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>If they can’t get something basic right, why would they be right about something more complicated? Can you steelman what the basic thing is that religious peo

>If they can’t get something basic right, why would they be right about something more complicated? Can you steelman what the basic thing is that religious people get wrong?

fossuser 6y ago
A lot of the creationist arguments stem from "irreducible complexity" or a misunderstanding of natural selection (the "eye just formed itself somehow"). Both of these things sound reasonable when explained in isolation to someone who grew up with religion, but natural selection is much stronger (light sensing cells benefit survival way before they're an entire eye) etc. It's the 'watchmaker' argument - things must have come from a creator because nothing can ever just exist. This always ignores the natural follow up - who created god then? There is no good answer for this (and it just creates an infinite regress). Religious steelmans are weird, because the arguments out front are not the real objections or even the real debate (which makes things confusing). The real debate is more about belief in belief, tribal affiliation, perceived morality, and identity. The arguments out front are mostly rationalizations to try and explain away contrary evidence. Religious people are arguing from a position entirely driven by motivated reasoning. They're not trying to uncover the truth, they're trying to defend what they already know to be true. You see this occasionally on the atheist side too (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4Bwr6s9dofvqPWakn/science-as-attire https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4Bwr6s9dofvqPWakn/science-as...) the difference though, is the evidence is there if you care to look. If there was real compelling evidence of supernatural behavior I'd change my mind, but whenever it's been claimed and tested - it's bullshit.
- loveistheanswer 6y ago
  Indeed, I've known a lot of religious people like the ones you speak of. And I've known and read from many other "religious"/deist people who think those types of people are silly. >If there was real compelling evidence of supernatural behavior I'd change my mind, but whenever it's been claimed and tested - it's bullshit. How is it possible to test for "supernatural behavior"?
  - fossuser 6y ago
    > ""How is it possible to test for "supernatural behavior"? - "I'm a psychic and can tell what's in these containers without looking" - "I can detect water with magic rods" - "I can heal you with the power of god" It's worth watching An Honest Liar about the life of the Amazing Randi. What's interesting is even when Randi shows people how they're being tricked they refuse to believe it. The above examples are pretty easy to test (and people do), but believers just ignore the results or make up reasons why results don't matter or can't be tested.
    - loveistheanswer 6y ago
      Those are of course easy strawman examples of charlatans trying to make money. This Carl Sagan quote is relevant: >An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.
      - fossuser 6y ago
        Sure - technically every atheist should be agnostic in the sense that you can never know anything with 100% confidence, but pragmatically you live as if you're an atheist. In the strict sense I'm "almost certain there is no god", but no one can be truly certain given the nature of the things Sagan points out. Just because something is hard to prove with certainty doesn't mean the probability is equally likely. You can't really be a strict atheist about magic sea fairies either, but you probably are (in the sense you that you think they don't exist). Priors matter for things. While many of those people were charlatans, many of them are also earnest. The water rods people really believe they can detect water with the sticks and have stories about how they helped a friend with a leak and such. Many astrology people really believe they can make personality predictions (they can't unless they're vague enough to be predictive of nothing). It's not all conartists.
- svieira 6y ago
  > things most have come from a creator because nothing can ever just exist. This isn't the "watchmaker" argument, this is the "principle of sufficient reason" argument applied to existence. The principle of sufficient reason is "an effect must have a cause sufficient to explain it". Things exist _right now_, but (so goes the argument) they didn't always exist (that is they are not things-which-must-by-their-very-nature-exist). Therefore, the fact that they exist _right now_ needs a cause that operates right now. The causal chain of why-does-this-contingent-thing-exist-right-now cannot be infinite. Therefore, the causal chain must terminate in some being that must by its very nature exist. This argument was not made by Christian theists, but by Aristotle over 300 years before Christianity came into existence. It was rediscovered by Christian theists a millenium and a half later (in the 1200s) and accepted because it matched what God said of Himself to Moses 1200 years before Aristotle (Exodus 3:14) https://biblehub.com/exodus/3-14.htm https://biblehub.com/exodus/3-14.htm
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - fossuser 6y ago
    Thanks - I think this does a better job clarifying that bit better than I did (which notably doesn't address the infinite regress issue). The watchmaker argument is more narrowly the creationist 'eye can't have just formed itself' argument (basically the eye must have been made by some sophisticated watchmaker: god).
    - svieira 6y ago
      When you say "which notably doesn't address the infinite regress issue" are you talking about what you said or what I did? (Just trying to understand if I wasn't clear enough in my explanations).
      - fossuser 6y ago
        I think you clarified where the 'something can't come from nothing' argument originates from (and that it's separate from the watchmaker one). My point was just that as an argument the answer being 'god' isn't very compelling when it then just moves the question to 'where did god come from', nothing is actually explained by this. In my experience with religious people you get unsatisfactory answers to that, so adding massive complexity (god) as an answer doesn't really help when it can't answer the underlying question (it just introduces a new and more complex one). This is ignoring all the other problems with the god hypothesis which don't hold up either.
- simplify 6y ago
  As a religious person, I don't see how the issues you describe are any lesser in non-religious populations. You're misplacing your blame; society would still have these problems without religion, and it'd arguably be worse, too.
- nfw2 6y ago
  Irreducible complexity is a somewhat compelling argument to me (a life-long atheist). I understand natural selection. I've taken graduate course in genomics with top grades. Still, the concept that random point changes to a several billion base pair sequence could produce advantageous new genes goes against everything I know about complexity and combinatorics. But I admit natural selection is still a far better explanation than anything else we have, so I continue to accept it grudgingly. I understand why scientists don't want to give religious leaders a foothold to sow doubt and push their nonsense, but I wish the scientific community was more open to criticisms of evolution that are presented rigorously. For example, a model of evolution where proteins first evolve in microorganisms before being integrated into larger organisms (for example through viral vectors) makes a lot more sense to me than SNP-driven natural selection.

>If they can’t get something basic right, why would they be right about something more complicated? Can you steelman what the basic thing is that religious people get wrong?

fossuser 6y ago

A lot of the creationist arguments stem from "irreducible complexity" or a misunderstanding of natural selection (the "eye just formed itself somehow"). Both of these things sound reasonable when explained in isolation to someone who grew up with religion, but natural selection is much stronger (light sensing cells benefit survival way before they're an entire eye) etc. It's the 'watchmaker' argument - things must have come from a creator because nothing can ever just exist. This always ignores the natural follow up - who created god then? There is no good answer for this (and it just creates an infinite regress). Religious steelmans are weird, because the arguments out front are not the real objections or even the real debate (which makes things confusing). The real debate is more about belief in belief, tribal affiliation, perceived morality, and identity. The arguments out front are mostly rationalizations to try and explain away contrary evidence. Religious people are arguing from a position entirely driven by motivated reasoning. They're not trying to uncover the truth, they're trying to defend what they already know to be true. You see this occasionally on the atheist side too (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4Bwr6s9dofvqPWakn/science-as-attire https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4Bwr6s9dofvqPWakn/science-as...) the difference though, is the evidence is there if you care to look. If there was real compelling evidence of supernatural behavior I'd change my mind, but whenever it's been claimed and tested - it's bullshit.

loveistheanswer 6y ago
Indeed, I've known a lot of religious people like the ones you speak of. And I've known and read from many other "religious"/deist people who think those types of people are silly. >If there was real compelling evidence of supernatural behavior I'd change my mind, but whenever it's been claimed and tested - it's bullshit. How is it possible to test for "supernatural behavior"?
- fossuser 6y ago
  > ""How is it possible to test for "supernatural behavior"? - "I'm a psychic and can tell what's in these containers without looking" - "I can detect water with magic rods" - "I can heal you with the power of god" It's worth watching An Honest Liar about the life of the Amazing Randi. What's interesting is even when Randi shows people how they're being tricked they refuse to believe it. The above examples are pretty easy to test (and people do), but believers just ignore the results or make up reasons why results don't matter or can't be tested.
  - loveistheanswer 6y ago
    Those are of course easy strawman examples of charlatans trying to make money. This Carl Sagan quote is relevant: >An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.
    - fossuser 6y ago
      Sure - technically every atheist should be agnostic in the sense that you can never know anything with 100% confidence, but pragmatically you live as if you're an atheist. In the strict sense I'm "almost certain there is no god", but no one can be truly certain given the nature of the things Sagan points out. Just because something is hard to prove with certainty doesn't mean the probability is equally likely. You can't really be a strict atheist about magic sea fairies either, but you probably are (in the sense you that you think they don't exist). Priors matter for things. While many of those people were charlatans, many of them are also earnest. The water rods people really believe they can detect water with the sticks and have stories about how they helped a friend with a leak and such. Many astrology people really believe they can make personality predictions (they can't unless they're vague enough to be predictive of nothing). It's not all conartists.
svieira 6y ago
> things most have come from a creator because nothing can ever just exist. This isn't the "watchmaker" argument, this is the "principle of sufficient reason" argument applied to existence. The principle of sufficient reason is "an effect must have a cause sufficient to explain it". Things exist _right now_, but (so goes the argument) they didn't always exist (that is they are not things-which-must-by-their-very-nature-exist). Therefore, the fact that they exist _right now_ needs a cause that operates right now. The causal chain of why-does-this-contingent-thing-exist-right-now cannot be infinite. Therefore, the causal chain must terminate in some being that must by its very nature exist. This argument was not made by Christian theists, but by Aristotle over 300 years before Christianity came into existence. It was rediscovered by Christian theists a millenium and a half later (in the 1200s) and accepted because it matched what God said of Himself to Moses 1200 years before Aristotle (Exodus 3:14) https://biblehub.com/exodus/3-14.htm https://biblehub.com/exodus/3-14.htm
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- fossuser 6y ago
  Thanks - I think this does a better job clarifying that bit better than I did (which notably doesn't address the infinite regress issue). The watchmaker argument is more narrowly the creationist 'eye can't have just formed itself' argument (basically the eye must have been made by some sophisticated watchmaker: god).
  - svieira 6y ago
    When you say "which notably doesn't address the infinite regress issue" are you talking about what you said or what I did? (Just trying to understand if I wasn't clear enough in my explanations).
    - fossuser 6y ago
      I think you clarified where the 'something can't come from nothing' argument originates from (and that it's separate from the watchmaker one). My point was just that as an argument the answer being 'god' isn't very compelling when it then just moves the question to 'where did god come from', nothing is actually explained by this. In my experience with religious people you get unsatisfactory answers to that, so adding massive complexity (god) as an answer doesn't really help when it can't answer the underlying question (it just introduces a new and more complex one). This is ignoring all the other problems with the god hypothesis which don't hold up either.
simplify 6y ago
As a religious person, I don't see how the issues you describe are any lesser in non-religious populations. You're misplacing your blame; society would still have these problems without religion, and it'd arguably be worse, too.
nfw2 6y ago
Irreducible complexity is a somewhat compelling argument to me (a life-long atheist). I understand natural selection. I've taken graduate course in genomics with top grades. Still, the concept that random point changes to a several billion base pair sequence could produce advantageous new genes goes against everything I know about complexity and combinatorics. But I admit natural selection is still a far better explanation than anything else we have, so I continue to accept it grudgingly. I understand why scientists don't want to give religious leaders a foothold to sow doubt and push their nonsense, but I wish the scientific community was more open to criticisms of evolution that are presented rigorously. For example, a model of evolution where proteins first evolve in microorganisms before being integrated into larger organisms (for example through viral vectors) makes a lot more sense to me than SNP-driven natural selection.