First off, I’d like to say, I have met Christians who similarly were very open to rationality and applying it to the premises of their religion, especially the ethics. In practice, one of these was the only person who directly recognized me as an immortalist a few sentences into our first discussion, where no one else around me even knew what that is. I find that admirable, and fascinating.
I also think it likely that human beings as they are now need some sort of comfort, reassurance, that their universe is not that universe of cold mathematics.
So I’m not sure I should point this out, but, in the end, you’re still trying to find a God of the gaps. In the end, you’re still basing your view of the universe on a very special premise, that is, God.
Eventually, this can only be resolved in a few ways : either God exists, or He doesn’t, or using its existence as a premise doesn’t make a difference, and a theist would eventually come to the same understanding of the universe as a down-to-earth, reductionist atheistic rationalist.
But I also began to feel depressed, and then sort of hollow inside. I had no attachment to young-earth creationism, but I suppose I was trying to keep a sort of “God of the gaps” with regard to the beginning and development of intelligent life on Earth. Having seen why there were considerably fewer gaps than I had thought, I couldn’t un-see it. A little part of me had been booted out of Eden.
I don’t think God exists, and I’m still puzzled by how anyone could come to believe it does. Here I mean believe in that sense where you don’t just “like to pretend something is real for the comfort it brings”, which I do too, but rather in the sense where you think “stop kidding yourself now, you need a real, practical, useable answer now”.
Both are different, the first is fine and necessary for many people, but if you use God in the latter I’m worried you’re going to be up for a few disappointing experiences for the next few decades.
I actually like the idea of the universe of cold mathematics. I would find the idea of a non-mathematical universe sort of disappointing and hopeless.
I think a few people are assuming odd things about what I currently believe, and that’s probably to be expected after a post like that.
For me now, my “faith” isn’t “epistemic belief in the existence of a particular God”, but “provisional trust in the hypothesis of an admittedly poorly expressed ideal”. This is no different than provisional trust in any other hypothesis, except inasmuch as I don’t have a nice clean experiment to falsify it. I’m just living my life and seeing how it goes. It’s not impossible that I will find that it goes badly enough to make me abandon some of the heuristics I currently adopt.
First off, I’d like to say, I have met Christians who similarly were very open to rationality and applying it to the premises of their religion, especially the ethics. In practice, one of these was the only person who directly recognized me as an immortalist a few sentences into our first discussion, where no one else around me even knew what that is. I find that admirable, and fascinating.
I also think it likely that human beings as they are now need some sort of comfort, reassurance, that their universe is not that universe of cold mathematics.
So I’m not sure I should point this out, but, in the end, you’re still trying to find a God of the gaps. In the end, you’re still basing your view of the universe on a very special premise, that is, God.
Eventually, this can only be resolved in a few ways : either God exists, or He doesn’t, or using its existence as a premise doesn’t make a difference, and a theist would eventually come to the same understanding of the universe as a down-to-earth, reductionist atheistic rationalist.
I don’t think God exists, and I’m still puzzled by how anyone could come to believe it does. Here I mean believe in that sense where you don’t just “like to pretend something is real for the comfort it brings”, which I do too, but rather in the sense where you think “stop kidding yourself now, you need a real, practical, useable answer now”.
Both are different, the first is fine and necessary for many people, but if you use God in the latter I’m worried you’re going to be up for a few disappointing experiences for the next few decades.
I actually like the idea of the universe of cold mathematics. I would find the idea of a non-mathematical universe sort of disappointing and hopeless.
I think a few people are assuming odd things about what I currently believe, and that’s probably to be expected after a post like that.
For me now, my “faith” isn’t “epistemic belief in the existence of a particular God”, but “provisional trust in the hypothesis of an admittedly poorly expressed ideal”. This is no different than provisional trust in any other hypothesis, except inasmuch as I don’t have a nice clean experiment to falsify it. I’m just living my life and seeing how it goes. It’s not impossible that I will find that it goes badly enough to make me abandon some of the heuristics I currently adopt.