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I have an interesting interaction with atheists, and it happens every time I discuss this online Me: I'm an agnostic. Atheist: So you believe there might be a

I have an interesting interaction with atheists, and it happens every time I discuss this online Me: I'm an agnostic. Atheist: So you believe there might be a god? Me: Not at all! Atheist: So you're an atheist! Just embrace it! Me: You're right! The Abrahamic God almost surely [1] does not exist. I am an atheist! Atheist: What do you mean almost surely?! What's with the equivocation? Me: It's a mathematical term. Probability converges toward 1. Atheist: You think there is a remote possibility Santa Claus exists, too? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almost_surely https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almost_surely

wernercd 5y ago
You should place an "Only a Sith deal in absolutes" in there... I'm a Christian and have no problem with Atheist's or what have you. There's a strong chance that there isn't a heaven/hell/72 virgins/what have you waiting "on the other side". I can still be confident in the tactile important parts (IE: Do unto others, love they neighbor, etc) without having my worldview destroyed by a "might" or a "maybe". It amazes me when someone can say with 100% confidence that it does or doesn't exist.
- vmception 5y ago
  I would primarily contend that you don't need religion for those parts you find redeeming All societies function on the 10 commandments without them being explicitly written. Convergent evolution of the concept of society leans towards that. Lying, coveting, and laying all result in the same outcomes.
  - KozmoNau7 5y ago
    Religion does provide a convenient framework and community around those values, you could also call it enforcement, depending on how strict a given religion is. As with any ideology, there are of course those who wish to exploit it to their own ends, which is where we get the atrocities that have happened through human history.
    - rendall 5y ago
      Yes, I would say it's human capacity for atrocity that's the danger, and the justification for it attaches itself to anything. In the past, that has been religion, nationality, race, even abstract concepts like justice. I believe it's naive to blame religion, even wishful thinking: if it were religion that is solely responsible for human atrocity, the answer then is simple: get rid of religion by any means necessary.
      - wernercd 5y ago
        Absolutely. Justification for why My Tribe can kill Your Tribe doesn't need any rational basis. All you have to do is look at the religious fervor and protests/violence/intolerance from The Woke to see that at a level more clear than it's ever been - and NONE of that is because of "religion" per-se, even if the level of energy is the same as the devoutly religious. I hope we can survive as a species long enough to figure a solution.
        KozmoNau7 5y ago
        "The Woke" as you call them, the extremely active, extremely online and extremist faction are an absolutely miniscule number of people, who are neither violent, nor particularly intolerant. The fearmongering about them is completely overblown, this is simply another case of the American penchant for the extreme, rearing its head again. Stirring up a storm by shouting loudly and getting attention in the media is nothing new, and is necessary for bringing attention to problems that the comfortable majority have been able to ignore. "Police are infallible!" is now "police are infallible?", thanks to activists and media attention on the very real problems faced by minorities in the US. The people who were previously sitting very comfortably and safe on top of the pile are feeling their position threatened, so of course they're afraid of the world becoming more equitable. That's just too bad for them. The extremists will move to another cause or mellow out, but that spark of activism is needed to effect real social change.
        wernercd 5y ago
  - wernercd 5y ago
    "Religion" is fine... the "groups" that practices, can be not so much. I can be a Christian and follow Christian tenants without following the Dogma of the Catholic/Lutheran/Baptist/etc. (I consider myself Lutheran even if I don't agree with stuff like baptism of babies - a carry over from the Catholic Church.) I also tend to follow JBPetersons line of thinking in that "religion" is a result of hundreds of thousands of years of "evolution". "religions" codify, as you've said, the important parts of life (Don't steal, kill, that's not your wife, etc). There is physical truth - an apple weighs this much, an atom has these parts, etc. And then there is Truth - don't lie. Don't steal. Don't screw your neighbor or your neighbors wife. Those aren't "true" like the weight of an atom is true... but it is true as in life is better if you live with those "rules". Religions give a basis of reference - and yes, that comes with some of the baggage (IE: Catholic priests, holy rollers in churches getting caught in bath houses, etc). It is hard - and at times impossible - to separate the Church from the Truth at the core. Like you said, all religions have similar cores... but there ARE differences - Jesus was a carpenter... Muhamad was a warlord. Buddha was a scholar. Their cores are very similar but there are differences in and out of the religions. Bit of a ramble as it's hard to pack a complicated conversation in a few paragraphs.
tshaddox 5y ago
I’m familiar with the mathematical term. What infinite set are you talking about?
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Probably a better term here would be "approaches", as in limits. 0 and 1 are not valid probabilities - absolute certainty shuts down probability math. (This is cleanly visible if you try to transform probabilities to log-odds representation - of the extremes, one becomes undefined, and the other infinite.)
- rendall 5y ago
  The infinite set is the set of all cosmologies. An axiom of my personal metaphysics is that any assertion about the cosmos is almost surely wrong, including those informed by science. That's not a formal statement of the principle, but gets at it. My belief is that human understanding of the cosmos is much more limited than we generally understand it to be. Relative to what (I believe) the cosmos contains, human beings have no more, and no less, capacity to understand it than any arbitrary animal. We can explain only that which is important and relevant to ourselves, and vast arenas are foreclosed even to our perception.
_0ffh 5y ago
Of course there is a remote possibility Santa Claus exists, too! (Yes, I'm also in camp "philosophically, no probability estimate can ever be exactly 0 or 1" ;-)
- rendall 5y ago
  Yep. My almost surely is philosophical. Socially, it also keeps me humble. Rather than blurting out "That's ridiculous!" when someone tells me about their ridiculous beliefs, I shrug and think . o O ("there is a non-zero chance that {insert absurdity} is true")
dale_glass 5y ago
I side with the Atheist in this regard. I used to do the agnostic thing, then I realized, agnosticism seems to exist almost exclusively for religion. We don't bother with that in any other context. Everything regarding the real world is 'almost surely'. I 'almost surely' have a job, a house, a brother and two cats. Any of those might be falsified at any time, but it's a pointless waste of time to faff about it and pedantically make it explicit how I'm pretty sure I'm still employed, but I can't exclude the possibility that maybe I'm not anymore.
- darkerside 5y ago
  If half the country believes I don't have a job, and were offended when I said I did, I'd probably accommodate them with an "almost surely" to get through my morning commute a little more peacefully.
- rendall 5y ago
  I hear that. But your examples fail because (e.g.) your house is not an unfalsifiable assertion about the cosmos. I get why you would make an unqualified rejection of the concept of a Sky Daddy. In practice I do, too. We human beings have so much ahead of us, and arbitrary lifestyle demands and fevered imaginings of desert nomads dead over 2000 years don't have a place in our present, much less our future. Of the infinite set of all possible assertions about the nature of the cosmos, Sky Daddy is almost surely wrong. But then, I believe all assertions about the nature of the cosmos are all almost surely wrong.
dekhn 5y ago
probabalistic agnostics like me assign a pseudocount of 1 to every possible religion (with some smoothing). Any god hypothesis is considered, but extremely unlikely.

wernercd 5y ago

You should place an "Only a Sith deal in absolutes" in there... I'm a Christian and have no problem with Atheist's or what have you. There's a strong chance that there isn't a heaven/hell/72 virgins/what have you waiting "on the other side". I can still be confident in the tactile important parts (IE: Do unto others, love they neighbor, etc) without having my worldview destroyed by a "might" or a "maybe". It amazes me when someone can say with 100% confidence that it does or doesn't exist.

vmception 5y ago
I would primarily contend that you don't need religion for those parts you find redeeming All societies function on the 10 commandments without them being explicitly written. Convergent evolution of the concept of society leans towards that. Lying, coveting, and laying all result in the same outcomes.
- KozmoNau7 5y ago
  Religion does provide a convenient framework and community around those values, you could also call it enforcement, depending on how strict a given religion is. As with any ideology, there are of course those who wish to exploit it to their own ends, which is where we get the atrocities that have happened through human history.
  - rendall 5y ago
    Yes, I would say it's human capacity for atrocity that's the danger, and the justification for it attaches itself to anything. In the past, that has been religion, nationality, race, even abstract concepts like justice. I believe it's naive to blame religion, even wishful thinking: if it were religion that is solely responsible for human atrocity, the answer then is simple: get rid of religion by any means necessary.
    - wernercd 5y ago
      Absolutely. Justification for why My Tribe can kill Your Tribe doesn't need any rational basis. All you have to do is look at the religious fervor and protests/violence/intolerance from The Woke to see that at a level more clear than it's ever been - and NONE of that is because of "religion" per-se, even if the level of energy is the same as the devoutly religious. I hope we can survive as a species long enough to figure a solution.
      - KozmoNau7 5y ago
        "The Woke" as you call them, the extremely active, extremely online and extremist faction are an absolutely miniscule number of people, who are neither violent, nor particularly intolerant. The fearmongering about them is completely overblown, this is simply another case of the American penchant for the extreme, rearing its head again. Stirring up a storm by shouting loudly and getting attention in the media is nothing new, and is necessary for bringing attention to problems that the comfortable majority have been able to ignore. "Police are infallible!" is now "police are infallible?", thanks to activists and media attention on the very real problems faced by minorities in the US. The people who were previously sitting very comfortably and safe on top of the pile are feeling their position threatened, so of course they're afraid of the world becoming more equitable. That's just too bad for them. The extremists will move to another cause or mellow out, but that spark of activism is needed to effect real social change.
        wernercd 5y ago
- wernercd 5y ago
  "Religion" is fine... the "groups" that practices, can be not so much. I can be a Christian and follow Christian tenants without following the Dogma of the Catholic/Lutheran/Baptist/etc. (I consider myself Lutheran even if I don't agree with stuff like baptism of babies - a carry over from the Catholic Church.) I also tend to follow JBPetersons line of thinking in that "religion" is a result of hundreds of thousands of years of "evolution". "religions" codify, as you've said, the important parts of life (Don't steal, kill, that's not your wife, etc). There is physical truth - an apple weighs this much, an atom has these parts, etc. And then there is Truth - don't lie. Don't steal. Don't screw your neighbor or your neighbors wife. Those aren't "true" like the weight of an atom is true... but it is true as in life is better if you live with those "rules". Religions give a basis of reference - and yes, that comes with some of the baggage (IE: Catholic priests, holy rollers in churches getting caught in bath houses, etc). It is hard - and at times impossible - to separate the Church from the Truth at the core. Like you said, all religions have similar cores... but there ARE differences - Jesus was a carpenter... Muhamad was a warlord. Buddha was a scholar. Their cores are very similar but there are differences in and out of the religions. Bit of a ramble as it's hard to pack a complicated conversation in a few paragraphs.

tshaddox 5y ago

I’m familiar with the mathematical term. What infinite set are you talking about?

TeMPOraL 5y ago
Probably a better term here would be "approaches", as in limits. 0 and 1 are not valid probabilities - absolute certainty shuts down probability math. (This is cleanly visible if you try to transform probabilities to log-odds representation - of the extremes, one becomes undefined, and the other infinite.)
rendall 5y ago
The infinite set is the set of all cosmologies. An axiom of my personal metaphysics is that any assertion about the cosmos is almost surely wrong, including those informed by science. That's not a formal statement of the principle, but gets at it. My belief is that human understanding of the cosmos is much more limited than we generally understand it to be. Relative to what (I believe) the cosmos contains, human beings have no more, and no less, capacity to understand it than any arbitrary animal. We can explain only that which is important and relevant to ourselves, and vast arenas are foreclosed even to our perception.

_0ffh 5y ago

Of course there is a remote possibility Santa Claus exists, too! (Yes, I'm also in camp "philosophically, no probability estimate can ever be exactly 0 or 1" ;-)

rendall 5y ago
Yep. My almost surely is philosophical. Socially, it also keeps me humble. Rather than blurting out "That's ridiculous!" when someone tells me about their ridiculous beliefs, I shrug and think . o O ("there is a non-zero chance that {insert absurdity} is true")

dale_glass 5y ago

I side with the Atheist in this regard. I used to do the agnostic thing, then I realized, agnosticism seems to exist almost exclusively for religion. We don't bother with that in any other context. Everything regarding the real world is 'almost surely'. I 'almost surely' have a job, a house, a brother and two cats. Any of those might be falsified at any time, but it's a pointless waste of time to faff about it and pedantically make it explicit how I'm pretty sure I'm still employed, but I can't exclude the possibility that maybe I'm not anymore.

darkerside 5y ago
If half the country believes I don't have a job, and were offended when I said I did, I'd probably accommodate them with an "almost surely" to get through my morning commute a little more peacefully.
rendall 5y ago
I hear that. But your examples fail because (e.g.) your house is not an unfalsifiable assertion about the cosmos. I get why you would make an unqualified rejection of the concept of a Sky Daddy. In practice I do, too. We human beings have so much ahead of us, and arbitrary lifestyle demands and fevered imaginings of desert nomads dead over 2000 years don't have a place in our present, much less our future. Of the infinite set of all possible assertions about the nature of the cosmos, Sky Daddy is almost surely wrong. But then, I believe all assertions about the nature of the cosmos are all almost surely wrong.

dekhn 5y ago

probabalistic agnostics like me assign a pseudocount of 1 to every possible religion (with some smoothing). Any god hypothesis is considered, but extremely unlikely.