Hmm, that does still say that her boyfriend was Catholic and made her agree to go to Mass. So although that’s not her background in the sense of having been raised in it, it’s still the one she was most exposed to. and it’s still a coincidence that the one she was exposed to happened to be the one that she supposedly rationally concluded was right.
In what sense is this a coincidence? In order to be rationally convinced of an idea, you need to be exposed to the idea. That’s not surprising. Now it may be the case that there is some other religion out there, to which she hasn’t been properly exposed, that provides more satisfying answers to the questions that motivate her than Catholicism does. But given that she hasn’t in fact been exposed to that religion, I don’t see how you can blame her (on rational grounds) for not converting to it. I believe in all kinds of scientific theories because they’re the most convincing ones I’ve encountered so far, not because I’ve evaluated them against every other possible theory.
The choice she made was essentially between atheism and Catholicism (and perhaps a couple of other religions in which she was well schooled), and she decided Catholicism made more sense to her than atheism. You can’t blame this on a lack of exposure to atheist arguments, I don’t think. She was an atheist blogger (as in, someone who blogs advocating atheism) for a while before converting, and at least somewhat familiar with LW-style rationalism, if I’m not mistaken.
Also, she’s not claiming her conversion to Catholicism is the consequence of some mystical experience that had nothing to do with her prior exposure to the religion. If that were the case, I’d understand suspicion that the mystical experience just happened to coincide with the dogma to which she had been exposed. But as far as I can tell, she says she converted to Catholicism precisely because she became immersed in Catholic philosophy and found a lot of it very convincing, so the exposure to Catholicism isn’t a coincidence, it’s the admitted cause of her conversion.
In what sense is this a coincidence? In order to be rationally convinced of an idea, you need to be exposed to the idea.
In order to be rationally convinced of an idea, you do need some level of exposure to an idea. But you don’t need the level of exposure that happened here. We don’t normally find people suddenly believing in Fermat’s Last Theorem because their boyfriend made them go to several months of Fermat’s Last Theorem lectures. That’s a sign of a meme that bootstraps our existing social structures in order to spread, not of rational thinking.
I agree that her boyfriend convincing her to go to Mass with him is a sign that he at least believed that some form of non-rational persuasion would work (since Mass isn’t really about making rational arguments for Catholicism). Still, it’s not obvious to me that this was the cause of her conversion. I’m guessing a much bigger factor was what she mentions in the next sentence: the deal they had where they would exchange books arguing for their respective positions.
I think you’re underestimating the intellectual strength of Catholic theology, especially of the contemporary Thomist variety. It’s miles ahead of any other religious apologetics I’ve encountered. I’ve read some of it, and while I’m not even remotely convinced, I can see how it could be extremely convincing to very intelligent people. In fact, I suspect I would have been much more susceptible to conversion if I had read some of this stuff earlier in life, before I read a bunch of philosophy (pragmatism, actually, hence my username) that basically inocculated me against it.
But given that she hasn’t in fact been exposed to that religion, I don’t see how you can blame her (on rational grounds) for not converting to it.
I can’t blame her for not concluding that it’s true, but I can blame her for concluding that it’s false. She knew that there were many, many religions that she hadn’t been exposed to. She knew that it would be a huge coincidence for the one she was exposed to to be right. She at least should have been able to guess that there could have been biases that gave a good alternative explanation for this other than that it was a coincidence.
Hmm, that does still say that her boyfriend was Catholic and made her agree to go to Mass. So although that’s not her background in the sense of having been raised in it, it’s still the one she was most exposed to. and it’s still a coincidence that the one she was exposed to happened to be the one that she supposedly rationally concluded was right.
In what sense is this a coincidence? In order to be rationally convinced of an idea, you need to be exposed to the idea. That’s not surprising. Now it may be the case that there is some other religion out there, to which she hasn’t been properly exposed, that provides more satisfying answers to the questions that motivate her than Catholicism does. But given that she hasn’t in fact been exposed to that religion, I don’t see how you can blame her (on rational grounds) for not converting to it. I believe in all kinds of scientific theories because they’re the most convincing ones I’ve encountered so far, not because I’ve evaluated them against every other possible theory.
The choice she made was essentially between atheism and Catholicism (and perhaps a couple of other religions in which she was well schooled), and she decided Catholicism made more sense to her than atheism. You can’t blame this on a lack of exposure to atheist arguments, I don’t think. She was an atheist blogger (as in, someone who blogs advocating atheism) for a while before converting, and at least somewhat familiar with LW-style rationalism, if I’m not mistaken.
Also, she’s not claiming her conversion to Catholicism is the consequence of some mystical experience that had nothing to do with her prior exposure to the religion. If that were the case, I’d understand suspicion that the mystical experience just happened to coincide with the dogma to which she had been exposed. But as far as I can tell, she says she converted to Catholicism precisely because she became immersed in Catholic philosophy and found a lot of it very convincing, so the exposure to Catholicism isn’t a coincidence, it’s the admitted cause of her conversion.
In order to be rationally convinced of an idea, you do need some level of exposure to an idea. But you don’t need the level of exposure that happened here. We don’t normally find people suddenly believing in Fermat’s Last Theorem because their boyfriend made them go to several months of Fermat’s Last Theorem lectures. That’s a sign of a meme that bootstraps our existing social structures in order to spread, not of rational thinking.
I agree that her boyfriend convincing her to go to Mass with him is a sign that he at least believed that some form of non-rational persuasion would work (since Mass isn’t really about making rational arguments for Catholicism). Still, it’s not obvious to me that this was the cause of her conversion. I’m guessing a much bigger factor was what she mentions in the next sentence: the deal they had where they would exchange books arguing for their respective positions.
I think you’re underestimating the intellectual strength of Catholic theology, especially of the contemporary Thomist variety. It’s miles ahead of any other religious apologetics I’ve encountered. I’ve read some of it, and while I’m not even remotely convinced, I can see how it could be extremely convincing to very intelligent people. In fact, I suspect I would have been much more susceptible to conversion if I had read some of this stuff earlier in life, before I read a bunch of philosophy (pragmatism, actually, hence my username) that basically inocculated me against it.
I can’t blame her for not concluding that it’s true, but I can blame her for concluding that it’s false. She knew that there were many, many religions that she hadn’t been exposed to. She knew that it would be a huge coincidence for the one she was exposed to to be right. She at least should have been able to guess that there could have been biases that gave a good alternative explanation for this other than that it was a coincidence.