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> People like certainty. It's why someone who is 100% reliable is generally perceived as far more valuable than someone who is merely very reliable. People are

> People like certainty. It's why someone who is 100% reliable is generally perceived as far more valuable than someone who is merely very reliable. People are far happier to follow a leader that has 95% chance of succeeding than someone who has a 75% chance. I absolutely agree that people like certainty. I would even go so far to say that they actually don't like the '95% chance' of anything. In that case, they would say "I believe this to be 100% correct", which is basically saying that you can't tell for sure, but you believe it to be 100% correct. Not an objective 'real' chance of maybe 90%. Take for example religion. Nobody can be 100% sure whether there is some sort of god or not. But you won't hear anybody make any % predictions, especially the ones who believe. They believe 100% for sure there is a god. Atheist are on that front the same, and believe 100% there is no god. They are unable to make a % prediction, or really don't want to because it would break something inside of them (their belief). Very strange. I like to work with chances a lot.

mjburgess 9y ago
Probabilities concern how much information it is possible to have about an event: they are a description of what a perfectly rational person, under perfectly rational constraints, could know. Since I do not understand how we could know anything about "God", there could be no 'probability' associated with it. What would it mean to say 50%? That, were the universe run 100 times -- 50 runs would have a god in them? I am an atheist in exactly the same way that I am an a-leprechaun-ist. The proposition "God Exists" is one I believe to be false for extra-empirical reasons. Namely, that the inexistance of God is consistent with every given observation -- and the content of the idea seems deeply anthropocentric and psychological. Those ideas which have had no explanatory content (ie., could not be used to predict anything) and which have had a clearly human psychological construction have all turned out to be "reasonably false". At the moment holding that god does not exist is "unreasonably false" according to people (eg. You) whereas holding that leprachuans do not exist is "reasonably fasle". I believe this distinction to have everything to do with saving people's feelings and nothing to do with the content and nature of the ideas. Objects which have no explanatory power (magic, gods, etc.) are "bugs" in human thinking. No one ought believe that any of them exist.
- windowsworkstoo 9y ago
  you have severe autism, you should probably get that looked at
  - mjburgess 9y ago
    Why do you say that?
  - sctb 9y ago
    Posting like this will get you banned, so please don't do it again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- shkkmo 9y ago
  > Objects which have no explanatory power (magic, gods, etc.) are "bugs" in human thinking. No one ought believe that any of them exist. To dismiss a pervasive category of human beliefs as a "bug" that serves no purpose is incredibly egotistical and arrogant. The sheer pervasiveness of these types of beliefs point at them serving an evolutionary / competitive purpose. I believe your mistake is based on a lack of understanding of the reasons why we hold beliefs and the purposes of knowledge. Belief and knowledge are not purely about making predictions. They provide the rules by which we operate as individuals and as a society. They provide the basis for value attribution and define our self identity. While some knowledge derives much of it value from it's ability to accurately make predictions, that is not the core reason that we have knowledge. Knowledge is fundamentally judged by the utility it provides to individuals and societies. Newtonian physics is my favorite example. It is not the most predictively powerful version of our knowledge about physics (since we know there are areas where its predictions break down), yet we still teach Newtonian physics because it is simpler and easier to understand and use than General Relativity or Reletavistic Statistical Mechanics. > I am an atheist in exactly the same way that I am an a-leprechaun-ist. The proposition "God Exists" is one I believe to be false for extra-empirical reasons. Namely, that the inexistance of God is consistent with every given observation -- and the content of the idea seems deeply anthropocentric and psychological. You claim that "God Exists" has no predictive power, this means that "God Does Not Exist" also has no predictive power. The existence of God is also consistent with every given observation. Thus your Atheism is another example of beliefs whose value arises not from their predictive power but from some other form of utility. TLDR: It's not a "bug" it's a "feature".
crdoconnor 9y ago
>Take for example religion. Nobody can be 100% sure whether there is some sort of god or not. But you won't hear anybody make any % predictions, especially the ones who believe. They believe 100% for sure there is a god. Atheist are on that front the same, and believe 100% there is no god. They are unable to make a % prediction, or really don't want to because it would break something inside of them (their belief). Very strange. I like to work with chances a lot. The question simply isn't meaningful enough to give a meaningful answer? The ultimate answer isn't going to be true or false - it's null. Humans seem peculiarly blind to the notion that sometimes questions just aren't meaningful enough to produce a meaningful answer. Or at least, the humans I tend to run into are. Maybe there are tribes in Africa where this notion is obvious.
- kimdcmason 9y ago
  "Atheist are on that front the same, and believe 100% there is no god." This is a false statement. The rest of your post is supposition and anecdote.
  - crdoconnor 9y ago
    It's neither a false nor a true statement. It's a mostly non-meaningful statement.
mseebach 9y ago
At least in Christianity, doubt is a major component of the faith structure. Generally, the more thoughtful believers will recognise that the concept of God is something that exists outside the realm of things humans can assign probabilities to - and likewise for thoughtful atheists, they generally refer to the overwhelming improbability of a god existing, not to any particular number, certainly not 100%. It seems to me that people willing to place probability numbers on such things (outside thought experiments) generally don't understand probabilities (or, frankly, religion or atheism, either) very well.
- Jedd 9y ago
  I'm having difficulty understanding your message here. Is doubt a positive feature of christianity in your view? Is 'more thoughtful believers' an oxymoron? Is probability, or indeed statistics, a sensible approach to people's belief in things they can't prove?
  - mseebach 9y ago
    Whether it's positive is irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion. It's there, so not confidently stating a 100% certainty in the existence of God is not something Christians just do as a matter of being Christians. For the two latter questions, not sure what you're getting at, but, no and no.
    - Jedd 9y ago
      > It's there, so not confidently stating a 100% certainty in the existence of God is not something Christians just do as a matter of being Christians. Okay. I thought that 100% certainty in the existence of God (who is also Jesus Christ) is in fact something Christians do as a consequence of being Christians. For the latter two questions, I was getting at being thoughtful belies being a believer (in the sense of 'believing something without evidence') and questioning the reliance on statistical probability for any faith-based religious belief.
      - 9y ago

mjburgess 9y ago

Probabilities concern how much information it is possible to have about an event: they are a description of what a perfectly rational person, under perfectly rational constraints, could know. Since I do not understand how we could know anything about "God", there could be no 'probability' associated with it. What would it mean to say 50%? That, were the universe run 100 times -- 50 runs would have a god in them? I am an atheist in exactly the same way that I am an a-leprechaun-ist. The proposition "God Exists" is one I believe to be false for extra-empirical reasons. Namely, that the inexistance of God is consistent with every given observation -- and the content of the idea seems deeply anthropocentric and psychological. Those ideas which have had no explanatory content (ie., could not be used to predict anything) and which have had a clearly human psychological construction have all turned out to be "reasonably false". At the moment holding that god does not exist is "unreasonably false" according to people (eg. You) whereas holding that leprachuans do not exist is "reasonably fasle". I believe this distinction to have everything to do with saving people's feelings and nothing to do with the content and nature of the ideas. Objects which have no explanatory power (magic, gods, etc.) are "bugs" in human thinking. No one ought believe that any of them exist.

windowsworkstoo 9y ago
you have severe autism, you should probably get that looked at
- mjburgess 9y ago
  Why do you say that?
- sctb 9y ago
  Posting like this will get you banned, so please don't do it again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
shkkmo 9y ago
> Objects which have no explanatory power (magic, gods, etc.) are "bugs" in human thinking. No one ought believe that any of them exist. To dismiss a pervasive category of human beliefs as a "bug" that serves no purpose is incredibly egotistical and arrogant. The sheer pervasiveness of these types of beliefs point at them serving an evolutionary / competitive purpose. I believe your mistake is based on a lack of understanding of the reasons why we hold beliefs and the purposes of knowledge. Belief and knowledge are not purely about making predictions. They provide the rules by which we operate as individuals and as a society. They provide the basis for value attribution and define our self identity. While some knowledge derives much of it value from it's ability to accurately make predictions, that is not the core reason that we have knowledge. Knowledge is fundamentally judged by the utility it provides to individuals and societies. Newtonian physics is my favorite example. It is not the most predictively powerful version of our knowledge about physics (since we know there are areas where its predictions break down), yet we still teach Newtonian physics because it is simpler and easier to understand and use than General Relativity or Reletavistic Statistical Mechanics. > I am an atheist in exactly the same way that I am an a-leprechaun-ist. The proposition "God Exists" is one I believe to be false for extra-empirical reasons. Namely, that the inexistance of God is consistent with every given observation -- and the content of the idea seems deeply anthropocentric and psychological. You claim that "God Exists" has no predictive power, this means that "God Does Not Exist" also has no predictive power. The existence of God is also consistent with every given observation. Thus your Atheism is another example of beliefs whose value arises not from their predictive power but from some other form of utility. TLDR: It's not a "bug" it's a "feature".

crdoconnor 9y ago

>Take for example religion. Nobody can be 100% sure whether there is some sort of god or not. But you won't hear anybody make any % predictions, especially the ones who believe. They believe 100% for sure there is a god. Atheist are on that front the same, and believe 100% there is no god. They are unable to make a % prediction, or really don't want to because it would break something inside of them (their belief). Very strange. I like to work with chances a lot. The question simply isn't meaningful enough to give a meaningful answer? The ultimate answer isn't going to be true or false - it's null. Humans seem peculiarly blind to the notion that sometimes questions just aren't meaningful enough to produce a meaningful answer. Or at least, the humans I tend to run into are. Maybe there are tribes in Africa where this notion is obvious.

kimdcmason 9y ago
"Atheist are on that front the same, and believe 100% there is no god." This is a false statement. The rest of your post is supposition and anecdote.
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  It's neither a false nor a true statement. It's a mostly non-meaningful statement.

mseebach 9y ago

At least in Christianity, doubt is a major component of the faith structure. Generally, the more thoughtful believers will recognise that the concept of God is something that exists outside the realm of things humans can assign probabilities to - and likewise for thoughtful atheists, they generally refer to the overwhelming improbability of a god existing, not to any particular number, certainly not 100%. It seems to me that people willing to place probability numbers on such things (outside thought experiments) generally don't understand probabilities (or, frankly, religion or atheism, either) very well.

Jedd 9y ago
I'm having difficulty understanding your message here. Is doubt a positive feature of christianity in your view? Is 'more thoughtful believers' an oxymoron? Is probability, or indeed statistics, a sensible approach to people's belief in things they can't prove?
- mseebach 9y ago
  Whether it's positive is irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion. It's there, so not confidently stating a 100% certainty in the existence of God is not something Christians just do as a matter of being Christians. For the two latter questions, not sure what you're getting at, but, no and no.
  - Jedd 9y ago
    > It's there, so not confidently stating a 100% certainty in the existence of God is not something Christians just do as a matter of being Christians. Okay. I thought that 100% certainty in the existence of God (who is also Jesus Christ) is in fact something Christians do as a consequence of being Christians. For the latter two questions, I was getting at being thoughtful belies being a believer (in the sense of 'believing something without evidence') and questioning the reliance on statistical probability for any faith-based religious belief.
    - 9y ago