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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 ra

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".
- mjburgess 9y ago
  Its a bug because its false. Suppose I say to you I have a magical creature in my bedroom. Surely you'd want to know more about it? Well for every question you ask, I will describe a property it has that prevents me from answering your question. Where is it? Everywhere. What does it weigh? It has no weight. How do i see it? Its invisible. And so on. These are "buggy objects". They actually possess no properties. The term "magical creature in my bedroom" doesnt actually refer to anything. But we are still able to speak of it as-if it does. And thus go around constructing speech around it: "I love my magical creature!". I am an atheist because God clearly falls into this pattern of buggy-object-generation. Take some idea that seems concrete and remove from it every impactful dimension so that what remains seems something, but is in fact, nothing. For the idea of God to even be true there ought to be something that it means for it to be true. Some property which, if absent, would make a difference. False beliefs may have other "value". Faires and sprites may be "fun" and "bring families together". But they are pure bugs. Whatever feel-good factor you want to have can be had without them. I don't believe in any of them as a class. God just happens to fall into this group. To claim that it is reasonable to believe that any object of this kind exists i think breaks reasonable thought to such a shattering degree. At that point I do not know what principles you have left to deny any form of nonesense. That is, why is "leprechauns do not exist" overwhelmingly reasonable but "god does not exist" not? There is no reason. At some point you need to draw a line and debug your reasoning. That isnt an empirical issue, its a thinking issue.

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".

mjburgess 9y ago
Its a bug because its false. Suppose I say to you I have a magical creature in my bedroom. Surely you'd want to know more about it? Well for every question you ask, I will describe a property it has that prevents me from answering your question. Where is it? Everywhere. What does it weigh? It has no weight. How do i see it? Its invisible. And so on. These are "buggy objects". They actually possess no properties. The term "magical creature in my bedroom" doesnt actually refer to anything. But we are still able to speak of it as-if it does. And thus go around constructing speech around it: "I love my magical creature!". I am an atheist because God clearly falls into this pattern of buggy-object-generation. Take some idea that seems concrete and remove from it every impactful dimension so that what remains seems something, but is in fact, nothing. For the idea of God to even be true there ought to be something that it means for it to be true. Some property which, if absent, would make a difference. False beliefs may have other "value". Faires and sprites may be "fun" and "bring families together". But they are pure bugs. Whatever feel-good factor you want to have can be had without them. I don't believe in any of them as a class. God just happens to fall into this group. To claim that it is reasonable to believe that any object of this kind exists i think breaks reasonable thought to such a shattering degree. At that point I do not know what principles you have left to deny any form of nonesense. That is, why is "leprechauns do not exist" overwhelmingly reasonable but "god does not exist" not? There is no reason. At some point you need to draw a line and debug your reasoning. That isnt an empirical issue, its a thinking issue.