Scale?I'm not talking about probabilities. I'm talking about explanations. I assert that interventionist deities are over-complicated explanations of anything. We can launch into an argument about why such a deity is a better explanation for observations than a world without the deity. I make the further assertion that to believe in a thing like a deity in the first place is weirdly simple-minded and inconsistent with the kind of ideas I expect people around me to hold, and that it ought to be trivially dismissed, and the fact that otherwise sensible people can cling to ideas about God for ages supports the notion of anti-rational memes that protect themselves from criticism.
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Tue 27 May 2008, 3:59,
archived)
The simplest explaination is not always the right onein fact there's nothing simple about anything in life. Do you seriously expect me to believe that what you believe is more simple just because it's what you've been able to understand? That's very arrogant of you. Also, criticism is one thing, calling someone simple-minded entirely another.
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Tue 27 May 2008, 4:03,
archived)
Out of any group of explanations which explain the observed factswe should always go with the simplest. If at some future point it fails to explain the facts then we require a more complicated explanation, but not before then. There are almost infinitely many explanations to choose from, if we include every excessively complicated one we can possibly make up.
Of course, if you can show me that there's a hole in my simple explanation and that it needs to be more complicated, then fair enough. And of course I might be (and I'm sure I always am, in some way) wrong. The fact that this might happen is no reason for me or you to give respect to any of the panoply of silly ideas that a person could pull out of his ass, prior to that person showing that there's something wrong with the more sensible alternative.
I didn't call anybody simple-minded; I said that there's something funny going on - that in fact I don't think the average, say, Christian is simple-minded, and therefore belief in God, which is akin to unicorns, is jarring when you consider that it's so commonly found in otherwise sensible people.
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Tue 27 May 2008, 4:16,
archived)
Of course, if you can show me that there's a hole in my simple explanation and that it needs to be more complicated, then fair enough. And of course I might be (and I'm sure I always am, in some way) wrong. The fact that this might happen is no reason for me or you to give respect to any of the panoply of silly ideas that a person could pull out of his ass, prior to that person showing that there's something wrong with the more sensible alternative.
I didn't call anybody simple-minded; I said that there's something funny going on - that in fact I don't think the average, say, Christian is simple-minded, and therefore belief in God, which is akin to unicorns, is jarring when you consider that it's so commonly found in otherwise sensible people.
Do we have to go with any?All avenues should be open to exploration and an assessment of either simplicity or likelihood is always going to be flawed until you know the full truth, if such a thing is even possible. You could always found a belief based on paradox instead of reason as any reason you have is unlikely to be precise at best.
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Tue 27 May 2008, 4:21,
archived)
Oh, sure.By "go with an idea" I don't mean "banish all alternatives from your mind and never contemplate them again".
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Tue 27 May 2008, 4:34,
archived)
All ideas we encounter have a place somewhere in our mindsand I fully accept that ideas about deities are ideas. I keep them near my ideas about unicorns and gnomes.
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Tue 27 May 2008, 4:45,
archived)
Hey,we can also discuss whether tinkerbell exists. I say no and it's a silly idea.
The discussion is still possible, though. Evidence that she exists in reality
can be presented to me, and I will listen. It would be a bad thing if I gave
the impression I thought the idea was sensible, though. It would be a bit like
lying about my ideas about reality in general, because of the implications on
related ideas. This is what we do when we respect religious viewpoints.
You're just too stubborn to admit the difference between being a gitand disagreeing. I see no reason to continue this discussion.
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Tue 27 May 2008, 5:34,
archived)
Religionis able to demand respect in discussions which it doesn't deserve.
Its success in obtaining undeserved respect distorts the conclusion
of discussions, usually in the direction of "maybe God exists, who
indeed can say, ahhhh."
Meta-comment about arguments being ludicrous - that is, founded in
a collection of other ideas commonly agreed to be false, or self
contradictory in trivially obvious ways, or otherwise weak - can be
part of truth-seeking, and not an attempt to shut down discussion,
but rather an attempt to avoid being tricked into an inconclusive
admission that anything is possible, which implies the ideas are
sort-of-true even though there's no reason at all to think that.