for why I’m not personally embarking on a bible study. There’s a potential subtext of, by not following his path, I am either not that rational, or lack integrity. The subtext may not really be there, but I figure if I can provide a well thought out response or summarize something from EY, it might make things feel more friendly, e.g. “I personally don’t have enough evidence to justify spending the time on this, but I will keep an open mind if any new evidence comes up.”
More concrete than your actual question, but there’s a couple options you can take:
acknowledge that there’s a form of social truth whereby the things people insist upon believing are functionally true. For instance, there may be no absolute moral value to criticism of a particular leader, but in certain countries the social system creates a very unambiguous negative value to it. Stick to the observable—if he does an experiment, replicate that experiment for yourself and share the results. If you get different results, examine why. IMO, attempting in good faith to replicate whatever experiments have convinced him that the world works differently from how he previously thought would be the best steelman for someone framing religion as rationalism.
There is of course the “which bible?” question. Irrefutable proof of the veracity of the old testament, if someone had it, wouldn’t answer the question of which modern religion incorporating it is “most correct”.
It’s entirely valid and consistent with rationalism to have the personal preference to not accept any document as fully and literally true. If you can gently find out how he handles the internal contradictions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_consistency_of_the_Bible), you’ve got a ready-made argument for taking some things figuratively.
And as unsolicited social advice, distinct from the questions of rationalism—don’t strawman him into someone who criticizes your atheism until he as an actual human tells you what if any actual critiques he has. That’s not nice. What is nice is to frame it as a harm reduction option, because organized religion can be great for some people with mental health struggles, and tell him the truth about what you see in his current behavior that you like and support. For instance if his church gets him more involved with the community, or encourages him to do more healthy behaviors or less unhealthy ones, maintain common ground by endorsing the outcomes of his beliefs rather than endorsing the beliefs themselves.
If the Utah mention means the Mormons in particular, their standard answer is that the Bible is only correct “as far as it is translated correctly” (that phrasing appears in their extended canon), which is a motte they can always retreat to if one presses them too hard on Biblical correctness generally. However, that doesn’t apply to the rest of their canon, so pressure may be more fruitful there. (If it’s not the Mormons, the rest of my comment probably isn’t relevant either.)
The Book of Mormon would at least narrow it down to the LDS movement, although there have been a few small schisms in their relatively short history.
Disagree with this one. The experiment the Mormon missionaries will insist on is Moroni’s Promise: read the Book of Mormon and then pray to God for a spiritual confirmation. The main problem with this experiment should be obvious to any good scientist: no controls. To be fair, one should try the experiment on many other books (holy or otherwise) to see if there are any other hits. Also, a null result is invariably interpreted as failing to do the experiment correctly, because it’s guaranteed by God, see, it’s right there in the book. The inability to accept a negative outcome is also rather unscientific. And finally, a “spiritual confirmation” will be interpreted for you as coming from (their particular version of) God, rather than some other explanation for a human emotional response, which we all know, can be achieved in numerous other ways that don’t particularly rely on God as an explanation. Make the experiment fair before you agree to play with a stacked deck!
If your brother has a history of being rational and evidence driven, you might encourage them to spend some time lurking on /r/AcademicBiblical on Reddit. They require citations for each post or comment, so he may be frustrated if he tries to participate, especially if in the midst of a mental health crisis. But lurking would be very informative very quickly.
I was a long time participant there before leaving Reddit, and it’s a great place for evidence driven discussion of the texts. Its a mix of atheists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Norse pagans, etc. (I’m an Agnostic myself that strongly believes we’re in a simulation, so it really was all sorts there.)
Might be a healthy reality check to apologist literalism, even if not necessarily disrupting a newfound theological inclination.
The nice things about a rabbit hole is that while not always, it’s often the case that someone else has traveled down whatever one you aren’t up for descending into.
(Though I will say in its defense, that particular field is way more interesting than you’d ever think if you never engaged with the material through an academic lens. There’s a lot of very helpful lessons in critical analysis wrapped up in the field given the strong anchoring and survivorship biases and how that’s handled both responsibly and irresponsibly by different camps.)
Theism is a symptom of epistemic deficiency. Atheism follows from epistemic sufficiency, but not all atheists are rational or sane. The epistemically virtuous do not believe on insufficient evidence, nor ignore or groundlessly dismiss evidence relevant to beliefs they hold.
That goes for both of you. The Litany of Tarsky is the correct attitude for a rationalist, and it’s about not thumbing the scales. If your brother were sane (to rationalist standards), he would not hold such a belief, given the state of readily available evidence. If he hasn’t figured this out, it’s either because he’s put his thumb on the scales or refuses to look. Organized religions (that have survived) teach their adherents not to look (ironically), and that it is virtuous to thumb the scales (faith), and that is something they have in common with cults, although not always to the same degree. These tactics are dark arts—symmetric weapons, that can promote any other beliefs (false or otherwise) just as easily.
If you feel like talking to him about it, but don’t want it to devolve into a debate, Street Epistemology is a pretty good approach. It can help dislodge irrational beliefs without attacking them directly, by instead promoting better epistemics (by Socratically poking holes in bad epistemics).
To answer your direct question, I think Privileging the Hypothesis is pretty relevant. Einstein’s Arrogance goes into more detail about the same key rationality concept of locating the hypothesis.