This perspective is classically biased, I’m afraid to say. :/ I agree with you (now, given other’s comments) that it may not be an appropriate conversation to ask LW to host.… but if you write off the possibility of its veracity as “fantasy” before studying the material, you are exhibiting a preconceived notion independent of the data. It’s like when Einstein wrote off quantum mechanics as “too weird”.
The universe acts just as we would expect a mechanistic, material universe to act. I have seen the argument you made in other comment threads, and I find it too weak to be worth much consideration. You suggest that God exists (along with heaven, souls, etc.). The only direct impact those entities seem to have on the universe, though, is the presence of a few vaguely-stated tidbits in a book that can be charitably interpreted to have been uncommon knowledge at the time they were written down. Notably, they were written down in connection to previous books which contain vast historical and factual inaccuracies and are better understood as mythology rather than revelation. This simply is not very convincing.
Then be unconvinced. But if you write off an argument as “fantasy”, instead of going through the mandatory “theory which exhibits an order-of-epsilon chance of being true”, then it speaks of a bias in your mind.
I don’t mean to fall into But There’s Still A Chance, Right?; I believe that the LDS faith has exhibited much more than an order-of-epsilon chance of truth. But then, we have different opinions about the weights of our priors.
Religious texts are works of fantasy. That’s just the most parsimonious description, currently. It fits the known evidence and pays rent much better than the postulation of an omnipotent entity that acts only in vague, constrained, idiosyncratic, and generally worthless ways (along with other entities that find just as little if not less justification in the evidence). It would be “writing off” if I declared it to be the case a priori, but as I said above, I’ve seen the opposing arguments.
I have little interest in discussing fantasy as though it were reality, and I don’t think it’s appropriate for or relevant to LW.
This perspective is classically biased, I’m afraid to say. :/ I agree with you (now, given other’s comments) that it may not be an appropriate conversation to ask LW to host.… but if you write off the possibility of its veracity as “fantasy” before studying the material, you are exhibiting a preconceived notion independent of the data. It’s like when Einstein wrote off quantum mechanics as “too weird”.
The universe acts just as we would expect a mechanistic, material universe to act. I have seen the argument you made in other comment threads, and I find it too weak to be worth much consideration. You suggest that God exists (along with heaven, souls, etc.). The only direct impact those entities seem to have on the universe, though, is the presence of a few vaguely-stated tidbits in a book that can be charitably interpreted to have been uncommon knowledge at the time they were written down. Notably, they were written down in connection to previous books which contain vast historical and factual inaccuracies and are better understood as mythology rather than revelation. This simply is not very convincing.
Then be unconvinced. But if you write off an argument as “fantasy”, instead of going through the mandatory “theory which exhibits an order-of-epsilon chance of being true”, then it speaks of a bias in your mind.
I don’t mean to fall into But There’s Still A Chance, Right?; I believe that the LDS faith has exhibited much more than an order-of-epsilon chance of truth. But then, we have different opinions about the weights of our priors.
Religious texts are works of fantasy. That’s just the most parsimonious description, currently. It fits the known evidence and pays rent much better than the postulation of an omnipotent entity that acts only in vague, constrained, idiosyncratic, and generally worthless ways (along with other entities that find just as little if not less justification in the evidence). It would be “writing off” if I declared it to be the case a priori, but as I said above, I’ve seen the opposing arguments.