Honestly the easiest explanation is just that Aumann is a very muddled thinker when it comes to religion. That’s hardly a surprising explanation—muddled thinking is extremely common when it comes to religion. And it doesn’t mean that such a person can’t otherwise be very rational. I know I’m being blunt here, but I see no reason to look beyond superficial appearances here. Just because a statement is religious doesn’t mean it’s deep.
All this stuff about non overlapping magisteria is honestly just confused nonsense. There’s only one truth. Sure you can approach that truth from different directions, but not if those directions directly contradict each other. Spending a great many pages talking about this just obscures that obvious fact.
And it’s all good and beautiful to say that “Religion is very different from science. The main part of religion is not about the way that we model the real world”. But I’ve never met a religious person who said that and then didn’t immediately turn around and started applying their religion to the real world. Aumann also does that. In fact in this very interview he literally says that copying software is wrong because his religion says so. So he clearly is modelling the real world based on his religion.
I don’t think he was saying that copying software is wrong because his religion says so. When he is talking about that example, he says:
“In short, you can be a moral person, but morals are often equivocal. In the eighties, copying software was considered moral by many people. The point I am making is that religion—at least my religion—is a sort of force, a way of making a commitment to conduct yourself in a certain way, which is good for the individual and good for society.”
In other words, he is saying that copying software is bad for society, but vague enough that it’s easy for people to cut corners. His religion prevents that sort of thing, and in that way it is good for people.
I don’t agree that copying software is bad for society, but in any case I don’t think he was trying to prove a fact about the world from his religion.
Honestly the easiest explanation is just that Aumann is a very muddled thinker when it comes to religion. That’s hardly a surprising explanation—muddled thinking is extremely common when it comes to religion. And it doesn’t mean that such a person can’t otherwise be very rational. I know I’m being blunt here, but I see no reason to look beyond superficial appearances here. Just because a statement is religious doesn’t mean it’s deep.
All this stuff about non overlapping magisteria is honestly just confused nonsense. There’s only one truth. Sure you can approach that truth from different directions, but not if those directions directly contradict each other. Spending a great many pages talking about this just obscures that obvious fact.
And it’s all good and beautiful to say that “Religion is very different from science. The main part of religion is not about the way that we model the real world”. But I’ve never met a religious person who said that and then didn’t immediately turn around and started applying their religion to the real world. Aumann also does that. In fact in this very interview he literally says that copying software is wrong because his religion says so. So he clearly is modelling the real world based on his religion.
I don’t think he was saying that copying software is wrong because his religion says so. When he is talking about that example, he says:
“In short, you can be a moral person, but morals are often equivocal. In the eighties, copying software was considered moral by many people. The point I am making is that religion—at least my religion—is a sort of force, a way of making a commitment to conduct yourself in a certain way, which is good for the individual and good for society.”
In other words, he is saying that copying software is bad for society, but vague enough that it’s easy for people to cut corners. His religion prevents that sort of thing, and in that way it is good for people.
I don’t agree that copying software is bad for society, but in any case I don’t think he was trying to prove a fact about the world from his religion.