I think our current culture tends to push people into a certainty that they may not be inclined to, thus over-representing both atheists and some-sort-of-deists. My observation is that many people do not like uncertainty and are uncomfortable with it. We prefer knowing over not-knowing, and I suspect that many will adopt a position closer to the poles than their facts and knowledge would suggest. There is also quite a bit of herd mentality.
I am an agnostic because I have no faith, not because logic tells me there is no god. This same lack of faith makes me doubt things like the Big Bang (Just because Carl Sagan/Richard Feynman says so is no better to me than “Because the Pope/Mohammad says so”. Both sets are Human, and both sets have other agendas and both sets can be wrong).
The big bang, and the rest science provides a more useful tool in predicting what will happen tomorrow than “God Did It”, but there’s no evidence that “Let There Be Light” wasn’t what God said right as he initiated the Big Bang.
You believe what gets you to bed at night, and I’ll lay awake with my uncertainty. I’ve been uncertain about a lot of things for a long time, and I’m not going to say I’m ok with it, but I’m used to it.
Oh, and without having seen a neurologist or psychiatrist (though I’ve tried), I tend to exhibit many of the symptoms of mild aspergers—down to some of the odd details.
The other thing is my eldest child, who was not raised by me much, has pretty much the same religious beliefs (or lack of same) that I do, tempered by the fact that she’s still in her early 20s, and as such feels them SO MUCH MORE.
think our current culture tends to push people into a certainty that they may not be inclined to, thus over-representing both atheists and some-sort-of-deists.
I get the opposite impression, that our current culture pushes people to express uncertainty instead of certainty, and especially if they are leaning towards atheism. That’s why “agnostic” is much more societally acceptable than “atheist”. If one says “I doubt there’s a God” or “I don’t know if there’s a God” that signals humility. If you say “There is no God” that’s seen as arrogance.
but there’s no evidence that “Let There Be Light” wasn’t what God said right as he initiated the Big Bang
Are we talking about this supposed being called ‘God’ producing acoustic vibrations in the pre-expanded matter of the early universe that corresponded to those English words in particular? Or was God speaking Hebrew?
If we did manage to detect that far back into the early conditions of the universe, and we figured that there’s no such acoustic vibrations corresponding to human words anywhere in the early matter of the universe—would that satisfy you as evidence against?
I am an agnostic because I have no faith, not because logic tells me there is no god.
[snip]
but there’s no evidence that “Let There Be Light” wasn’t what God said right as he initiated the Big Bang.
You didn’t mention that there is also no evidence that Odin didn’t make the big bang happen, or His Noodliness, or any of the many possibilities that are just as complicated and just as undisproved. Not mentioning this makes it seem like you didn’t take it into account—that is to say, you don’t know why Occam’s razor makes sense.
Reading your nearby comments—you don’t come across as someone who is deliberately trolling. Yet you still made the statements Emil quoted (and half a dozen similar errors). The likely (and more polite) assumption is that you are merely ignorant of the basic principles of clear thinking rather than that you were deliberately violating them to provoke a response.
Atheism only has meaning in the context of someone else’s religious beliefs. If you don’t know anything about a god you really are by default an atheist. I don’t believe in other people’s fairys or pink unicorns. That’s not a position of absolute knowledge but a skepticism against any mysticism or mythology for which there is no credible evidence. I do not need to examine every set of religious beliefs that anyone has ever held and determine if they sound credible to me before I consider myself an atheist.
A denial of knowledge is agnosticism. It’s what the word means, and it is mostly in the context of your beliefs, not others.
One can completely disavow the possible existence of the god of every religion on earth and still not be an atheist because he has developed some personal, internal theology.
I’ve never heard, nor heard of a theology that is plausible, but this does not mean that in the whole of the universe there isn’t one. As I was trying to jokingly indicate, a mechanistic clockwork or quantum/clockwork universe with predictable rules does not inherently rule out the possibility of a creator god. Occams razor simply indicates that one must not “multiply entities unnecessarily”, and it’s corollary “the simplest explanation is usually the most accurate” is a heuristic, not an ironclad law.
Yeah, there probably isn’t a god, but since in my life, for the problems I am interested in, God? no God? no difference. As there is no difference to the problems I’m interested in I stopped worrying much about it, and have no ego in either outcome so I can listen and discuss things with representatives from either side without having the whole “you’re full of shit” thing get in the way.
Between being raised in a college town, and spending over 15 years in the computer industry, as well as hanging out with a sub-culture within a sub-culture that consisted mostly of people who were if not smarter, at least had better educational pedigrees than I, I’ve spent a LOT of time around really smart people. Many of whom were atheists, and many of whom were not. To be able to speak to either group, to ask questions from the perspective of one who seeks knowledge, and who doesn’t have to (internally) fight that information in order to understand it and to integrate it.
As an example, I have very good friend of mine in the south bay area who is a fundamentalist christian. He is a very bright man with multiple patents in a variety of disciplines under his belt, and one who understands his faith, has read deeply about it, questioned it and not found it wanting (much). We were talking about the paradox of humans having free will, but God still knowing How It Will All Turn Out. This, to one how must have all answers Does Not Make Sense. Hence paradox. He admits it is a paradox, but (to him) this is the mystery of God, and something one must accept in faith.
No, not a satisfying answer for me, but by accepting that I cannot understand the mind of God, should he exist, and by accepting that what I...let’s say “suspect”...may be wrong, I can listen to him and get more out of the conversation than if I just dump his answer into the bucket marked “fucking bullshit”.
How you wish to deal with these sorts of questions is your life, but I have approached the world with arrogance and a belief that I was in the Right, and I have (tried to anway) approached with world with a bit of humility (even if it’s manufactured for the purpose) to try to understand the other side. One gets you a LOT more information about what and how people think than the other. And frankly the problems and questions I find most interesting these days are more about people than not.
As others have pointed out to you in this thread and Eliezer has explained in detail, absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Why on this one topic would you deny the possibility of knowledge based on all the evidence you have?
There was no evidence of black swans, until there was.
To many people there is evidence of God, it’s just that to others that evidence is (via Occam’s razor or other tools) evidence of the vastness of the universe, evolutionary adaptions, the big bang, spontaneous remission etc.
I don’t have the tools to evaluate many of their arguments, and at my age i’m fairly certain (not due to age, but due to my track record where advanced math and such is concerned as well as other interests and commitments) that will not be able to acquire the skills and knowledge to evaluate them.
In many of my social and professional activities I have to rub elbows with folks who are of varying degrees of religious, and it makes my life more interesting if I can listen to them with the possibility, however faint that they are right.
In many of my social and professional activities I have to rub elbows with folks who are of varying degrees of religious, and it makes my life more interesting if I can listen to them with the possibility, however faint that they are right.
A good bayesian will always assign a small chance that anyone is right, even the homeless guy down the street claiming that the aliens are living in the sewers and stealing our nuclear energy. That doesn’t mean it is likely. Moreover, how interesting it is to temporarily entertain a claim has nothing to do with how likely the claim is. I entertain myself by discussing minutia of halacha (Orthodox Jewish law). That doesn’t mean I need to pretend that that has any more connection to reality than the rules for Dungeons and Dragons.
Why does this bother you so?
You are posting on a website devoted to improving human rationality and you are wondering why people feel a need to respond to a set of arguments that directly advocate assigning higher chances to certain hypotheses because they make the world more interesting?
The big bang, and the rest science provides a more useful tool in predicting what will happen tomorrow than “God Did It”, but there’s no evidence that “Let There Be Light” wasn’t what God said right as he initiated the Big Bang.
In general, there are many flaws in the metaphorical interpretations of Genesis which assert that it matches up with the order of events in the universe as scientists have determined them. See Talk Origins.
I think our current culture tends to push people into a certainty that they may not be inclined to
People don’t necessarily just have one degree of certainty they’re naturally inclined to. I do not think it is culture making people feel more sure than they think they should be. This was recent and relevant.
I think our current culture tends to push people into a certainty that they may not be inclined to, thus over-representing both atheists and some-sort-of-deists. My observation is that many people do not like uncertainty and are uncomfortable with it. We prefer knowing over not-knowing, and I suspect that many will adopt a position closer to the poles than their facts and knowledge would suggest. There is also quite a bit of herd mentality.
I am an agnostic because I have no faith, not because logic tells me there is no god. This same lack of faith makes me doubt things like the Big Bang (Just because Carl Sagan/Richard Feynman says so is no better to me than “Because the Pope/Mohammad says so”. Both sets are Human, and both sets have other agendas and both sets can be wrong).
The big bang, and the rest science provides a more useful tool in predicting what will happen tomorrow than “God Did It”, but there’s no evidence that “Let There Be Light” wasn’t what God said right as he initiated the Big Bang.
You believe what gets you to bed at night, and I’ll lay awake with my uncertainty. I’ve been uncertain about a lot of things for a long time, and I’m not going to say I’m ok with it, but I’m used to it.
Oh, and without having seen a neurologist or psychiatrist (though I’ve tried), I tend to exhibit many of the symptoms of mild aspergers—down to some of the odd details.
The other thing is my eldest child, who was not raised by me much, has pretty much the same religious beliefs (or lack of same) that I do, tempered by the fact that she’s still in her early 20s, and as such feels them SO MUCH MORE.
I get the opposite impression, that our current culture pushes people to express uncertainty instead of certainty, and especially if they are leaning towards atheism. That’s why “agnostic” is much more societally acceptable than “atheist”. If one says “I doubt there’s a God” or “I don’t know if there’s a God” that signals humility. If you say “There is no God” that’s seen as arrogance.
Are we talking about this supposed being called ‘God’ producing acoustic vibrations in the pre-expanded matter of the early universe that corresponded to those English words in particular? Or was God speaking Hebrew?
If we did manage to detect that far back into the early conditions of the universe, and we figured that there’s no such acoustic vibrations corresponding to human words anywhere in the early matter of the universe—would that satisfy you as evidence against?
I recommend you read some of the sequence posts, for example Occam’s Razor and Absense of Evidence is Evidence of Absense.
What makes you think I haven’t?
You didn’t mention that there is also no evidence that Odin didn’t make the big bang happen, or His Noodliness, or any of the many possibilities that are just as complicated and just as undisproved. Not mentioning this makes it seem like you didn’t take it into account—that is to say, you don’t know why Occam’s razor makes sense.
Reading your nearby comments—you don’t come across as someone who is deliberately trolling. Yet you still made the statements Emil quoted (and half a dozen similar errors). The likely (and more polite) assumption is that you are merely ignorant of the basic principles of clear thinking rather than that you were deliberately violating them to provoke a response.
Atheism only has meaning in the context of someone else’s religious beliefs. If you don’t know anything about a god you really are by default an atheist. I don’t believe in other people’s fairys or pink unicorns. That’s not a position of absolute knowledge but a skepticism against any mysticism or mythology for which there is no credible evidence. I do not need to examine every set of religious beliefs that anyone has ever held and determine if they sound credible to me before I consider myself an atheist.
A denial of knowledge is agnosticism. It’s what the word means, and it is mostly in the context of your beliefs, not others.
One can completely disavow the possible existence of the god of every religion on earth and still not be an atheist because he has developed some personal, internal theology.
I’ve never heard, nor heard of a theology that is plausible, but this does not mean that in the whole of the universe there isn’t one. As I was trying to jokingly indicate, a mechanistic clockwork or quantum/clockwork universe with predictable rules does not inherently rule out the possibility of a creator god. Occams razor simply indicates that one must not “multiply entities unnecessarily”, and it’s corollary “the simplest explanation is usually the most accurate” is a heuristic, not an ironclad law.
Yeah, there probably isn’t a god, but since in my life, for the problems I am interested in, God? no God? no difference. As there is no difference to the problems I’m interested in I stopped worrying much about it, and have no ego in either outcome so I can listen and discuss things with representatives from either side without having the whole “you’re full of shit” thing get in the way.
Between being raised in a college town, and spending over 15 years in the computer industry, as well as hanging out with a sub-culture within a sub-culture that consisted mostly of people who were if not smarter, at least had better educational pedigrees than I, I’ve spent a LOT of time around really smart people. Many of whom were atheists, and many of whom were not. To be able to speak to either group, to ask questions from the perspective of one who seeks knowledge, and who doesn’t have to (internally) fight that information in order to understand it and to integrate it.
As an example, I have very good friend of mine in the south bay area who is a fundamentalist christian. He is a very bright man with multiple patents in a variety of disciplines under his belt, and one who understands his faith, has read deeply about it, questioned it and not found it wanting (much). We were talking about the paradox of humans having free will, but God still knowing How It Will All Turn Out. This, to one how must have all answers Does Not Make Sense. Hence paradox. He admits it is a paradox, but (to him) this is the mystery of God, and something one must accept in faith.
No, not a satisfying answer for me, but by accepting that I cannot understand the mind of God, should he exist, and by accepting that what I...let’s say “suspect”...may be wrong, I can listen to him and get more out of the conversation than if I just dump his answer into the bucket marked “fucking bullshit”.
How you wish to deal with these sorts of questions is your life, but I have approached the world with arrogance and a belief that I was in the Right, and I have (tried to anway) approached with world with a bit of humility (even if it’s manufactured for the purpose) to try to understand the other side. One gets you a LOT more information about what and how people think than the other. And frankly the problems and questions I find most interesting these days are more about people than not.
As others have pointed out to you in this thread and Eliezer has explained in detail, absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Why on this one topic would you deny the possibility of knowledge based on all the evidence you have?
There was no evidence of black swans, until there was.
To many people there is evidence of God, it’s just that to others that evidence is (via Occam’s razor or other tools) evidence of the vastness of the universe, evolutionary adaptions, the big bang, spontaneous remission etc.
I don’t have the tools to evaluate many of their arguments, and at my age i’m fairly certain (not due to age, but due to my track record where advanced math and such is concerned as well as other interests and commitments) that will not be able to acquire the skills and knowledge to evaluate them.
In many of my social and professional activities I have to rub elbows with folks who are of varying degrees of religious, and it makes my life more interesting if I can listen to them with the possibility, however faint that they are right.
Why does this bother you so?
A good bayesian will always assign a small chance that anyone is right, even the homeless guy down the street claiming that the aliens are living in the sewers and stealing our nuclear energy. That doesn’t mean it is likely. Moreover, how interesting it is to temporarily entertain a claim has nothing to do with how likely the claim is. I entertain myself by discussing minutia of halacha (Orthodox Jewish law). That doesn’t mean I need to pretend that that has any more connection to reality than the rules for Dungeons and Dragons.
You are posting on a website devoted to improving human rationality and you are wondering why people feel a need to respond to a set of arguments that directly advocate assigning higher chances to certain hypotheses because they make the world more interesting?
In general, there are many flaws in the metaphorical interpretations of Genesis which assert that it matches up with the order of events in the universe as scientists have determined them. See Talk Origins.
People don’t necessarily just have one degree of certainty they’re naturally inclined to. I do not think it is culture making people feel more sure than they think they should be. This was recent and relevant.