About vegetarianism: you seem to be confusing two different positions:
it is ok to not eat animals
it is not ok to eat animals
One is the Mormon position, and the other is the vegan position. I understand that the Mormon church would be ok with something living a vegan lifestyle. No problem.
I am talking about being able to coherently hold the Mormon position and the vegan position. I’m talking about having the freedom to decided for myself that I believe it is wrong to eat animals. This is different from the freedom to just not eat animals. One is about actions you do or don’t do, and the other is about ethics.
If I were still Mormon, I could not give a talk in church about how it’s wrong to eat animals. If I were to tell others that I thought it was wrong (I’m really not the preachy sort at all, BTW, and most of my friends are carnivores, but if I were to tell others), I would be told by someone in authority in the church that I was incorrect. That animals are here for us to use, and God said so, and I am wrong if I think that’s not how it is. Because an old book said so.
I find this unacceptable. I find the idea (that I am not free to try to discover what is right and wrong in this world) to be totally unacceptable. After thinking long and hard about this (for years), and after accruing a great deal of evidence and experience, I have come to believe something, and someone who has never thought much about it at all can just tell me that I’m wrong, and This Is The Mormon Truth, because it’s written in an old book. It’s everything this website is against!! (IMHO)
Now don’t take this the wrong way: I welcome religious people to this website, I value differing points of view, and I think we can all stand to be a bit less wrong. But I have to ask: given your viewpoints (which seem to suggest that the way to be less wrong is to listen to god and read your scriptures)… why are you here?? What are you getting out of this?
Anyway… about the alcohol: did you even read what I originally wrote? I wrote “alcohol (taken responsibly (which is not the same as “in moderation” in all cases))”
Responsibly. Which might (might!), in some cases, be to some degree of excess… but still responsibly. That is what I said. You took that and went straight to every sort of excess and irresponsibility you could think of.
[Disclaimer: I’m having a pretty strong negative emotional reaction to this post, and much of this thread, but I’m really trying to give you the benefit of the doubt; I apologize if I come off as snippy.]
No, it makes sense in any case. Even if there’s a god. Even if that god is omniscient. Even if that god is benevolent. And even is that god is perfectly rational!!
There’s a difference between “rational” and “ethical”. (By your argument, Satan could not possibly be rational… is that your belief?) There’s a difference between “rational” and “logically internally consistent”. The mentally ill can be logically internally consistent, but that is not what we mean by “rational”.
Let me ask you again: why are you here? I don’t intend it as a rhetorical equivalent to “fuck off”… I’m honestly asking: what do you hope to get out of this?
I don’t know if you read Eliezer’s recent Epistle to the New York Less Wrongians, but I’d like to highlight a few of the items in the list of things rationality is about:
Saying oops and changing your mind occasionally.
Knowing that clever arguing isn’t the same as looking for truth.
Reserving your self-congratulations for the occasions when you actually change a policy or belief, because while not every change is an improvement, every improvement is a change.
Asking whether your most cherished beliefs to shout about actually control your anticipations, whether they mean anything, never mind whether their predictions are actually correct.
These are what rationality are for me. (The second point, in particular, is what I was trying to say when I spoke of “logic games”.) And these things are not dependent on there not being a god! (In fact, if you want to convince me that there is a god (in another thread, please!), these points are the way to do it.)
Are you here to say ‘oops’ on occasion? Are you here to look for the truth (or are you convinced that you’ve already found it)?
Rationality, the set of tools for for examining and changing our beliefs, necessarily must be more basic than any of your beliefs. Otherwise, it isn’t rationality… just logic games.
I’m here because I want to be Less Wrong! And that means changing my beliefs, and not to be more in-line with everyone else here! For example, my most recent ‘oops’:
I recently adopted a vegan lifestyle, saying “oops! I shouldn’t be eating animals”. (While I may, for the sake of brevity, refer to myself as ‘vegan’, in my mind I see myself as ‘living a vegan lifestyle’. I’ve even quipped, “No, I’m not vegan, I just live like one.”) I don’t know if there are any other vegans here, but I’ve never seen any posts claiming it to be virtuous, and I assume it is a minority view here.
But it was a process of rationality that led me to making the lifestyle choice. While I may have, someday, come to the same conclusions on my own, it was my exposure to Less Wrong that helped me to “shut up and multiply”, to overcome my biases and fears, and just say ‘oops’.
Even the name of this site helped! Just as this isn’t “BeingRight.com″, the issue for me was clearer once I viewed (my own personal take on) veganism not as “the Right choice”, but as “Less Animals”: I don’t claim to be right, just a bit less wrong that I was being before.
Sorry, that was a bit of a tangent… but do you see what I mean? That’s what I’m here for. Is that what you’re here for?