I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I’m glad you wrote it as openness seems like the first step to knowledge. On the other, I think you’re dealing with your evidence wrongly.
To me it feels like you’ve been discovering something new (rationality) and found a way to fit it into your existing belief system. On the inside this feels like it confirms your belief system but from the outside it looks like privileging the hypothesis. One of the main things I got from Thinking: Fast and Slow was that being able to tell ourselves a convincing story feels like we’re discovering the truth but actually the convincing-ness of the story is orthogonal to truth.
If we grant that Christians invented science then maybe this can be counted as evidence for Christianity, but is it strong evidence? A rough estimate might be that 1⁄6 people who have ever lived were Christian so I don’t think that it should be overly surprising that one of them was the inventor. I know this is a horrendous method for choosing a prior but it gives an indicator that evidence of what Christians have done in the past is unlikely to be strong evidence either way.
If you count this as evidence for Christianity then you need to count similar evidence too. Should the other historical figures before the 12th century who contributed to science and maths count as evidence that their beliefs are true? Compared to the number of Christians who have ever lived, the number of ancient Greeks who ever lived is tiny so it is incredible that they got as far as they did.
To someone looking in from the outside, claiming that Christianity is different because it gave a reason for believing the world would be consistent again seems like privileging the hypothesis. Those other ancient figures seemed to assume that the world would be consistent even without Christianity so even in your belief system there doesn’t seem to be an a priori reason to believe that they couldn’t have invented the scientific method.
It took 12 centuries after Christ to invent the scientific method so it would also seem to be true that believing in Christianity wasn’t a massively strong driver towards inventing the scientific method.
***
To put my cards on the table, until a couple of years ago I was in a similar situation to you. I believed in Christianity and didn’t expect ever to be dissuaded.
I’m not sure that I can pinpoint exactly what changed for me. One big part of it was the realisation that I didn’t have to believe or not believe in Christianity − 0 and 1 are not probabilities. What was more I realised I already didn’t 100% believe in everything in Christianity—there were already plenty of things that I found incredibly confusing but kinda just accepted because they were part of a parcel of beliefs. I guess you might be similar but may have different issues—mine included the trinity, free will vs God’s sovereignty, differences between new and old testaments, suffering, # of fertilised eggs which never even implant into the womb (I know, that one is probably fairly idiosyncratic).
When I allowed myself to see my belief in Christianity on a scale I was able to modify how much I believed it based on evidence I saw. Before that any new evidence was judged on whether it allowed me to believe Christianity rather than whether it encouraged me to believe. I should note that from a Christian point of view this seems to be a virtue not a vice—Christianity seems to imply that you should only believe in Christianity if it is true so looking accurately at the evidence should be encouraged.
Over a few months my belief slowly waned as more evidence came in. I think the tipping point for me was realising how badly designed human intelligence is. The likelihood of God inventing something so poor in absolute terms to be the pinnacle of his creation was enough to push me over the edge. Again, this is probably fairly idiosyncratic!
***
I’m not sure exactly what you were hoping for in response to your introduction but I hoped my experience might be interesting to you.
I’m not sure exactly what you were hoping for in response to your introduction but I hoped my experience might be interesting to you.
I wasn’t hoping for anything. I had expectations that I had assigned prior probabilities to, and could have happily continued on reading without ever mentioning anything of my epistemology. To my mind that was not the rational approach—and the guidelines that are offered are to lay your underlying assumptions bare for discussion so that people can avoid straw-manning one another. This is what I have done.
There is too much else in your comment to dissect each part, and I can’t deal with it fairly without dealing with all of it. I do appreciate your experience, and your frankness with me regarding it. It is not my experience though and you have misrepresented me in your mental model here:
To me it feels like you’ve been discovering something new (rationality) and found a way to fit it into your existing belief system.
We must be wary of what things feel like to us. Toward the end of the story section I wrote that I was doing my best to not believe—and pursued mathematics, rationality, and science toward those ends.
It sounds like you’ve discovered something new (rationality) and it has dissolved your previously felt cognitive dissonance regarding your belief. The dissolving of cognitive dissonance feels like it is confirming the side that you end up on, even though the actual evidence is sketchy at best.
***
Corrections to my previous comments:
1. Where I said:
method for choosing a prior
I should have said “method for calculating a likelihood”
2. I talk about my belief in Christianity being on a scale but this is unhelpful because of the issues discussed in No, really, I’ve deceived myself. I should have talked about “How likely I though it was that Christianity was true” being measured on a scale. This sounds the same but means I actually assessed the truth of the statement, not just my level of belief.
I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I’m glad you wrote it as openness seems like the first step to knowledge. On the other, I think you’re dealing with your evidence wrongly.
To me it feels like you’ve been discovering something new (rationality) and found a way to fit it into your existing belief system. On the inside this feels like it confirms your belief system but from the outside it looks like privileging the hypothesis. One of the main things I got from Thinking: Fast and Slow was that being able to tell ourselves a convincing story feels like we’re discovering the truth but actually the convincing-ness of the story is orthogonal to truth.
If we grant that Christians invented science then maybe this can be counted as evidence for Christianity, but is it strong evidence? A rough estimate might be that 1⁄6 people who have ever lived were Christian so I don’t think that it should be overly surprising that one of them was the inventor. I know this is a horrendous method for choosing a prior but it gives an indicator that evidence of what Christians have done in the past is unlikely to be strong evidence either way.
If you count this as evidence for Christianity then you need to count similar evidence too. Should the other historical figures before the 12th century who contributed to science and maths count as evidence that their beliefs are true? Compared to the number of Christians who have ever lived, the number of ancient Greeks who ever lived is tiny so it is incredible that they got as far as they did.
To someone looking in from the outside, claiming that Christianity is different because it gave a reason for believing the world would be consistent again seems like privileging the hypothesis. Those other ancient figures seemed to assume that the world would be consistent even without Christianity so even in your belief system there doesn’t seem to be an a priori reason to believe that they couldn’t have invented the scientific method.
It took 12 centuries after Christ to invent the scientific method so it would also seem to be true that believing in Christianity wasn’t a massively strong driver towards inventing the scientific method.
***
To put my cards on the table, until a couple of years ago I was in a similar situation to you. I believed in Christianity and didn’t expect ever to be dissuaded.
I’m not sure that I can pinpoint exactly what changed for me. One big part of it was the realisation that I didn’t have to believe or not believe in Christianity − 0 and 1 are not probabilities. What was more I realised I already didn’t 100% believe in everything in Christianity—there were already plenty of things that I found incredibly confusing but kinda just accepted because they were part of a parcel of beliefs. I guess you might be similar but may have different issues—mine included the trinity, free will vs God’s sovereignty, differences between new and old testaments, suffering, # of fertilised eggs which never even implant into the womb (I know, that one is probably fairly idiosyncratic).
When I allowed myself to see my belief in Christianity on a scale I was able to modify how much I believed it based on evidence I saw. Before that any new evidence was judged on whether it allowed me to believe Christianity rather than whether it encouraged me to believe. I should note that from a Christian point of view this seems to be a virtue not a vice—Christianity seems to imply that you should only believe in Christianity if it is true so looking accurately at the evidence should be encouraged.
Over a few months my belief slowly waned as more evidence came in. I think the tipping point for me was realising how badly designed human intelligence is. The likelihood of God inventing something so poor in absolute terms to be the pinnacle of his creation was enough to push me over the edge. Again, this is probably fairly idiosyncratic!
***
I’m not sure exactly what you were hoping for in response to your introduction but I hoped my experience might be interesting to you.
I wasn’t hoping for anything. I had expectations that I had assigned prior probabilities to, and could have happily continued on reading without ever mentioning anything of my epistemology. To my mind that was not the rational approach—and the guidelines that are offered are to lay your underlying assumptions bare for discussion so that people can avoid straw-manning one another. This is what I have done.
There is too much else in your comment to dissect each part, and I can’t deal with it fairly without dealing with all of it. I do appreciate your experience, and your frankness with me regarding it. It is not my experience though and you have misrepresented me in your mental model here:
We must be wary of what things feel like to us. Toward the end of the story section I wrote that I was doing my best to not believe—and pursued mathematics, rationality, and science toward those ends.
Thank you again for your response.
I’ll rephrase:
It sounds like you’ve discovered something new (rationality) and it has dissolved your previously felt cognitive dissonance regarding your belief. The dissolving of cognitive dissonance feels like it is confirming the side that you end up on, even though the actual evidence is sketchy at best.
***
Corrections to my previous comments:
1. Where I said:
I should have said “method for calculating a likelihood”
2. I talk about my belief in Christianity being on a scale but this is unhelpful because of the issues discussed in No, really, I’ve deceived myself. I should have talked about “How likely I though it was that Christianity was true” being measured on a scale. This sounds the same but means I actually assessed the truth of the statement, not just my level of belief.