FWIW, I’ve had the experience of a Presence manifesting itself to talk to me. The most likely explanation of that experience is a brain glitch. I’m not sure why I ought to consider that a “backup” explanation.
Right, obviously it’s a problem. There are lots of people who think they’ve been manifested to, and some of them are schizophrenic, and some of them are not, and it’s a whole lot easier to just assume they’re all deluded (even if not lying). But even Richard Dawkins has admitted that he could believe in God if he had no other choice. (I have a source if you want.)
Certainly, if you’re completely determined not to believe no matter what—if you would refuse God even if He appeared to you himself—then you never will. But if there is absolutely nothing that would convince you, then you’re giving it a chance of 0.
Since you are rationalists, you can’t have it actually be 0. So what is that 0.0001 that would convince you?
There’s a big difference between “no matter what” and “if He appeared to you himself,” especially if by the latter you mean appearing to my senses. I mean, the immediate anecdotal evidence of my senses is far from being the most convincing form of evidence in my world; there are many things I’m confident exist without having directly perceived them, and some things I’ve directly perceived I’m confident don’t exist.
For example, a being possessing the powers attributed to YHWH in the Old Testament, or to Jesus in the New Testament, could simply grant me faith directly—that is, directly raising my confidence in that being’s existence. If YHWH or Jesus (or some other powerful entity) appeared to me that way, I would believe in them.
I’m assuming you’re not counting that as convincing me, though I’m not sure why not.
But if there is absolutely nothing that would convince you, then you’re giving it a chance of 0.
Actually, that isn’t true. It might well be that I assign a positive probability to X, but that I still can’t rationally reach a state of >50% confidence in X, because the kind of evidence that would motivate such a confidence-shift simply isn’t available to me. I am a limited mortal being with bounded cognition, not all truths are available to me just because they’re true.
But it may be that with respect to the specific belief you’re asking about, the situation isn’t even that bad. I don’t know, because I’m not really sure what specific belief you’re asking about. What is it, exactly, that you want to know how to convince me of?
That is… are you asking what would convince me in the existence of YHWH, Creator of the Universe, the God of my fathers and my forefathers, who lifted them up from bondage in Egypt with a mighty hand an an outstretched arm, and through his prophet Moses led them to Sinai where he bequeathed to them his Law?
Or what would convince me of the existence of Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, who was born a man and died for our sins, that those who believe in Him would not die but have eternal life?
Or what would convince me of the existence of Loki, son of the All-Father Odin who dwells in highest Asgard, and will one day bring about Ragnarok and the death of the Gods?
Or… well, what, exactly?
With respect to those in particular, I can’t think of any experience off-hand which would raise my confidence in any of them high enough to be worth considering (EDIT: that’s hyperbole; I really mean “to convince me”; see below), though that’s not to say that such experiences don’t exist or aren’t possible… I just don’t know what they are.
With respect to those in particular, I can’t think of any experience off-hand which would raise my confidence in any of them high enough to be worth considering, though that’s not to say that such experiences don’t exist or aren’t possible… I just don’t know what they are.
Huh. That’s interesting. For at least the first two I can think of a few that would convince me, and for the third I suspect that a lack of being easily able to be convinced is connected more to my lack of knowledge about the religion in question. In the most obvious way for YHVH, if everyone everywhere started hearing a loud shofar blowing and then the dead rose, and then an extremely educated fellow claiming to be Elijah showed up and started answering every halachic question in ways that resolve all the apparent problems, I think I’d be paying close attention to the hypothesis.
Similar remarks apply for Jesus. They do seem to depend strongly on making much more blatant interventions in the world then the deities generally seem to (outside their holy texts).
Technically the shofar blowing thing should not be enough sensory evidence to convince you of the prior improbability of this being the God—probability of alien teenagers, etcetera—but since you weren’t expecting that to happen and other people were, good rationalist procedure would be to listen very carefully what they had to say about how your priors might’ve been mistaken. It could still be alien teenagers but you really ought to give somebody a chance to explain to you about how it’s not. On the other hand, we can’t execute this sort of super-update until we actually see the evidence, so meanwhile the prior probability remains astronomically low.
and then an extremely educated fellow claiming to be Elijah showed up
In this context I think it makes sense to ask “showed up where?” but if the answer were “everywhere on earth at once,” I’d call that pretty damn compelling.
Yeah, you’re right, “to be worth considering” is hyperbole. On balance I’d still lean towards “powerful entity whom I have no reason to believe created the universe, probably didn’t lift my forefathers up from bondage in Egypt, might have bequeathed them his Law, and for reasons of its own is adopting the trappings of YHWH” but I would, as you say, be paying close attention to alternative hypotheses.
You’re right, I’m assuming that God doesn’t just tweak anyone’s mind to force them to believe, because the God of the Abrahamic religions won’t ever do that—our ultimate agency to believe or not is very important to Him. What would be the point of seven billion mindless minions? (OK, it might be fun for a while, but I bet sentient children would be more interesting over the course of, say, eternity.)
As I said at the time, it hadn’t been clear when I wrote the comment that you meant, specifically, the God of the Abrahamic religions when you talked about God.
I’ve since read your comments elsewhere about Mormonism, which made it clearer that there’s a specific denomination’s traditional beliefs about the universe you’re looking to defend, and not just beliefs in the existence of a God more generally.
And, sure, given that you’re looking for compelling arguments that defend your pre-existing beliefs, including specific claims about God’s values as well as God’s existence, history, powers, personality, relationships to particular human beings, and so forth, then it makes sense to reject ideas that seem inconsistent with those epistemic pre-commitments.
If you do assume that God can (and does) just reach in and tweak our minds directly, then being “convinced” takes on a sort of strange meaning. Unless we’re assuming that you remain in normal control of your own mind, the concepts of “choice,” “opinion,” and “me” sort of start to disappear.
I’m trying to talk about a deity in general, but you’re right, it often turns into the God we’re all familiar with. A radically different deity could uproot every part of the way we think about things, even logic and reason itself.
So in order to stay within our own universe, I think it’s OK to assume that any God only intervenes to the extent that we usually hear about, like Old Testament miracles.
A radically different deity could uproot every part of the way we think about things, even logic and reason itself. So in order to stay within our own universe, I think it’s OK to assume that any God only intervenes to the extent that we usually hear about, like Old Testament miracles.
Wait… you endorse rejecting the lived experience of millions of people whose conception of deity is radically different from yours, on the grounds that to do otherwise could uproot logic, reason, and every part of the way we think about things?
Wow. Um… I genuinely don’t mean to be offensive, but I don’t know a polite way to say this: if I understood that correctly, I just lost all interest in discussing this subject with you.
You seemed to be arguing a while back that our precommitments to “the way we think about things” were not sufficient grounds to reject uncomfortable or difficult ideas, which is a position I can respect, though I think it’s importantly though subtly false.
But now you just seem to be saying that we should not respect such precommitments when they interfere with accepting some beliefs, such as one popular conception of deity, while considering them sufficient grounds to reject others, such as different popular conceptions of deity.
Which seems to bring us all the way back around to the idea that an “atheist” is merely someone who treats my God the way I treat everyone else’s God, which is boring.
So it seems like what we were actually talking about here was how thoroughly God could convince a human of His existence, and you suggested he could just raise your faith level directly.
Here’s the problem I have with that: I don’t know about Odin, but the YHWH we were raised with doesn’t (could, but doesn’t) ever do that. I wouldn’t really call it faith if you have no choice in the matter.
But I recognize that free agency is a very important tenet of my religion and important to my understanding of the universe given that my religion is correct. (I still don’t quite understand free choice, which I’ll have to figure out sometime in the next few years, but that’s my own issue.)
Thus, a radically different deity is at odds with my view of the universe. This probably means that I ought to go looking for radically different deities which will challenge my universe, but for now I don’t know of any (except maybe simulation hypotheses, which I like a lot).
But for the purposes of this discussion—which, remember, was only about how spectacular a manifestation it would take to make you believe—I said it would be easier to stick to a God that doesn’t intervene to the point of directly tampering with our neurons. You had a problem with this. OK, sorry—let’s also think about a fundamentally different God.
I think that an effectively all-powerful being could easily just reach in and rearrange our circuits such that we know it exists. Sure it could happen. As I think I told someone, I don’t see why—having seven billion mindless minions would get old after a while—but I have no right to go questioning the motives of a deity, especially one that’s radically different from the one I’m told I’m modeled after.
I’m sorry, I never meant to dismiss the possibility of radically different religions. You’re right, that would be awfully silly coming from me.
Now then.
You seemed to be arguing a while back that our precommitments to “the way we think about things” were not sufficient grounds to reject uncomfortable or difficult ideas, which is a position I can respect, though I think it’s importantly though subtly false.
I recommend you prioritize clarifying your confusions surrounding “free choice” higher than you seem to be doing.
In particular, I observe that our circuits have demonstrably been arranged such that we find certain propositions, sources of value, and courses of action (call them C1) significantly (and in some cases overwhelmingly) more compelling than other propositions, sources of value, and courses of action (C2). For example (and trivially), C1 includes “I have a physical body” and C2 includes “I don’t have a physical body”.
If we were designed by a deity, it follows that this deity in fact designed us to be predisposed to accept C1 and not accept C2.
A concept of free agency that allows for stacking the deck so overwhelmingly in support of C1 over C2, but does not allow for including in C1 “YHWH as portrayed in the Book of Mormon, other texts included by reference in the Book of Mormon, and subsequent revelations granted to the line of Mormon Prophets by YHWH”, seems like an important concept to clarify, if only because it sounds so very contrived on the face of it.
This sounds very interesting, what do you mean?
Well, for example, consider the proposition (Pj) that YHWH as conceived of and worshiped by 20th-century Orthodox Jews of my family’s tradition exists.
As a child, I was taught Pj and believed it (which incidentally entailed other things, for example, such as Jesus Christ not being the Messiah). As a teenager re-evaluated the evidence I had for and against Pj and concluded that my confidence in NOT(Pj) was higher than my confidence in Pj.
Had someone said to me at that time “Dave, I realize that your evaluation of the evidence presented by your experience of the world leads you to high confidence in certain propositions which you consider logically inconsistent with Pj, but I caution you not to become so thoroughly precommitted to the methods by which you perform those evaluations that you cannot seriously consider alternative ways of evaluating evidence,” that would intuitively feel like a sensible, rational, balanced position.
The difficulty with it is that in practice, refusing to commit to any epistemic method means giving up on reaching any conclusions at all, however tentative. And since in practice making any choices about what to do next requires arriving at some conclusion, however implicit or unexamined, it similarly precludes an explicit examination of the conclusions underlying my choices. (Which typically entails an unexamined adoption of the epistemic methods my social group implicitly endorses, rather than the adoption of no epistemic methods at all, but that’s a whole different conversation.)
I ultimately decided I valued such explicit examinations, and that entailed a willingness to making a commitment to an epistemic methodology, and that the epistemic methodology that seemed most compelling to me at that time did in fact lead me to reject Pj, so absent discovering inconsistencies in that methodology that led me to reject it at some later time I was committed to rejecting Pj, which I did.
(Of course, I wasn’t thinking in quite these terms as a 13-year-old Yeshiva student, and it took some years to get fully consistent about that position. Actually, I’m not yet fully consistent about it, and don’t anticipate becoming so in my lifetime.)
Interesting. I’ll keep thinking about it. But just to clarify, what exactly was it I said that was subtly but importantly wrong?
This is what EY says about “uncomfortable or difficult ideas:”
“When you’re doubting one of your most cherished beliefs, close your eyes, empty your mind, grit your teeth, and deliberately think about whatever hurts the most. Don’t rehearse standard objections whose standard counters would make you feel better. Ask yourself what smart people who disagree would say to your first reply, and your second reply. Whenever you catch yourself flinching away from an objection you fleetingly thought of, drag it out into the forefront of your mind.”
But just to clarify, what exactly was it I said that was subtly but importantly wrong?
Like I said, I thought you were arguing a while back that our precommitments to “the way we think about things” were not sufficient grounds to reject uncomfortable or difficult ideas, which is an idea I respect (for reasons similar to those articulated in the post you quote) but consider subtly but importantly wrong (for reasons similar to those I articulate in the comment you reply to).
I’ll note, also, that an epistemic methodology (a way of thinking about things) isn’t the same thing as a belief.
FWIW, I’ve had the experience of a Presence manifesting itself to talk to me. The most likely explanation of that experience is a brain glitch. I’m not sure why I ought to consider that a “backup” explanation.
Right, obviously it’s a problem. There are lots of people who think they’ve been manifested to, and some of them are schizophrenic, and some of them are not, and it’s a whole lot easier to just assume they’re all deluded (even if not lying). But even Richard Dawkins has admitted that he could believe in God if he had no other choice. (I have a source if you want.)
Certainly, if you’re completely determined not to believe no matter what—if you would refuse God even if He appeared to you himself—then you never will. But if there is absolutely nothing that would convince you, then you’re giving it a chance of 0.
Since you are rationalists, you can’t have it actually be 0. So what is that 0.0001 that would convince you?
There’s a big difference between “no matter what” and “if He appeared to you himself,” especially if by the latter you mean appearing to my senses. I mean, the immediate anecdotal evidence of my senses is far from being the most convincing form of evidence in my world; there are many things I’m confident exist without having directly perceived them, and some things I’ve directly perceived I’m confident don’t exist.
For example, a being possessing the powers attributed to YHWH in the Old Testament, or to Jesus in the New Testament, could simply grant me faith directly—that is, directly raising my confidence in that being’s existence. If YHWH or Jesus (or some other powerful entity) appeared to me that way, I would believe in them.
I’m assuming you’re not counting that as convincing me, though I’m not sure why not.
Actually, that isn’t true. It might well be that I assign a positive probability to X, but that I still can’t rationally reach a state of >50% confidence in X, because the kind of evidence that would motivate such a confidence-shift simply isn’t available to me. I am a limited mortal being with bounded cognition, not all truths are available to me just because they’re true.
But it may be that with respect to the specific belief you’re asking about, the situation isn’t even that bad. I don’t know, because I’m not really sure what specific belief you’re asking about. What is it, exactly, that you want to know how to convince me of?
That is… are you asking what would convince me in the existence of YHWH, Creator of the Universe, the God of my fathers and my forefathers, who lifted them up from bondage in Egypt with a mighty hand an an outstretched arm, and through his prophet Moses led them to Sinai where he bequeathed to them his Law?
Or what would convince me of the existence of Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, who was born a man and died for our sins, that those who believe in Him would not die but have eternal life?
Or what would convince me of the existence of Loki, son of the All-Father Odin who dwells in highest Asgard, and will one day bring about Ragnarok and the death of the Gods?
Or… well, what, exactly?
With respect to those in particular, I can’t think of any experience off-hand which would raise my confidence in any of them high enough to be worth considering (EDIT: that’s hyperbole; I really mean “to convince me”; see below), though that’s not to say that such experiences don’t exist or aren’t possible… I just don’t know what they are.
With respect to other things, I might be able to.
Huh. That’s interesting. For at least the first two I can think of a few that would convince me, and for the third I suspect that a lack of being easily able to be convinced is connected more to my lack of knowledge about the religion in question. In the most obvious way for YHVH, if everyone everywhere started hearing a loud shofar blowing and then the dead rose, and then an extremely educated fellow claiming to be Elijah showed up and started answering every halachic question in ways that resolve all the apparent problems, I think I’d be paying close attention to the hypothesis.
Similar remarks apply for Jesus. They do seem to depend strongly on making much more blatant interventions in the world then the deities generally seem to (outside their holy texts).
Technically the shofar blowing thing should not be enough sensory evidence to convince you of the prior improbability of this being the God—probability of alien teenagers, etcetera—but since you weren’t expecting that to happen and other people were, good rationalist procedure would be to listen very carefully what they had to say about how your priors might’ve been mistaken. It could still be alien teenagers but you really ought to give somebody a chance to explain to you about how it’s not. On the other hand, we can’t execute this sort of super-update until we actually see the evidence, so meanwhile the prior probability remains astronomically low.
In this context I think it makes sense to ask “showed up where?” but if the answer were “everywhere on earth at once,” I’d call that pretty damn compelling.
Not to mention crowded.
Yeah, you’re right, “to be worth considering” is hyperbole. On balance I’d still lean towards “powerful entity whom I have no reason to believe created the universe, probably didn’t lift my forefathers up from bondage in Egypt, might have bequeathed them his Law, and for reasons of its own is adopting the trappings of YHWH” but I would, as you say, be paying close attention to alternative hypotheses.
Fixed.
You’re right, I’m assuming that God doesn’t just tweak anyone’s mind to force them to believe, because the God of the Abrahamic religions won’t ever do that—our ultimate agency to believe or not is very important to Him. What would be the point of seven billion mindless minions? (OK, it might be fun for a while, but I bet sentient children would be more interesting over the course of, say, eternity.)
As I said at the time, it hadn’t been clear when I wrote the comment that you meant, specifically, the God of the Abrahamic religions when you talked about God.
I’ve since read your comments elsewhere about Mormonism, which made it clearer that there’s a specific denomination’s traditional beliefs about the universe you’re looking to defend, and not just beliefs in the existence of a God more generally.
And, sure, given that you’re looking for compelling arguments that defend your pre-existing beliefs, including specific claims about God’s values as well as God’s existence, history, powers, personality, relationships to particular human beings, and so forth, then it makes sense to reject ideas that seem inconsistent with those epistemic pre-commitments.
That’s quite a given, though.
If you do assume that God can (and does) just reach in and tweak our minds directly, then being “convinced” takes on a sort of strange meaning. Unless we’re assuming that you remain in normal control of your own mind, the concepts of “choice,” “opinion,” and “me” sort of start to disappear.
I’m trying to talk about a deity in general, but you’re right, it often turns into the God we’re all familiar with. A radically different deity could uproot every part of the way we think about things, even logic and reason itself.
So in order to stay within our own universe, I think it’s OK to assume that any God only intervenes to the extent that we usually hear about, like Old Testament miracles.
Wait… you endorse rejecting the lived experience of millions of people whose conception of deity is radically different from yours, on the grounds that to do otherwise could uproot logic, reason, and every part of the way we think about things?
Wow. Um… I genuinely don’t mean to be offensive, but I don’t know a polite way to say this: if I understood that correctly, I just lost all interest in discussing this subject with you.
You seemed to be arguing a while back that our precommitments to “the way we think about things” were not sufficient grounds to reject uncomfortable or difficult ideas, which is a position I can respect, though I think it’s importantly though subtly false.
But now you just seem to be saying that we should not respect such precommitments when they interfere with accepting some beliefs, such as one popular conception of deity, while considering them sufficient grounds to reject others, such as different popular conceptions of deity.
Which seems to bring us all the way back around to the idea that an “atheist” is merely someone who treats my God the way I treat everyone else’s God, which is boring.
Have I misunderstood you?
Probably you have, unfortunately. Give me a few minutes to figure it out...this is getting confusing.
OK. No worries; no hurries… I’ll consider this branch paused pending re-evaluation. Take your time.
So it seems like what we were actually talking about here was how thoroughly God could convince a human of His existence, and you suggested he could just raise your faith level directly.
Here’s the problem I have with that: I don’t know about Odin, but the YHWH we were raised with doesn’t (could, but doesn’t) ever do that. I wouldn’t really call it faith if you have no choice in the matter.
But I recognize that free agency is a very important tenet of my religion and important to my understanding of the universe given that my religion is correct. (I still don’t quite understand free choice, which I’ll have to figure out sometime in the next few years, but that’s my own issue.) Thus, a radically different deity is at odds with my view of the universe. This probably means that I ought to go looking for radically different deities which will challenge my universe, but for now I don’t know of any (except maybe simulation hypotheses, which I like a lot).
But for the purposes of this discussion—which, remember, was only about how spectacular a manifestation it would take to make you believe—I said it would be easier to stick to a God that doesn’t intervene to the point of directly tampering with our neurons. You had a problem with this. OK, sorry—let’s also think about a fundamentally different God.
I think that an effectively all-powerful being could easily just reach in and rearrange our circuits such that we know it exists. Sure it could happen. As I think I told someone, I don’t see why—having seven billion mindless minions would get old after a while—but I have no right to go questioning the motives of a deity, especially one that’s radically different from the one I’m told I’m modeled after.
I’m sorry, I never meant to dismiss the possibility of radically different religions. You’re right, that would be awfully silly coming from me.
Now then.
This sounds very interesting, what do you mean?
I recommend you prioritize clarifying your confusions surrounding “free choice” higher than you seem to be doing.
In particular, I observe that our circuits have demonstrably been arranged such that we find certain propositions, sources of value, and courses of action (call them C1) significantly (and in some cases overwhelmingly) more compelling than other propositions, sources of value, and courses of action (C2). For example (and trivially), C1 includes “I have a physical body” and C2 includes “I don’t have a physical body”.
If we were designed by a deity, it follows that this deity in fact designed us to be predisposed to accept C1 and not accept C2.
A concept of free agency that allows for stacking the deck so overwhelmingly in support of C1 over C2, but does not allow for including in C1 “YHWH as portrayed in the Book of Mormon, other texts included by reference in the Book of Mormon, and subsequent revelations granted to the line of Mormon Prophets by YHWH”, seems like an important concept to clarify, if only because it sounds so very contrived on the face of it.
Well, for example, consider the proposition (Pj) that YHWH as conceived of and worshiped by 20th-century Orthodox Jews of my family’s tradition exists.
As a child, I was taught Pj and believed it (which incidentally entailed other things, for example, such as Jesus Christ not being the Messiah). As a teenager re-evaluated the evidence I had for and against Pj and concluded that my confidence in NOT(Pj) was higher than my confidence in Pj.
Had someone said to me at that time “Dave, I realize that your evaluation of the evidence presented by your experience of the world leads you to high confidence in certain propositions which you consider logically inconsistent with Pj, but I caution you not to become so thoroughly precommitted to the methods by which you perform those evaluations that you cannot seriously consider alternative ways of evaluating evidence,” that would intuitively feel like a sensible, rational, balanced position.
The difficulty with it is that in practice, refusing to commit to any epistemic method means giving up on reaching any conclusions at all, however tentative. And since in practice making any choices about what to do next requires arriving at some conclusion, however implicit or unexamined, it similarly precludes an explicit examination of the conclusions underlying my choices. (Which typically entails an unexamined adoption of the epistemic methods my social group implicitly endorses, rather than the adoption of no epistemic methods at all, but that’s a whole different conversation.)
I ultimately decided I valued such explicit examinations, and that entailed a willingness to making a commitment to an epistemic methodology, and that the epistemic methodology that seemed most compelling to me at that time did in fact lead me to reject Pj, so absent discovering inconsistencies in that methodology that led me to reject it at some later time I was committed to rejecting Pj, which I did.
(Of course, I wasn’t thinking in quite these terms as a 13-year-old Yeshiva student, and it took some years to get fully consistent about that position. Actually, I’m not yet fully consistent about it, and don’t anticipate becoming so in my lifetime.)
Interesting. I’ll keep thinking about it. But just to clarify, what exactly was it I said that was subtly but importantly wrong?
This is what EY says about “uncomfortable or difficult ideas:”
“When you’re doubting one of your most cherished beliefs, close your eyes, empty your mind, grit your teeth, and deliberately think about whatever hurts the most. Don’t rehearse standard objections whose standard counters would make you feel better. Ask yourself what smart people who disagree would say to your first reply, and your second reply. Whenever you catch yourself flinching away from an objection you fleetingly thought of, drag it out into the forefront of your mind.”
Like I said, I thought you were arguing a while back that our precommitments to “the way we think about things” were not sufficient grounds to reject uncomfortable or difficult ideas, which is an idea I respect (for reasons similar to those articulated in the post you quote) but consider subtly but importantly wrong (for reasons similar to those I articulate in the comment you reply to).
I’ll note, also, that an epistemic methodology (a way of thinking about things) isn’t the same thing as a belief.