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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 24, 2024

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"Religions being divine revelation seems more straightforward."

How so? Isn't the most likely thing that all religions are made up? You just stumbled into the one true one by blind luck (or divine plan)?

There is no way to rationally discuss something so fundamentally irrational, in the end it boils down to "I believe, or I have faith". I try not to get bogged down in the weeds with people who study the bible for fun. It is like engaging with any fandom in their domain. The difference is, most fans of Stargate don't consider it to be a factual representation of events taking place under Cheyenne Mountain in the late 1990's and early 2000's

To be clear, I'm not trying to say here that religions being divine revelation is more probable than not.

What I was trying to say was that a major religion being divine revelation seems to me to be more likely than that there is a god that rewards atheists infinitely or punishes theists infinitely. Specifically, for the argument, the question is about looking around to find the best way to get infinite expected value. I'm guessing you don't think there's any especially likely way to do so, so now we're looking for the least unlikely way to do so (even if it's still very unlikely). I think a religion could well be that.

Why a major one? I don't know, seems intuitively likely that a big one's more likely to be true than a small one. Like, if the god's interested in contact with humans, it would be unsurprising if that god is interested in contact with a lot of humans. Yes, that's a judgment call, but it seems like the right call to me—at least more reasonable and workable than the alternative. Is there any reason you might think otherwise?

If you recall, this was to you posing alternate wagers; I'm talking here about how to gauge between them. But I don't think posing alternate possible wagers entitles you to reject wagers altogether.

Anyway, I'm trying to make a rational argument here, so feel free to engage in reason.