I’ve met plenty of Christians who exude the same optimism and conviviality as a Rick Warren or a Ned Flanders....what’s stopping us from teaching ourselves to live the same way?
Availability bias. How often are you actually visualizing that future? Focusing on it? Experiencing it? Then again, likely some people just have a greater capacity for that kind of thing than others.
I watched a series of interesting youtubes from a woman who is an atheist now, but grew up in a pentecostal family, and was very devout. The interesting thing here was that she shared her experience of being a Christian, and what evidence she had of the truth of Christianity. The evidence was experiential, in sights and sounds and feelings. Part of it was the satisfaction of feeling the love of that infinite, all powerful being who was looking over you, in whose presence you’ll soon enough be spending an eternity of bliss. I can understand how experiencing that daily would make one quite a positive person.
I wonder if you actually have to believe the literal truth of that to experience it. I doubt it. And I wonder how many “believers” don’t literally believe it either, and are just part of a mutually reinforcing feel good theater, and know it, but won’t let on, because that puts a damper on the show. You can see why such people would be annoyed with atheists—they’re just a bunch of kill joys who just don’t get the joke, and ruin it for everyone else. A bunch of soldiers in the Buzzkill Army.
I’ve seen that sort of thing. A couple of folks in my frat were pro wrestling fans when I was going through college. They watched every show, traveled to a few ppv’s, etc. They had to bear with an endless parade of helpful souls informing them that it wasn’t real.
I’m trying to come up with an analogy into my own experience for this. The best I’ve come up with so far is if I were reading a novel or watching a movie, and people kept coming up to me and telling me that the story was made up and didn’t really happen.
That would be really freakin’ annoying. People can be excited by fiction, and deeply emotionally engaged with it, without mistaking it for everyday reality. Belittling their sense of the distinction seems like a pretty unfriendly thing to do.
OTOH, applying this to religion seems harder. I’m not sure that most religious people want their religion to be mapped in the category of “fandom”.
Belittling their sense of the distinction seems like a pretty unfriendly thing to do.
However, some of the things that religion proscribes are also pretty unfriendly things to do. (arguably religion itself is an unfriendly thing to do). So until they stop doing such things, they can reasonably expect to cop retaliation for their own hostility. (in proportion to their craziness, IME—for example Buddhism doesn’t cop much flak, whereas Christianity does)
Putting yourself in the position of being significantly opposed to reality cannot be rationally viewed as a friendly, or even just not-unfriendly, thing to do… You just never can constrain the effect to yourself. You tend to end up doing things that it is interesting for a character to do, but destructive in real life. And all in pursuit of mere ‘good feelings’.
However, some of the things that religion proscribes are also pretty unfriendly things to do.
Yeah, that’s the problem. If somebody wants to have some invisible friend who loves them, they can knock themselves out. If they say it makes them happy, I probably won’t even be a snide dick about it. But if your invisible friend makes you a dick, don’t expect me to just take it and not respond.
But to the contrary, most Christians aren’t [insulting word]. In fact, as the OP says:
I’ve met plenty of Christians who exude the same optimism and conviviality as a Rick Warren or a Ned Flanders....what’s stopping us from teaching ourselves to live the same way?
Christians don’t just get a fake invisible friend who loves them, they get a fake invisible friend who makes them caring, generous and trustworthy. I think their beliefs are silly, but I’d much rather have a committed Christian for a neighbour than a militant atheist, and it’s not remotely close.
That’s stacking the deck against atheists by considering militant atheists. What does that mean to you? Do you prefer militant Christians over militant atheists? Militant Muslims over militant atheists?
they get a fake invisible friend who makes them caring, generous and trustworthy.
Or, a fake invisible friend who makes you hate a lot of people. Who makes you miserable about your sin. Who makes you afraid of eternal torment.
The kind of Christian you meet depends on who you are, depends on where you are. Being an atheist myself, and therefore in league with Satan, I won’t get the best out of a Christian.
But I often gravitate to a certain type of serious Christian, and they gravitate to me. In my experience, atheists and serious Christians are largely the same people. What is true matters to us. That’s the real dividing line. Christians who have a real loving personal relationship with their invisible friend can be wonderful people. I call them egoistic Christians—they’re concerned about their salvation and their love for their invisible friend, as opposed to social Christians who are more concerned with the state of society, and the sin around them. This kind of Christian is rare, and often an outcast in their own Church. Egoistic Christians have an advantage over atheists in terms of general positivity. They have the disadvantage of compromised judgment, including fatalism (it was God’s will...), and some guilt/hatred/fear from dogma.
I was recently thinking that the ideal is someone who grew up devout, knowing that they had an all powerful loving protector, but then overcame the faith in the doctrines and became an atheist as adults. The positivity seems to abide long after God is gone.
That’s stacking the deck against atheists by considering militant atheists. What does that mean to you? Do you prefer militant Christians over militant atheists? Militant Muslims over militant atheists?
All I meant was an atheist who is as invested in his belief as the committed Christian is in his religion. My committed Christian friends go to church regularly, read the Bible frequently and attend study groups on it, have a strong preference to marry a fellow Christian, and so on. They identify primarily as Christians. I suppose the atheist equivalent would be someone who is a member of the BHA or atheism+ or similar, reads Richard Dawkins, whatever, and strongly identifies as an atheist. These people are not rare, and are in fact overrepresented on lesswrong.
There are also people who don’t believe in God in the same way that he doesn’t believe in unicorns, and gives the two ideas the same amount of thought. Or indeed, the Christian who never thinks about God. I don’t perceive much difference between these two.
Or, a fake invisible friend who makes you hate a lot of people. Who makes you miserable about your sin. Who makes you afraid of eternal torment.
Yes, anything is theoretically possible. And it’s a big old world, so no doubt there are even one or two people like that. But in point of fact, the way it works out is that Christianity tends to make people more generous, caring and trustworthy than atheism does. So it goes.
EDIT: To be fair, if you are arguing that the reason committed Christians are nicer than committed atheists is that professed Christianity attracts nicer people whereas professed atheism attracts jerks, then this is also consistent with observation, but I prefer the causal story.
It remains hilarious that people use “Islamic militant” to mean someone who kills civilians with bombs, and “militant Christian” to means someone who shoots gynecologists (or fantasizes about doing so, anyway) … and “militant atheist” to mean someone who gets in a lot of arguments.
To be fair, you should not compare “Islamic militant” to “militant atheist.” You have flipped the verb and the noun, and changed the meaning. “Atheist militant” is equally some guy who goes around murdering priests, e.g. in Spain in the 1930s.
To me, a “Christian militant” is someone violent, as you say, whereas a “militant Christian” is someone who goes around aggressively proselytizing. Or at least that’s how I would understand the terms. A “militant Muslim” is a terrorist, yes, but that’s just because of the general hatred of Muslims that is so common in the West so the language gets blurred.
A “militant Muslim” is a terrorist, yes, but that’s just because of the general hatred of Muslims that is so common in the West so the language gets blurred.
No that’s because there are a lot more Muslim terrorists than Christian terrorists.
But in point of fact, the way it works out is that Christianity tends to make people more generous, caring and trustworthy than atheism does. So it goes.
But this is not in point of fact. Citation very much needed.
I don’t disagree that (strong, ie. ‘God does NOT exist’ rather than ‘there is no evidence that God exists’) atheism attracts some jerks, btw. Any belief that is essentially anti-X has the problem of attracting at least some people who simply enjoy punishing belief in X.
Where I live self-identifying as Christian doesn’t carry much information on its own, but sure, I’d sooner live next to a high-religiosity Mormon or Jew than an atheist if that is all the information I have available to me (not sure about Christians in general though, I’d have to revisit some statistics first).
People can be excited by fiction, and deeply emotionally engaged with it, without mistaking it for everyday reality.
Exactly my point.
What’s the compelling reason not to have an imaginary invisible all powerful friend who loves you? Seems like there are a lot of benefits. Similarly, why not engage in weekly worship theater? It wouldn’t feel respectful to do it in a room where others earnestly believed, but it could be satisfying with others similarly engaging in conscious fiction.
When I visualize Bjorn Lomborg’s “Indonesia 2100 should have the same GDP per capita as Denmark now” future, I start to glow on the inside. There are many things about LW that give me that glow. I just wish I were better at expressing the glow at the right times without sounding weird about it.
I think that’s lowballing it by a wide margin. If Indonesians in 2100 only live as well as the Danes now, some catastrophe hit the earth in the interim.
Availability bias. How often are you actually visualizing that future? Focusing on it? Experiencing it? Then again, likely some people just have a greater capacity for that kind of thing than others.
I watched a series of interesting youtubes from a woman who is an atheist now, but grew up in a pentecostal family, and was very devout. The interesting thing here was that she shared her experience of being a Christian, and what evidence she had of the truth of Christianity. The evidence was experiential, in sights and sounds and feelings. Part of it was the satisfaction of feeling the love of that infinite, all powerful being who was looking over you, in whose presence you’ll soon enough be spending an eternity of bliss. I can understand how experiencing that daily would make one quite a positive person.
I wonder if you actually have to believe the literal truth of that to experience it. I doubt it. And I wonder how many “believers” don’t literally believe it either, and are just part of a mutually reinforcing feel good theater, and know it, but won’t let on, because that puts a damper on the show. You can see why such people would be annoyed with atheists—they’re just a bunch of kill joys who just don’t get the joke, and ruin it for everyone else. A bunch of soldiers in the Buzzkill Army.
I’ve seen that sort of thing. A couple of folks in my frat were pro wrestling fans when I was going through college. They watched every show, traveled to a few ppv’s, etc. They had to bear with an endless parade of helpful souls informing them that it wasn’t real.
I’m trying to come up with an analogy into my own experience for this. The best I’ve come up with so far is if I were reading a novel or watching a movie, and people kept coming up to me and telling me that the story was made up and didn’t really happen.
That would be really freakin’ annoying. People can be excited by fiction, and deeply emotionally engaged with it, without mistaking it for everyday reality. Belittling their sense of the distinction seems like a pretty unfriendly thing to do.
OTOH, applying this to religion seems harder. I’m not sure that most religious people want their religion to be mapped in the category of “fandom”.
However, some of the things that religion proscribes are also pretty unfriendly things to do. (arguably religion itself is an unfriendly thing to do). So until they stop doing such things, they can reasonably expect to cop retaliation for their own hostility. (in proportion to their craziness, IME—for example Buddhism doesn’t cop much flak, whereas Christianity does)
Putting yourself in the position of being significantly opposed to reality cannot be rationally viewed as a friendly, or even just not-unfriendly, thing to do… You just never can constrain the effect to yourself. You tend to end up doing things that it is interesting for a character to do, but destructive in real life. And all in pursuit of mere ‘good feelings’.
Yeah, that’s the problem. If somebody wants to have some invisible friend who loves them, they can knock themselves out. If they say it makes them happy, I probably won’t even be a snide dick about it. But if your invisible friend makes you a dick, don’t expect me to just take it and not respond.
But to the contrary, most Christians aren’t [insulting word]. In fact, as the OP says:
Christians don’t just get a fake invisible friend who loves them, they get a fake invisible friend who makes them caring, generous and trustworthy. I think their beliefs are silly, but I’d much rather have a committed Christian for a neighbour than a militant atheist, and it’s not remotely close.
That’s stacking the deck against atheists by considering militant atheists. What does that mean to you? Do you prefer militant Christians over militant atheists? Militant Muslims over militant atheists?
Or, a fake invisible friend who makes you hate a lot of people. Who makes you miserable about your sin. Who makes you afraid of eternal torment.
The kind of Christian you meet depends on who you are, depends on where you are. Being an atheist myself, and therefore in league with Satan, I won’t get the best out of a Christian.
But I often gravitate to a certain type of serious Christian, and they gravitate to me. In my experience, atheists and serious Christians are largely the same people. What is true matters to us. That’s the real dividing line. Christians who have a real loving personal relationship with their invisible friend can be wonderful people. I call them egoistic Christians—they’re concerned about their salvation and their love for their invisible friend, as opposed to social Christians who are more concerned with the state of society, and the sin around them. This kind of Christian is rare, and often an outcast in their own Church. Egoistic Christians have an advantage over atheists in terms of general positivity. They have the disadvantage of compromised judgment, including fatalism (it was God’s will...), and some guilt/hatred/fear from dogma.
I was recently thinking that the ideal is someone who grew up devout, knowing that they had an all powerful loving protector, but then overcame the faith in the doctrines and became an atheist as adults. The positivity seems to abide long after God is gone.
All I meant was an atheist who is as invested in his belief as the committed Christian is in his religion. My committed Christian friends go to church regularly, read the Bible frequently and attend study groups on it, have a strong preference to marry a fellow Christian, and so on. They identify primarily as Christians. I suppose the atheist equivalent would be someone who is a member of the BHA or atheism+ or similar, reads Richard Dawkins, whatever, and strongly identifies as an atheist. These people are not rare, and are in fact overrepresented on lesswrong.
There are also people who don’t believe in God in the same way that he doesn’t believe in unicorns, and gives the two ideas the same amount of thought. Or indeed, the Christian who never thinks about God. I don’t perceive much difference between these two.
Yes, anything is theoretically possible. And it’s a big old world, so no doubt there are even one or two people like that. But in point of fact, the way it works out is that Christianity tends to make people more generous, caring and trustworthy than atheism does. So it goes.
EDIT: To be fair, if you are arguing that the reason committed Christians are nicer than committed atheists is that professed Christianity attracts nicer people whereas professed atheism attracts jerks, then this is also consistent with observation, but I prefer the causal story.
It remains hilarious that people use “Islamic militant” to mean someone who kills civilians with bombs, and “militant Christian” to means someone who shoots gynecologists (or fantasizes about doing so, anyway) … and “militant atheist” to mean someone who gets in a lot of arguments.
To be fair, you should not compare “Islamic militant” to “militant atheist.” You have flipped the verb and the noun, and changed the meaning. “Atheist militant” is equally some guy who goes around murdering priests, e.g. in Spain in the 1930s.
To me, a “Christian militant” is someone violent, as you say, whereas a “militant Christian” is someone who goes around aggressively proselytizing. Or at least that’s how I would understand the terms. A “militant Muslim” is a terrorist, yes, but that’s just because of the general hatred of Muslims that is so common in the West so the language gets blurred.
No that’s because there are a lot more Muslim terrorists than Christian terrorists.
Otherwise, I agree with your comment.
But this is not in point of fact. Citation very much needed.
I don’t disagree that (strong, ie. ‘God does NOT exist’ rather than ‘there is no evidence that God exists’) atheism attracts some jerks, btw. Any belief that is essentially anti-X has the problem of attracting at least some people who simply enjoy punishing belief in X.
Where I live self-identifying as Christian doesn’t carry much information on its own, but sure, I’d sooner live next to a high-religiosity Mormon or Jew than an atheist if that is all the information I have available to me (not sure about Christians in general though, I’d have to revisit some statistics first).
Exactly my point.
What’s the compelling reason not to have an imaginary invisible all powerful friend who loves you? Seems like there are a lot of benefits. Similarly, why not engage in weekly worship theater? It wouldn’t feel respectful to do it in a room where others earnestly believed, but it could be satisfying with others similarly engaging in conscious fiction.
When I visualize Bjorn Lomborg’s “Indonesia 2100 should have the same GDP per capita as Denmark now” future, I start to glow on the inside. There are many things about LW that give me that glow. I just wish I were better at expressing the glow at the right times without sounding weird about it.
I think that’s lowballing it by a wide margin. If Indonesians in 2100 only live as well as the Danes now, some catastrophe hit the earth in the interim.
I think it’s highballing it by a wide margin. There’s no way that much cheap energy can possibly be available.
Why not? The most obvious possibility is fusion reactors.