Hmm? If Atheism is correct, I cease to exist after I die no matter what I believe in. If it isn’t, I’ll either wind up burning in Hell, going to a relatively mediocre afterlife, or ceasing to exist, depending on which religion is correct.
What incentive could I possibly have to decide to be an atheist? It seems to be more likely to be true judging by most present science, but that doesn’t automatically make it the most rational decision to make. The best-case scenario is that I’m wrong and I wind up as a minor functionary in the Celestial Bureaucracy or something.
And I’d thank him for it, since it’s better to spend eternity burning in Religious Hell than ceasing to exist. At least in Religious Hell, I’m still me. ;)
Also, I should probably be going to bed since I live in Australia and it’s half-past midnight and I have university tomorrow.
If Atheism is correct, I cease to exist after I die no matter what I believe in.
And I’d thank him for it, since it’s better to spend eternity burning in Religious Hell than ceasing to exist. At least in Religious Hell, I’m still me. ;)
That belief in an afterlife tends to go with belief in a deity doesn’t make disbelief in an afterlife a logical consequence of atheism.
For real life example: one Russian kook preaches exactly this doctrine—strong atheism combined with strong belief of immortality of souls. Add holocaust denial, moon landing denial and admiration of Stalin as greatest hero that ever lived and you have something that sells dozens of books and gains many dedicated followers.
Any more about him would belong to “irrationality quotes” thread if one existed...
why? how do you measure that P of caring personal god who saves human souls from extinction is higher that P of unthinking mechanism (“akashic chronicle”, “reincarnation wheel”) doing the same?
why? how do you measure that P of caring personal god who saves human souls from extinction is higher that P of unthinking mechanism (“akashic chronicle”, “reincarnation wheel”) doing the same?
I don’t, but something like a reincarnation wheel or an akashic chronicle is not inconsistent with the existence of a deity so I don’t need to.
You are an atheist. You just said so. If you verbally self-identify as a Christian, then you’ll be a lying atheist.
EDIT: And if the reason that you verbally self-identify as a Christian is because you are enticed by Pascal’s Wager, then you’ve made a (subtle) mistake. I can explain the subtle mistake if you want.
Care to tell? If it’s “Pascal’s Wager is insufficiently broad” I believe that I have stated I examined a more generalized version of Pascal’s Wager before deciding.
I don’t believe that I’m an atheist; basically, what I was saying was that it’s impossible to know anything to be true with 100 percent certainty; science can only disprove things. The physical evidence indicates atheism is probably true, but the optimal decision for what belief to choose might well to be to ignore that and believe something else.
the optimal decision for what belief to choose might well to be to ignore that and believe something else.
Can you describe what you mean by “choosing to believe” in something? Right now it’s raining where I am, and I don’t seem to be able to choose to believe otherwise. I have the same difficulty in choosing to believe things I don’t know the truth of, like whether it will stop raining by the time I go home.
On the other hand, I know someone who became interested in paganism, tested it by believing in it, and found it worked, so continued to believe. I would have been fascinated to probe him further on the matter, but I didn’t think I could manage to not sound like an anthropologist inquiring somewhat condescendingly into the strange superstitions of tribal savages.
Worshipping the Goddess that infuses Nature made a difference in his life, or something like that. As I say, I didn’t feel comfortable about pressing him on the subject. It would have been like asking what sex is like.
On the other hand, I know someone who became interested in paganism, tested it by believing in it, and found it worked, so continued to believe. I would have been fascinated to probe him further on the matter, but I didn’t think I could manage to not sound like an anthropologist inquiring somewhat condescendingly into the strange superstitions of tribal savages.
how exactly paganism worked for him? pagan rituals were cool and pagan chicks were hot ;-) or it was pagan magic that really worked?
If you define “atheist” to be someone who believes, with probability 1, that there is no God, then I am also not an atheist. I think you would struggle to find any sane person who believed, with probability 1, that there is no God.
Perhaps I should bring up a point about probabilistic reasoning here. If you believe that a proposition is true with probability 1, then you cannot rationally change your belief away from probability 1. This is a consequence of Bayes’ theorem. So really, nobody believes any empirical fact with a probability of 1 or 0.
Perhaps I should bring up a point about probabilistic reasoning here. If you believe that a proposition is true with probability 1, then you cannot rationally change your belief away from probability 1. This is a consequence of Bayes’ theorem. So really, nobody believes any empirical fact with a probability of 1 or 0.
The last sentence shouldn’t be “nobody” but “no Bayesian rationalist.”
what interpretation of the word “probability” does allow you to think that the probability of something is 1 and then change to something other than 1?
As far as I know a frequentist could never do this. They’d need an infinitely long sequence of experiments to think that the probability of an event was 1?
what interpretation of the word “probability” does allow you to think that the probability of something is 1 and then change to something other than 1?
Any interpretation where you can fix a broken model. I can imagine a conversation like this...
Prankster: I’m holding a die behind my back. If I roll it, what probability would you assign to a 1 coming up?
cupholder: Is it loaded?
Prankster: No.
cupholder: Are you throwing it in a funny way, like in one of those machines that throws it so it’s really likely to come up a 6 or something?
Prankster: No, no funny tricks here. Just rolling it normally.
cupholder: Then you’ve got a 1⁄6 probability of rolling a 1.
Prankster: And what about rolling a 2?
cupholder: Well, the same.
Prankster: And so on for all the other numbers, right?
cupholder: Sure.
Prankster: So you assign a probability of 1 to a number between 1 and 6 coming up?
cupholder: Yeah.
Prankster: Surprise! It’s 20-sided!
cupholder: Huh. I’d better change my estimate from 1 to 6⁄20.
what interpretation of the word “probability” does allow you to think that the probability of something is 1 and then change to something other than 1?
They need to have inconsistent attitudes about how they calculate probability, or estimate probabilities by inherently irrational means such as assigning likelyhood based on what hypothesis they want to be true the most and acting like that belief is certain. Empirically, I’ve met individuals who claim that no amount of evidence would alter some of their beliefs so something like this may be going on. It is however possible that trying to model these beliefs as probabilities implies a degree of rationality that they simply lack. The human mind is not generally a good Bayesian.
It may be a matter of language use—if I assign something a probability of 1, it means that everything I know now points in that direction, but I leave the possibility open that I might come to know more.
I think my underlying premise is “no evidence could ever convince me otherwise” is so ridiculous that it doesn’t need to be included in the schema.
So the mistake that I think is inherent in Pascal’s Wager is the assumption that there is some outcome (heaven, existence, whatever) that is infinitely good.
Why is this mistaken?
Well, for heaven to be infinitely good, it must be the case that you value a 1/N probability of heaven more than you value a certainty of some extremely good outcome (like becoming a billionaire, curing all disease in the world, etc), for any N, no matter how large. Even N=Graham’s number.
Now there are good scientific reasons to think that heaven couldn’t really be “that good”. For example, there is a limit to how long you can exist without going into a cycle (Poincare Recurrance Theorem), a limit to how much joy you can feel (limited response of neurons) etc.
But even if you stipulated that your utility is infinite for a state that is only finitely good in the usual sense (this is perfectly logically consistent, it’s just mad), you still run into problems.
A reasoning system that has infinite utilities would sacrifice any finite possession for even a minuscule increase in the probability of the infinite utility outcome.
For example, if one read the bible with the assumption that getting into heaven is infinitely good, one would try to find the most likely interpretation of every rule and follow it exactly. Someone actually tried to do this—see A year of living biblically. The result of actually trying to follow those rules exactly would inevitably be Jail. But an idealized reasoning system that assigned an infinite utility to heaven would recommend that Jail in this life is a small sacrifice to make for infinite utility.
It seems extremely unlikely that you would actually act on the stated preference of infinite utility for heaven.
The bigger problem is that accepting Pascal wager is just first step on the road to faith. And walking the road means to live and pray as if you had faith.
Sure, I was simply referring to the isolated quote in question: comment that Normal_Anomaly was replying to had a lot of problems, but I don’t think that the sentence in question was the one that deserved criticism.
Hmm? If Atheism is correct, I cease to exist after I die no matter what I believe in. If it isn’t, I’ll either wind up burning in Hell, going to a relatively mediocre afterlife, or ceasing to exist, depending on which religion is correct.
What incentive could I possibly have to decide to be an atheist? It seems to be more likely to be true judging by most present science, but that doesn’t automatically make it the most rational decision to make. The best-case scenario is that I’m wrong and I wind up as a minor functionary in the Celestial Bureaucracy or something.
To avoid being punished by the God of Rationality. Since there’s no evidence for gods, It sends all theists to Hell.
And I’d thank him for it, since it’s better to spend eternity burning in Religious Hell than ceasing to exist. At least in Religious Hell, I’m still me. ;)
Also, I should probably be going to bed since I live in Australia and it’s half-past midnight and I have university tomorrow.
That belief in an afterlife tends to go with belief in a deity doesn’t make disbelief in an afterlife a logical consequence of atheism.
For real life example: one Russian kook preaches exactly this doctrine—strong atheism combined with strong belief of immortality of souls. Add holocaust denial, moon landing denial and admiration of Stalin as greatest hero that ever lived and you have something that sells dozens of books and gains many dedicated followers. Any more about him would belong to “irrationality quotes” thread if one existed...
Interesting. Never head of this guy. Link?
|Interesting.
as interesting as picking up rocks and observing insects crawling under them, IMHO
|Never head of this guy. Link?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yury_Ignatyevich_Mukhin
most of his works are online, in Russian of course, links from Russian wiki page
What, insects are fascinating!
Yes, but it seems fair to say that P(Afterlife|A deity exists) > P(Afterlife|~ A deity exists).
why? how do you measure that P of caring personal god who saves human souls from extinction is higher that P of unthinking mechanism (“akashic chronicle”, “reincarnation wheel”) doing the same?
I don’t, but something like a reincarnation wheel or an akashic chronicle is not inconsistent with the existence of a deity so I don’t need to.
You are an atheist. You just said so. If you verbally self-identify as a Christian, then you’ll be a lying atheist.
EDIT: And if the reason that you verbally self-identify as a Christian is because you are enticed by Pascal’s Wager, then you’ve made a (subtle) mistake. I can explain the subtle mistake if you want.
Care to tell? If it’s “Pascal’s Wager is insufficiently broad” I believe that I have stated I examined a more generalized version of Pascal’s Wager before deciding.
I don’t believe that I’m an atheist; basically, what I was saying was that it’s impossible to know anything to be true with 100 percent certainty; science can only disprove things. The physical evidence indicates atheism is probably true, but the optimal decision for what belief to choose might well to be to ignore that and believe something else.
Can you describe what you mean by “choosing to believe” in something? Right now it’s raining where I am, and I don’t seem to be able to choose to believe otherwise. I have the same difficulty in choosing to believe things I don’t know the truth of, like whether it will stop raining by the time I go home.
On the other hand, I know someone who became interested in paganism, tested it by believing in it, and found it worked, so continued to believe. I would have been fascinated to probe him further on the matter, but I didn’t think I could manage to not sound like an anthropologist inquiring somewhat condescendingly into the strange superstitions of tribal savages.
how paganism worked for him? pagan rituals were cool and pagan chicks were hot, or something more? :P
Worshipping the Goddess that infuses Nature made a difference in his life, or something like that. As I say, I didn’t feel comfortable about pressing him on the subject. It would have been like asking what sex is like.
how exactly paganism worked for him? pagan rituals were cool and pagan chicks were hot ;-) or it was pagan magic that really worked?
If you define “atheist” to be someone who believes, with probability 1, that there is no God, then I am also not an atheist. I think you would struggle to find any sane person who believed, with probability 1, that there is no God.
Perhaps I should bring up a point about probabilistic reasoning here. If you believe that a proposition is true with probability 1, then you cannot rationally change your belief away from probability 1. This is a consequence of Bayes’ theorem. So really, nobody believes any empirical fact with a probability of 1 or 0.
The last sentence shouldn’t be “nobody” but “no Bayesian rationalist.”
what interpretation of the word “probability” does allow you to think that the probability of something is 1 and then change to something other than 1?
As far as I know a frequentist could never do this. They’d need an infinitely long sequence of experiments to think that the probability of an event was 1?
Any interpretation where you can fix a broken model. I can imagine a conversation like this...
Prankster: I’m holding a die behind my back. If I roll it, what probability would you assign to a 1 coming up?
cupholder: Is it loaded?
Prankster: No.
cupholder: Are you throwing it in a funny way, like in one of those machines that throws it so it’s really likely to come up a 6 or something?
Prankster: No, no funny tricks here. Just rolling it normally.
cupholder: Then you’ve got a 1⁄6 probability of rolling a 1.
Prankster: And what about rolling a 2?
cupholder: Well, the same.
Prankster: And so on for all the other numbers, right?
cupholder: Sure.
Prankster: So you assign a probability of 1 to a number between 1 and 6 coming up?
cupholder: Yeah.
Prankster: Surprise! It’s 20-sided!
cupholder: Huh. I’d better change my estimate from 1 to 6⁄20.
They need to have inconsistent attitudes about how they calculate probability, or estimate probabilities by inherently irrational means such as assigning likelyhood based on what hypothesis they want to be true the most and acting like that belief is certain. Empirically, I’ve met individuals who claim that no amount of evidence would alter some of their beliefs so something like this may be going on. It is however possible that trying to model these beliefs as probabilities implies a degree of rationality that they simply lack. The human mind is not generally a good Bayesian.
It may be a matter of language use—if I assign something a probability of 1, it means that everything I know now points in that direction, but I leave the possibility open that I might come to know more.
I think my underlying premise is “no evidence could ever convince me otherwise” is so ridiculous that it doesn’t need to be included in the schema.
So the mistake that I think is inherent in Pascal’s Wager is the assumption that there is some outcome (heaven, existence, whatever) that is infinitely good.
Why is this mistaken?
Well, for heaven to be infinitely good, it must be the case that you value a 1/N probability of heaven more than you value a certainty of some extremely good outcome (like becoming a billionaire, curing all disease in the world, etc), for any N, no matter how large. Even N=Graham’s number.
Now there are good scientific reasons to think that heaven couldn’t really be “that good”. For example, there is a limit to how long you can exist without going into a cycle (Poincare Recurrance Theorem), a limit to how much joy you can feel (limited response of neurons) etc.
But even if you stipulated that your utility is infinite for a state that is only finitely good in the usual sense (this is perfectly logically consistent, it’s just mad), you still run into problems.
A reasoning system that has infinite utilities would sacrifice any finite possession for even a minuscule increase in the probability of the infinite utility outcome.
For example, if one read the bible with the assumption that getting into heaven is infinitely good, one would try to find the most likely interpretation of every rule and follow it exactly. Someone actually tried to do this—see A year of living biblically. The result of actually trying to follow those rules exactly would inevitably be Jail. But an idealized reasoning system that assigned an infinite utility to heaven would recommend that Jail in this life is a small sacrifice to make for infinite utility.
It seems extremely unlikely that you would actually act on the stated preference of infinite utility for heaven.
The bigger problem is that accepting Pascal wager is just first step on the road to faith. And walking the road means to live and pray as if you had faith.
Somewhat, I do not see this guy doing it...
Only atheists can honestly assert that statement.
That assertion may depend on how one unpacks atheism, physical evidence, and probably.
It would take an awful lot of contortions to make the grandparent statement look reasonable and I’m not even sure it’s possible.
Sure, I was simply referring to the isolated quote in question: comment that Normal_Anomaly was replying to had a lot of problems, but I don’t think that the sentence in question was the one that deserved criticism.