Judging by lukeprog’s account here, and the video he links here, and also accounts by several people on LessWrong, a grounding in rationality and science seems effective in dissolving theistic beliefs without even paying them any attention. On that basis I would recommend the Sequences, or Eliezer’s books in preparation, or rationalistic sensawunda material like Carl Sagan or Feynman explaining not just how the universe works but how we know it.
I’d like to quote one of the comments on lukeprog’s post:
These sorts of statements are, unfortunately, generally the refuge of the intellectually lazy and dishonest: “If you just knew this stuff [usually related to math and science, though other things among certain continentally inclined segments of the population] you’d see that your religious beliefs were false! I don’t have to explain why this is the case, it just is.” I don’t think you’re intellectually lazy or dishonest, so I’m hoping this is a temporary lapse of judgment. In any case you know, as well as I do, that there are quite a lot of people who are familiar with the subjects you cite who do take religious hypotheses quite seriously. This statement, then, is simply and definitively disproved by widely available empirical evidence: “And if they have time to consume enough math and science, then The God Question just fades away as not even a question worth talking about.”
That seems right to me. I have been reading the sequences for a few months now, and I see how the God question could fade away, but where is the argument that shows it must fade away? If someone has a formal argument based on the Kolmogorov complexity of God or whatever, I could better decide if I agree with the priors.
Questions about deities must fade away just like any other issue fades away after it’s been dissolved.
Compartmentalization is the last refuge for religious beliefs for an educated person. Once compartmentalization is outlawed there is no defense left. The religious beliefs just have to face a confrontation of the rational part of the brain and then the religious beliefs will evaporate.
If somebody has internalized the sequences they must (at least):
be adapt at reductionism,
be comfortable with Bayes and MML, Kolmogorov complexity,
be acutely aware of which cognitive processes are running.
If you habitually ask yourself “Why am I feeling this way?”, “Am I rationalizing right now?”, “Am I letting my ego get in the way of admitting I’m wrong?”, “Did I just shift the goal post?”, “Did I make the fundamental attribution error?”, “Is this a cached thought?” and all those other questions you become very good at telling which feeling corresponds to which of those cognitive mistakes.
So, let’s assume that for these reasons the theist at least comes to this point where he realizes his earlier reasoning was unsound and decides to honestly re-evaluate his position.
A typical educated person who likes a belief he will continue to believe it until he’s proven wrong (he’s a reasonable person after all). If he doesn’t like a belief he will reject it until the evidence is so overwhelming he has no choice but to accept it (he’s open minded after all!). This is a double standard where the things you believe are dominated by whichever information enters your brain first.
The next step is to realize that religious beliefs are essentially just an exercise in privileging the hypothesis. If you take a step back and look at the data and try to go from there to the best hypothesis that conforms to the data there’s just no way you’re going to arrive at Hinduism, Taoism, Christianity or any other form of spirituality. All those holy books contain thousands of claims each of significant Kolmogorov complexity. We’re dealing with a prior of 2 ^ −100000 at the least. Only if you start out looking for evidence for a specific holy book you can end up with a “lot” of evidence and believe that it can’t be coincidence and that therefore the claims in the holy book have merit. Start out with a thousand holy books and a thousand scientific theories on equal footing (zero evidence for each, prior based on Kolmogorov complexity) and then look at all relevant things we know about the world. There’s no way a holy book is going to end up as the best explanation because holy books are just really bad at making explanations that lead to predictions that can be tested. A holy book has to make more and better accurate predictions than the equivalent scientific theories (to compensate for the unlikely prior) to come out on top after all evidence has been examined.
I don’t think it’s possible at all to internalize the sequences and still believe in a deity. I consider this almost a tautology because the sequences are basically about good thinking and about applying that good thinking in all domains of life. Religious thinking directly rejects the concept of rationality about religious topics. So if you decide to be rational in all things (not cold and unemotional; just rational) then religion just has to go.
Judging by lukeprog’s account here, and the video he links here, and also accounts by several people on LessWrong, a grounding in rationality and science seems effective in dissolving theistic beliefs without even paying them any attention. On that basis I would recommend the Sequences, or Eliezer’s books in preparation, or rationalistic sensawunda material like Carl Sagan or Feynman explaining not just how the universe works but how we know it.
I’d like to quote one of the comments on lukeprog’s post:
That seems right to me. I have been reading the sequences for a few months now, and I see how the God question could fade away, but where is the argument that shows it must fade away? If someone has a formal argument based on the Kolmogorov complexity of God or whatever, I could better decide if I agree with the priors.
Questions about deities must fade away just like any other issue fades away after it’s been dissolved.
Compartmentalization is the last refuge for religious beliefs for an educated person. Once compartmentalization is outlawed there is no defense left. The religious beliefs just have to face a confrontation of the rational part of the brain and then the religious beliefs will evaporate.
If somebody has internalized the sequences they must (at least):
be adapt at reductionism,
be comfortable with Bayes and MML, Kolmogorov complexity,
be acutely aware of which cognitive processes are running.
If you habitually ask yourself “Why am I feeling this way?”, “Am I rationalizing right now?”, “Am I letting my ego get in the way of admitting I’m wrong?”, “Did I just shift the goal post?”, “Did I make the fundamental attribution error?”, “Is this a cached thought?” and all those other questions you become very good at telling which feeling corresponds to which of those cognitive mistakes.
So, let’s assume that for these reasons the theist at least comes to this point where he realizes his earlier reasoning was unsound and decides to honestly re-evaluate his position.
A typical educated person who likes a belief he will continue to believe it until he’s proven wrong (he’s a reasonable person after all). If he doesn’t like a belief he will reject it until the evidence is so overwhelming he has no choice but to accept it (he’s open minded after all!). This is a double standard where the things you believe are dominated by whichever information enters your brain first.
The next step is to realize that religious beliefs are essentially just an exercise in privileging the hypothesis. If you take a step back and look at the data and try to go from there to the best hypothesis that conforms to the data there’s just no way you’re going to arrive at Hinduism, Taoism, Christianity or any other form of spirituality. All those holy books contain thousands of claims each of significant Kolmogorov complexity. We’re dealing with a prior of 2 ^ −100000 at the least. Only if you start out looking for evidence for a specific holy book you can end up with a “lot” of evidence and believe that it can’t be coincidence and that therefore the claims in the holy book have merit. Start out with a thousand holy books and a thousand scientific theories on equal footing (zero evidence for each, prior based on Kolmogorov complexity) and then look at all relevant things we know about the world. There’s no way a holy book is going to end up as the best explanation because holy books are just really bad at making explanations that lead to predictions that can be tested. A holy book has to make more and better accurate predictions than the equivalent scientific theories (to compensate for the unlikely prior) to come out on top after all evidence has been examined.
I don’t think it’s possible at all to internalize the sequences and still believe in a deity. I consider this almost a tautology because the sequences are basically about good thinking and about applying that good thinking in all domains of life. Religious thinking directly rejects the concept of rationality about religious topics. So if you decide to be rational in all things (not cold and unemotional; just rational) then religion just has to go.
I’m not making an argument that it must, just an empirical observation that sometimes it does.