(Off-topic) You could probably edit out the drug war bit.
(Note) This was originally supposed to be a comment in response to the same post ciphergoth was responding to. After a while it bloated into something not directly related to the original post and so I just saved it somewhere until it was more relevant. I think it actually fits this post better but the whole thing is only slightly related to the topic.
God is not just wise, nice, and powerful—he is all knowing, omnibenificent, and omnipotent. Heaven and Hell are not just pleasant and unpleasant places you can spend a long time in—they are the very best possible and the very worst possible experiences, and for all eternity.
This is strictly only useful when talking to someone who believes that specific set of beliefs. What if the religion believes in an evil God? A God that can be tricked? What it believes we are the Gods? Any or all of these could be just as irrational, but they are instantly excluded from the argument and any theist who does not perfectly fit the example can just shrug it off and say, “oh, it does not apply to me.” That does not seem particularly useful, but I watch communities of rational atheists stand and nod their head like the ultimate truth has been spoken even though it only applies to a strict subset of theistic beliefs.
There are huge swaths of major religious theory that are blatantly irrational. Some world religions even take the irrationality as a core feature and emphasize its own inability to be rationally processed. There is, however, a strong tendency to look at these logic evils, denounce them, and then throw the rest of Earth’s theology into the same category of “obviously stupid”.
(Minor point) I am not saying that the rest of Earth’s theology doesn’t belong in the category of obviously stupid. I am saying that I watch a lot of people (not necessary people here) start throwing things into that bucket irrationally. Whether they end up there eventually is irrelevant.
The most prevalent examples are posts that apparently assume folk-Christianity as the one religion. To unfairly pick on someone, your post is an example. To claim that “theism” works a certain way and then only give one, albeit common, example of theism is a little shortsighted. Your point is wonderful and useful, but it does not apply to all of theism.
The problem is not that you found something irrational about theism. The problem seems to be that much of what is said about the invalidity of religion is assumed to be true or rational. In other words, I see this:
Belief A is a known problem and has been denounced by the throngs of rationalists. Belief B looks suspiciously similar to Belief A and is denounced out of hand by the same throngs.
To express this pattern with a non-theistic example:
Pascal’s Wager is a known problem and has been denounced by the throngs of rationalists. Arguments for cryonics looks suspiciously similar to Pascal’s Wager and is denounced out of hand by the same throngs.
In the case of cryonics, Eliezer and Roko argued that cryonics deserves another shot. In the case of theism, I am not saying any particular belief deserves another shot, I am just reminding the community as a whole that “irrational by association” is a fallacy.
(Side topic) One possible response to this, in my opinion, is that theism is rotten at its core. Theism, all variants, have been denounced as irrational and nitpicking over specific examples just slows everything down. Someone who is a theist happened to miss the memo. I am not suggesting nitpicking everything because most of it does not matter. This was true in the example of your post: nitpicking really has little value since the point he was making still stands. Generally speaking, one-off comments do not have a scope was intended to cover challenges to the assumed truths about theism, which is why I avoided posting this comment until you made it the subject of a full post.
IAWYC. However, it is possible to launch arguments against theism which are so deep as to take out the entire spectrum of religions, including Buddhism and New Age spirituality, in a single blast. See e.g. excluding the supernatural.
Of course, this only invalidates at least one central element of every religion—perhaps their scriptures say somewhere than the sky is blue, or such; reversed stupidity is not intelligence.
Certainly some branches of Buddhism and of Taoism explicitly reject the supernatural. Maybe even some Norse mythology does, though that’s much less clear to me.
Note that there is a large space of possible materialist theisms (eg The Matrix).
The division of nature into spiritual/physical came much later than the invention of religion. I don’t think an ancient Greek could have described his beliefs as supernatural in the way that we understand; the concept of “supernatural” wasn’t complete until we had a concept of “the natural” as those things that obeyed the laws of nature.
So, I think saying that “religion has the supernatural at its core” (not that I know what Eliezer means to say, but that’s part of what I think he’s saying) is a projection of more recent, relatively sophisticated theological ideas onto the entire spectrum of religions.
Heck. I read the link Eliezer gave, and actually that isn’t what he’s saying, because he’s defining “supernatural” in a particular way that probably does include the entire spectrum of existing religions:
> By far the best definition I’ve ever heard of the supernatural is Richard Carrier’s: A “supernatural” explanation appeals to ontologically basic mental things, mental entities that cannot be reduced to nonmental entities.
This might not describe Unitarianism. It doesn’t describe the Matrix theism, which is part of an underexplored space of “theisms that are not religious”. And it may just be historical accident that our theisms are religious, and that our religions are supernatural.
Would you consider someone who believed in an absolute morality, but not in a God or an afterlife or spirits, to be religious, but have no supernatural beliefs?
Hobbes definitely believed (or claimed to) in God and a materialist account of human beings. It’s less clear that he believed in a materialist account of God Himself. (This belief has shown up in Christianity a number of times; the Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example. It’s probably the most natural reading of the Bible.)
Like The Matrix. The makers of the Matrix are gods to those living in the Matrix. If those in the Matrix were aware of it, they would be theists, but probably not religious.
Because unless the Lords of the Matrix are made of spirit-stuff, having them being mere material beings made out of atoms, just like us only they happen to be the ones in charge of the simulation, does not make for very satisfying theology as long as you’re going to just make stuff up anyway.
It really is my impression that the Norse Aesir were just like that. You know, they have blood, have children, die, need to eat, etc. Despite that, Odin was involved in creating the (our) universe (Midgard).
But the Aesir had a sacred dimension that the Matrix Lords would not; they had assigned roles in the scheme of things and not just assumed roles in the scheme of things.
Doesn’t Agent Smith have an assigned role as a coordinator of the immune system?
Doesn’t something like fate or game theory ordain that some entity with his characteristics fill that role?
Hell, the simulated universe in the Matrix was forced by human nature, e.g. “what’s right” while the Norse universe could just as easily have been different and will be after Ragnarok.
And of course, to determinist, everything MUST happen and to scientists/Humeans everything does happen for a reason, even if the reason is “the quantum coin flip comes up both ways. It inevitably progressed to a world where you saw it come up heads and one where you saw tails and in both of those worlds, to you asking this question and my giving this answer.
If anyone started talking about Agent Smith just filling the ordained and necessary role as the coordinator of the immune system, then they would have invented the Matrix religion. That is, once you have divinely ordained roles, you have a religion, whether or not there’s a postulated divinity to do the divine ordaining.
You just invented Ken Wilbur’s Blue developmental stage, which he and I agree was not reached by humans until the last 3000 or so years. The earliest religions, like the Egyptian one, clearly didn’t have this. Neither does Silmarilianism (Valarism? )BTW.
The Valar are like norse gods, but Eru Iluvatar is like the christian god. I think the mythology of the Silmarillion fits Eliezer’s comment. I’m not sure how much Wilber cares about mythology, though; I suspect you’re responding to a gestalt sense of the practice of religion by numenoreans, elves, or the men of Gondor, which may not match the mythology.
Technically, the Matrix Lords might have been assigned roles to carry out in the program when it was created by it’s initial creator and be programmed to carry them out. (Thus somewhat resembling religion)
On the other hand, wouldn’t trying to in some way (if possible) please the Lords of the Matrix and secure rewards be highly desirable if possible? In some possible Matrix-like situations, cult-like devotion might actually be rational.
You raise an interesting point I’ve considered before in relation to Bostrom’s simulation argument: if we’re living in a simulation, wouldn’t that effectively make God real? I can’t see a way to deny this without some linguistic legerdemain. It seems like one’s probability assignment to the proposition “God is real” should be lower-bounded by the proposition “we’re living in a simulation.”
However, it is possible to launch arguments against theism which are so deep as to take out the entire spectrum of religions, including Buddhism and New Age spirituality, in a single blast. See e.g. excluding the supernatural.
Oh, no doubt. I have not done a whole ton of studying in that area (yet; thanks for the link) but I find it interesting that people do not start from the core instead of picking away at the fringes. If you can knock out the foundation, why bother with the attic?
Of course, this only invalidates at least one central element of every religion—perhaps their scriptures say somewhere than the sky is blue, or such; reversed stupidity is not intelligence.
In addition, I never thought that a religion assumes belief in the supernatural, but I am rusty on some of these definitions. I just know that people disagree about it.
(Edited out; thanks komponisto) I am not familiar with the term “reversed stupidity” but I do not see what intelligence has to do with irrationality. Am I missing something?
(Off-topic) You could probably edit out the drug war bit.
Why? I was quite glad to see it. The drug war is a “uniquely awful” example itself, being something no longer based on evidence but manufacturing it, and worse—perhaps humorously so, if only it were fiction—causing the very things it supposedly acts to prevent: death, disease, suffering, economic and social cost, and drug addiction. (Yes! Portugal and Prague show us what happens when personal use is decriminalized: fewer drug users!).
Religion is the most exaggerated one can get when detached from evidence; the drug war is, perhaps, the most corrupt.
Link-following leads to the actual paper (pdf, 4 MB). It quotes an official-sounding institute. It’s not very good, though—decriminalization was in 2001, but it rarely shows pre-2001 data. There’s a clear decrease in drug-related deaths, not much else.
If this really leads to fewer users, this is surprising new information. I’d expect “more use, but overall less harm”, and wouldn’t be surprised by “more users, but overall less use”, but I can’t see why there’d be fewer users. Either my model is false or this story is wrong!
Well, that’s just one Google result (try “drug use portugal” or “drug use decriminalization”) - I’ve seen several articles about drug use decreasing in the Netherlands, Czech Republic, and Portugal after each nation decriminalized some or all drugs.
I would imagine that this is because (in Portugal, at least) instead of arrest, users are required to attend counseling and support groups (and it’s much easier to seek help when one needn’t fear arrest). These groups are designed mostly to help people stop using drugs, and I would bet they work at least a small percent of the time.
(Off-topic) You could probably edit out the drug war bit.
(Note) This was originally supposed to be a comment in response to the same post ciphergoth was responding to. After a while it bloated into something not directly related to the original post and so I just saved it somewhere until it was more relevant. I think it actually fits this post better but the whole thing is only slightly related to the topic.
This is strictly only useful when talking to someone who believes that specific set of beliefs. What if the religion believes in an evil God? A God that can be tricked? What it believes we are the Gods? Any or all of these could be just as irrational, but they are instantly excluded from the argument and any theist who does not perfectly fit the example can just shrug it off and say, “oh, it does not apply to me.” That does not seem particularly useful, but I watch communities of rational atheists stand and nod their head like the ultimate truth has been spoken even though it only applies to a strict subset of theistic beliefs.
There are huge swaths of major religious theory that are blatantly irrational. Some world religions even take the irrationality as a core feature and emphasize its own inability to be rationally processed. There is, however, a strong tendency to look at these logic evils, denounce them, and then throw the rest of Earth’s theology into the same category of “obviously stupid”.
(Minor point) I am not saying that the rest of Earth’s theology doesn’t belong in the category of obviously stupid. I am saying that I watch a lot of people (not necessary people here) start throwing things into that bucket irrationally. Whether they end up there eventually is irrelevant.
The most prevalent examples are posts that apparently assume folk-Christianity as the one religion. To unfairly pick on someone, your post is an example. To claim that “theism” works a certain way and then only give one, albeit common, example of theism is a little shortsighted. Your point is wonderful and useful, but it does not apply to all of theism.
The problem is not that you found something irrational about theism. The problem seems to be that much of what is said about the invalidity of religion is assumed to be true or rational. In other words, I see this:
Belief A is a known problem and has been denounced by the throngs of rationalists.
Belief B looks suspiciously similar to Belief A and is denounced out of hand by the same throngs.
To express this pattern with a non-theistic example:
Pascal’s Wager is a known problem and has been denounced by the throngs of rationalists.
Arguments for cryonics looks suspiciously similar to Pascal’s Wager and is denounced out of hand by the same throngs.
This pattern is directly addressed by Eliezer’s The Pascal’s Wager Fallacy Fallacy and is also talked about in Roko’s Rationality, Cryonics and Pascal’s Wager.
In the case of cryonics, Eliezer and Roko argued that cryonics deserves another shot. In the case of theism, I am not saying any particular belief deserves another shot, I am just reminding the community as a whole that “irrational by association” is a fallacy.
(Side topic) One possible response to this, in my opinion, is that theism is rotten at its core. Theism, all variants, have been denounced as irrational and nitpicking over specific examples just slows everything down. Someone who is a theist happened to miss the memo. I am not suggesting nitpicking everything because most of it does not matter. This was true in the example of your post: nitpicking really has little value since the point he was making still stands. Generally speaking, one-off comments do not have a scope was intended to cover challenges to the assumed truths about theism, which is why I avoided posting this comment until you made it the subject of a full post.
IAWYC. However, it is possible to launch arguments against theism which are so deep as to take out the entire spectrum of religions, including Buddhism and New Age spirituality, in a single blast. See e.g. excluding the supernatural.
Of course, this only invalidates at least one central element of every religion—perhaps their scriptures say somewhere than the sky is blue, or such; reversed stupidity is not intelligence.
Certainly some branches of Buddhism and of Taoism explicitly reject the supernatural. Maybe even some Norse mythology does, though that’s much less clear to me.
Note that there is a large space of possible materialist theisms (eg The Matrix).
The division of nature into spiritual/physical came much later than the invention of religion. I don’t think an ancient Greek could have described his beliefs as supernatural in the way that we understand; the concept of “supernatural” wasn’t complete until we had a concept of “the natural” as those things that obeyed the laws of nature.
So, I think saying that “religion has the supernatural at its core” (not that I know what Eliezer means to say, but that’s part of what I think he’s saying) is a projection of more recent, relatively sophisticated theological ideas onto the entire spectrum of religions.
Heck. I read the link Eliezer gave, and actually that isn’t what he’s saying, because he’s defining “supernatural” in a particular way that probably does include the entire spectrum of existing religions: > By far the best definition I’ve ever heard of the supernatural is Richard Carrier’s: A “supernatural” explanation appeals to ontologically basic mental things, mental entities that cannot be reduced to nonmental entities. This might not describe Unitarianism. It doesn’t describe the Matrix theism, which is part of an underexplored space of “theisms that are not religious”. And it may just be historical accident that our theisms are religious, and that our religions are supernatural. Would you consider someone who believed in an absolute morality, but not in a God or an afterlife or spirits, to be religious, but have no supernatural beliefs?I have heard that Hobbes claimed to be materialistic and a Christian!
Hobbes definitely believed (or claimed to) in God and a materialist account of human beings. It’s less clear that he believed in a materialist account of God Himself. (This belief has shown up in Christianity a number of times; the Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example. It’s probably the most natural reading of the Bible.)
The phrase “materialist theism” is interesting. Do you mean materialist religion? If not, do you mind expounding on your terms?
Like The Matrix. The makers of the Matrix are gods to those living in the Matrix. If those in the Matrix were aware of it, they would be theists, but probably not religious.
That’s not an actual religion. (EDIT: That is, nobody actually seems to believe in and worship this religion.) And there’s a reason for that.
What is the reason?
Because unless the Lords of the Matrix are made of spirit-stuff, having them being mere material beings made out of atoms, just like us only they happen to be the ones in charge of the simulation, does not make for very satisfying theology as long as you’re going to just make stuff up anyway.
It really is my impression that the Norse Aesir were just like that. You know, they have blood, have children, die, need to eat, etc. Despite that, Odin was involved in creating the (our) universe (Midgard).
But the Aesir had a sacred dimension that the Matrix Lords would not; they had assigned roles in the scheme of things and not just assumed roles in the scheme of things.
Doesn’t Agent Smith have an assigned role as a coordinator of the immune system? Doesn’t something like fate or game theory ordain that some entity with his characteristics fill that role? Hell, the simulated universe in the Matrix was forced by human nature, e.g. “what’s right” while the Norse universe could just as easily have been different and will be after Ragnarok. And of course, to determinist, everything MUST happen and to scientists/Humeans everything does happen for a reason, even if the reason is “the quantum coin flip comes up both ways. It inevitably progressed to a world where you saw it come up heads and one where you saw tails and in both of those worlds, to you asking this question and my giving this answer.
If anyone started talking about Agent Smith just filling the ordained and necessary role as the coordinator of the immune system, then they would have invented the Matrix religion. That is, once you have divinely ordained roles, you have a religion, whether or not there’s a postulated divinity to do the divine ordaining.
You just invented Ken Wilbur’s Blue developmental stage, which he and I agree was not reached by humans until the last 3000 or so years. The earliest religions, like the Egyptian one, clearly didn’t have this. Neither does Silmarilianism (Valarism? )BTW.
Ken Wilber, with an e; a list of colors that doesn’t seem terribly helpful. Does the axial age fit in?
The Valar are like norse gods, but Eru Iluvatar is like the christian god. I think the mythology of the Silmarillion fits Eliezer’s comment. I’m not sure how much Wilber cares about mythology, though; I suspect you’re responding to a gestalt sense of the practice of religion by numenoreans, elves, or the men of Gondor, which may not match the mythology.
Technically, the Matrix Lords might have been assigned roles to carry out in the program when it was created by it’s initial creator and be programmed to carry them out. (Thus somewhat resembling religion)
On the other hand, wouldn’t trying to in some way (if possible) please the Lords of the Matrix and secure rewards be highly desirable if possible? In some possible Matrix-like situations, cult-like devotion might actually be rational.
You raise an interesting point I’ve considered before in relation to Bostrom’s simulation argument: if we’re living in a simulation, wouldn’t that effectively make God real? I can’t see a way to deny this without some linguistic legerdemain. It seems like one’s probability assignment to the proposition “God is real” should be lower-bounded by the proposition “we’re living in a simulation.”
Oh, no doubt. I have not done a whole ton of studying in that area (yet; thanks for the link) but I find it interesting that people do not start from the core instead of picking away at the fringes. If you can knock out the foundation, why bother with the attic?
In addition, I never thought that a religion assumes belief in the supernatural, but I am rusty on some of these definitions. I just know that people disagree about it.
(Edited out; thanks komponisto) I am not familiar with the term “reversed stupidity” but I do not see what intelligence has to do with irrationality. Am I missing something?
See Reversed Stupidity is Not Intelligence.
(Necropost)
Why? I was quite glad to see it. The drug war is a “uniquely awful” example itself, being something no longer based on evidence but manufacturing it, and worse—perhaps humorously so, if only it were fiction—causing the very things it supposedly acts to prevent: death, disease, suffering, economic and social cost, and drug addiction. (Yes! Portugal and Prague show us what happens when personal use is decriminalized: fewer drug users!).
Religion is the most exaggerated one can get when detached from evidence; the drug war is, perhaps, the most corrupt.
Link-following leads to the actual paper (pdf, 4 MB). It quotes an official-sounding institute. It’s not very good, though—decriminalization was in 2001, but it rarely shows pre-2001 data. There’s a clear decrease in drug-related deaths, not much else.
If this really leads to fewer users, this is surprising new information. I’d expect “more use, but overall less harm”, and wouldn’t be surprised by “more users, but overall less use”, but I can’t see why there’d be fewer users. Either my model is false or this story is wrong!
Well, that’s just one Google result (try “drug use portugal” or “drug use decriminalization”) - I’ve seen several articles about drug use decreasing in the Netherlands, Czech Republic, and Portugal after each nation decriminalized some or all drugs.
I would imagine that this is because (in Portugal, at least) instead of arrest, users are required to attend counseling and support groups (and it’s much easier to seek help when one needn’t fear arrest). These groups are designed mostly to help people stop using drugs, and I would bet they work at least a small percent of the time.