To be clear I am not promoting religon here, but have any of you who are bashing Christianity ever actually talked to a real theologian? Or are all of your views of Christianity based on TV preachers and the common mob who don’t know anything when it comes to defending what they believe? Just as with any other area there is a barrier to admission like in physics you have to know the math otherwise you have really nothing to contribute. If you want to contribute to Christianity you have to understand the belief system and its reasoning and the average person probably doesn’t. The same goes for physics how many average people do think can actually solve the field equations? In Christianity how many of the people who claim to believe have gone to Seminary? Unless you are arguing with scholars of Christianity this bashing seems to me to be like finding some person who claims to be a physicist but can’t do basic algebra and then discounting physics because of that persons opinion.
From what I’ve seen, most theologians don’t even believe that they know how to defend what they believe. The most common sentiment among them seems to be that the part of theology that seeks to demonstrate the existence of God is the crudest and least interesting part. Those theologians who do bother to try and support their belief with arguments, like Swinburne and Plantinga, rarely agree with one another.
In any case, comparing theologians to physicists as you do is silly. Physicists are the experts of physics because they know about the most accurate theories and the evidence that supports them. What do theologians know about? The evidence for the existence of God? Most of them admit there isn’t any. The most accurate version of Christianity? There’s no way to judge accuracy without evidence.
Some people who call themselves theologians may be experts on the history of Christianity, and a precious few might even be experts on what Christians actually believe these days, but none of them are experts about the actual claims of Christianity: That God loves us, that he sent his son to Earth, that he’s got a blissful afterlife set up for good people, and so forth. Without evidence to know about, theologians have no more expertise on this subject than average Christians. Therefore, the theologian’s version of Christianity is no more valid than the average Christian’s version of it, and is no more deserving of our attention. In fact, because theologians represent such a tiny fraction of Christians, it deserves less.
I think you might be deflecting the main point here. Possibly without realising it.
You have a better opportunity to practice your skills as a rationalist if you respond to the [least convenient] (http://tinyurl.com/LWleastconvenient) possible interpretation of this comment.
I would propose that the “experts” being referred to are experts in debating the existence of God. ie of all the arguments that have ever been put forward for the existence of God, these are the people who know the most compelling ones. The most rationally compelling, logically coherent arguments.
Perhaps you mean to say that no such people exist, or no such arguments exist. It is possible that that’s true. But it is almost certain that having brief conversations with garden-variety theists, won’t expose us to these arguments.
If you happen to have gone looking for these arguments, with an open mind and a willingness to genuinely consider their merits, and you remain unconvinced, then that’s fine. I’m pretty sure that if I were to go looking for the most compelling arguments, with a genuinely open mind, i would remain unconvinced too. But i think it’s important to acknowledge that I haven’t actually done so. I haven’t done the research and I haven’t given myself the best possible opportunity to change my mind. - There were other things that I was more interested in doing.
For those of us who haven’t heard the most compelling arguments: I honestly think that’s fine. But i think the original poster (and Psycho) are describing an important bias, that we should be aware of and careful about in our own thinking: the tendency to reason as if we have already seen the most compelling evidence for something, even when there’s no reason to believe that you have.
When you realise that you’ve not yet seen the most convincing version of an argument, there’s no reason to raise your probability estimates. But you also shouldn’t lower them in the same way that you would if you were sure you’d seen all the evidence that there was.
Indeed. Ignorant atheists piss me off. No, you don’t have to go along with everything your culture does just because everybody else thinks it’s a good idea… but you’d better have a damn good reason for rejecting it.. But there really are a lot of atheists for whom it comes down to something like “talking snake? C’mon!”. It’s worse than being religious.
What’s worse is a lot of these folks love being polemical—they don’t have good reasons for being atheists but want to be loud jerks about it, so religious folk get the idea that atheists are just uninformed rude jerks.
Although I agree with the general thrust of your statement, I cannot forgive the incorrect subargument, “It’s worse than being religious.”
But yes, definitely: atheists should aspire to be skillful, competent, elegant, logical rude jerks. Those of our kind with the rare talent not to be rude jerks could aspire to that part too.
If your friends are atheists, then you see that atheists come with any temperament. But when you hear about atheism from a stranger, there is a big chance he is a jerk, because other people usually don’t impose their opinions on strangers.
It works the same if you replace “atheism” by many other things. The most visible people are usually the most annoying ones.
Thank you for writing this. I started to write something similar, got bogged down in too many layers of qualification, and ultimately scrapped it; you expressed what I wanted to, far more succinctly than I would have.
Hum, depends of where you live. Here in France, atheists are common, recent surveys show almost an even three thirds split between atheists, agnostics and religious. A significant part of many social professions (teachers, nurses, social helpers, journalists, …) are atheists, for example.
But that still holds true for vocal atheists : they tend to be intellectual and nerdy, even if vocal atheists also include a part of the traditional working-class (factory workers, construction workers, transport drivers, …) due to still strong anarcho-syndicalist and marxist currents in French unions.
Indeed, I was speaking US-centrically, and I don’t doubt Eliezer was too at the time.
Though even here, atheists of some sort or another are more common than people think. Almost a quarter of Americans answered “no religion” on the 2004 census. Of course, a BBC poll from the same time suggested that North Americans were about 9% atheist, and those categories might mean different things.
I cannot forgive the incorrect subargument, “It’s worse than being religious.”
I’m not sure how you could misconstrue that as an argument—it’s a single proposition!
If it’s not obvious, consider that they’re rejecting a commonly-held belief for a really bad reason. That’s practically insane. Much better to go along with the crowd until you have an actual reason not to.
And I think being neither rude nor a jerk is vital to being a complete person. You’re setting the bar way too low.
Just because they say “the idea of a talking snake is ridiculous!” does not mean that they rely solely on the absurdity heuristic. After all, they got the correct answer.
“Do not criticize people when they turn out to be right! Wait for an occasion where they are wrong! Otherwise you are missing the chance to see when someone is thinking smarter than you”
If you suspect someone is relying too heavily on the absurdity heuristic, there are absurd things that are true that you can test them on. If you’re talking about “the average atheist” and don’t have time to test a representitive sample, I would not assume that the absurdity heuristic is all they got going for them.
I’d think the majority, if not nearly all atheists see (some of) the biases that lead to religious beliefs. “All your stated reasons for belief are worthless and shared with the majority, and your claim is absurd” is probably enough to discount the majority.
There’s also such a thing as being fair—epistemic justice. That plea can only be made by showing a poor criticism of Them and comparing it to a poor criticism of Us.
I also agree with the post’s assertion that relying on the absurdity heuristic alone is dangerous ground, it is still an excellent tool for at least calling in to question a set of beliefs which, upon further and more rigorous examination, may or may not merit rejection.
But, I must protest, a talking snake is not “a really bad reason” to reject that set of common beliefs. It is an EXCELLENT reason.
To be clear I am not promoting religon here, but have any of you who are bashing Christianity ever actually talked to a real theologian? Or are all of your views of Christianity based on TV preachers and the common mob who don’t know anything when it comes to defending what they believe? Just as with any other area there is a barrier to admission like in physics you have to know the math otherwise you have really nothing to contribute. If you want to contribute to Christianity you have to understand the belief system and its reasoning and the average person probably doesn’t. The same goes for physics how many average people do think can actually solve the field equations? In Christianity how many of the people who claim to believe have gone to Seminary? Unless you are arguing with scholars of Christianity this bashing seems to me to be like finding some person who claims to be a physicist but can’t do basic algebra and then discounting physics because of that persons opinion.
From what I’ve seen, most theologians don’t even believe that they know how to defend what they believe. The most common sentiment among them seems to be that the part of theology that seeks to demonstrate the existence of God is the crudest and least interesting part. Those theologians who do bother to try and support their belief with arguments, like Swinburne and Plantinga, rarely agree with one another.
In any case, comparing theologians to physicists as you do is silly. Physicists are the experts of physics because they know about the most accurate theories and the evidence that supports them. What do theologians know about? The evidence for the existence of God? Most of them admit there isn’t any. The most accurate version of Christianity? There’s no way to judge accuracy without evidence.
Some people who call themselves theologians may be experts on the history of Christianity, and a precious few might even be experts on what Christians actually believe these days, but none of them are experts about the actual claims of Christianity: That God loves us, that he sent his son to Earth, that he’s got a blissful afterlife set up for good people, and so forth. Without evidence to know about, theologians have no more expertise on this subject than average Christians. Therefore, the theologian’s version of Christianity is no more valid than the average Christian’s version of it, and is no more deserving of our attention. In fact, because theologians represent such a tiny fraction of Christians, it deserves less.
I think you might be deflecting the main point here. Possibly without realising it.
You have a better opportunity to practice your skills as a rationalist if you respond to the [least convenient] (http://tinyurl.com/LWleastconvenient) possible interpretation of this comment.
I would propose that the “experts” being referred to are experts in debating the existence of God. ie of all the arguments that have ever been put forward for the existence of God, these are the people who know the most compelling ones. The most rationally compelling, logically coherent arguments.
Perhaps you mean to say that no such people exist, or no such arguments exist. It is possible that that’s true. But it is almost certain that having brief conversations with garden-variety theists, won’t expose us to these arguments.
If you happen to have gone looking for these arguments, with an open mind and a willingness to genuinely consider their merits, and you remain unconvinced, then that’s fine. I’m pretty sure that if I were to go looking for the most compelling arguments, with a genuinely open mind, i would remain unconvinced too. But i think it’s important to acknowledge that I haven’t actually done so. I haven’t done the research and I haven’t given myself the best possible opportunity to change my mind. - There were other things that I was more interested in doing.
For those of us who haven’t heard the most compelling arguments: I honestly think that’s fine. But i think the original poster (and Psycho) are describing an important bias, that we should be aware of and careful about in our own thinking: the tendency to reason as if we have already seen the most compelling evidence for something, even when there’s no reason to believe that you have.
When you realise that you’ve not yet seen the most convincing version of an argument, there’s no reason to raise your probability estimates. But you also shouldn’t lower them in the same way that you would if you were sure you’d seen all the evidence that there was.
Indeed. Ignorant atheists piss me off. No, you don’t have to go along with everything your culture does just because everybody else thinks it’s a good idea… but you’d better have a damn good reason for rejecting it.. But there really are a lot of atheists for whom it comes down to something like “talking snake? C’mon!”. It’s worse than being religious.
What’s worse is a lot of these folks love being polemical—they don’t have good reasons for being atheists but want to be loud jerks about it, so religious folk get the idea that atheists are just uninformed rude jerks.
Although I agree with the general thrust of your statement, I cannot forgive the incorrect subargument, “It’s worse than being religious.”
But yes, definitely: atheists should aspire to be skillful, competent, elegant, logical rude jerks. Those of our kind with the rare talent not to be rude jerks could aspire to that part too.
Why exactly is it rare for atheists not to be rude jerks? This isn’t something I’ve observed strong evidence for.
Opinions of rude jerks are more known to strangers.
If your friends are atheists, then you see that atheists come with any temperament. But when you hear about atheism from a stranger, there is a big chance he is a jerk, because other people usually don’t impose their opinions on strangers.
It works the same if you replace “atheism” by many other things. The most visible people are usually the most annoying ones.
Thank you for writing this. I started to write something similar, got bogged down in too many layers of qualification, and ultimately scrapped it; you expressed what I wanted to, far more succinctly than I would have.
Atheists are generally self-selected intellectual people, therefore generally nerds, therefore generally lacking in social skills.
Also, religion is harming and killing a lot of people, so a lot of atheists get up in arms about that and come off as jerky.
Hum, depends of where you live. Here in France, atheists are common, recent surveys show almost an even three thirds split between atheists, agnostics and religious. A significant part of many social professions (teachers, nurses, social helpers, journalists, …) are atheists, for example.
But that still holds true for vocal atheists : they tend to be intellectual and nerdy, even if vocal atheists also include a part of the traditional working-class (factory workers, construction workers, transport drivers, …) due to still strong anarcho-syndicalist and marxist currents in French unions.
Indeed, I was speaking US-centrically, and I don’t doubt Eliezer was too at the time.
Though even here, atheists of some sort or another are more common than people think. Almost a quarter of Americans answered “no religion” on the 2004 census. Of course, a BBC poll from the same time suggested that North Americans were about 9% atheist, and those categories might mean different things.
I’m not sure how you could misconstrue that as an argument—it’s a single proposition!
If it’s not obvious, consider that they’re rejecting a commonly-held belief for a really bad reason. That’s practically insane. Much better to go along with the crowd until you have an actual reason not to.
And I think being neither rude nor a jerk is vital to being a complete person. You’re setting the bar way too low.
Just because they say “the idea of a talking snake is ridiculous!” does not mean that they rely solely on the absurdity heuristic. After all, they got the correct answer.
“Do not criticize people when they turn out to be right! Wait for an occasion where they are wrong! Otherwise you are missing the chance to see when someone is thinking smarter than you”
If you suspect someone is relying too heavily on the absurdity heuristic, there are absurd things that are true that you can test them on. If you’re talking about “the average atheist” and don’t have time to test a representitive sample, I would not assume that the absurdity heuristic is all they got going for them.
I’d think the majority, if not nearly all atheists see (some of) the biases that lead to religious beliefs. “All your stated reasons for belief are worthless and shared with the majority, and your claim is absurd” is probably enough to discount the majority.
There’s also such a thing as being fair—epistemic justice. That plea can only be made by showing a poor criticism of Them and comparing it to a poor criticism of Us.
thomblake:
I also agree with the post’s assertion that relying on the absurdity heuristic alone is dangerous ground, it is still an excellent tool for at least calling in to question a set of beliefs which, upon further and more rigorous examination, may or may not merit rejection.
But, I must protest, a talking snake is not “a really bad reason” to reject that set of common beliefs. It is an EXCELLENT reason.
Snakes do not talk.