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All the people in the Old Testament are constantly denying God, worshipping idols, etc. even after seeing miracles. Obviously the evidence they saw was still ambiguous or they wouldn't be doing those things.
1-epsilon still doesn't address the people that leave the church, it just sounds like it does.
This is a good thing and is how evidence should work. If something is true, it should be difficult to dissuade someone. If someone has seen lots of evidence for something over the course of their life, of course counterbalancing that evidence will also require quite a lot of work, possibly more than anyone can feasibly muster. Being confident in a belief is not the same thing as adopting that belief as an axiom.
Either you're wrong or they use a different definition of "axiom" than the commonly accepted one. Like I said, if your axioms depend on evidence, they're not axioms at all. Sounds like their actual axioms are something like "truth must be consistent", and the things you describe as axioms would be better characterized as useful assumptions. There is no such thing as a downstream axiom--it's either an axiom or it's not one.
To be honest none of those Bing options really address that; they're more concerned with the ultimate fate of people who get sent to Hell, not the nature of what Hell is. This is obvious enough that I question why you even included that point. I asked Bing "please describe a few commonly-held beliefs regarding the nature of christian hell" and on my first try got a much better response:
So, obviously "hell is the absence of God" is in fact a pretty mainstream position.
Yes I know. So now we're back to square one, as I was saying, where your claim is that there's not enough evidence for Christianity. This is a much less interesting criticism than one about epicycles, forgetting that epicycles are how we get things like the laws of physics in the first place.
If you don't know which of the pills is laced with cyanide, that's not exactly your choice, is it? If you do know, then it's still your choice even if the choice-offerer knows what your decision will be before you've made it.
Axioms don't depend on evidence; you can pick any axiom you want. Once you've picked one, all the evidence you see is interpreted according to that axiom. You can compare the perspectives on a set of evidence through two axioms, and then pick the perspective you prefer, for whatever reason you prefer it. Picking axioms because you prefer the shape of the evidence-cluster they generate is a basic, intuitive part of human reasoning, and it's fair to say that it involves Axioms being influenced by evidence, if somewhat indirectly.
I agree with this for certain meanings of "axiom". If I accept this definition as true though, it hardly seems problematic to accept the existence of God as axiomatic. I think most of the time when people use the term they really just mean "you're more confident about this than you should be."
That's the sort of sloppiness I've spent a fair amount of time arguing against lately. Axioms are unavoidably necessary, you can't reason without them.
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Seems to me like the majority opinion, or certainly what I would expect from grabbing a random Christian off the street. If the clergy of either hold more nuanced views, they're not doing a good job of promulgating them.
I don't really care to litigate every single definition of Hell someone dragged out from under the closet over the past 2 millennia.
Once again, I point out that even going the definition you keep bringing up, I'm doing perfectly fine as is.
I'm pretty sure that I never claimed that all Christians had an invincible degree of belief in God. I wouldn't expect to see deconverts in that case either.
I contend that it's true for otherwise intelligent Christians, the kind who have actually examined the tenets of their religion instead of just going with general vibes like the majority of any movement do.
I have no way of estimating in any rigorous way how much evidence there is for or against Christianity, yet I can clearly tell which one is overwhelming. Evidently you disagree, and evidently that doesn't convince me, or vice versa.
If the interlocutor knows, then there was no choice at all. I don't even think Free Will is a coherent concept, and the universe is deterministic with the possible exception of random processes at the subatomic level, which doesn't change anything. In principle, I think all sapient entities can be dissected to understand with near perfect accuracy what their response to any given stimuli would be, to the limits determined by Quantum Uncertainty. We simply lack the tools to scan them that accurately, or the compute to render them 1:1 on useful time scales.
Our concept of choice is a useful social fiction, and useful only because we can't actually simulate everyone perfectly.
What is clear to me that an omniscient and omnibenevolent deity ought to know with absolute certainty what anything they create will ever do, and is thus entirely on the hook for any horrors along the way. I deny that this is possible to salvage in any way, though kudos to Apologists for trying their hardest.
You're not in Hell by that definition.
You're the one who went out of your way to respond to the "separation" definition, then tried to claim it wasn't a mainstream definition. Asking you to actually respond to the definition is not asking you to litigate every single definition.
What you claimed was that Christianity holds God as an axiom. To me this is a meaningless statement, since organizations do not actually have beliefs, so I interpreted it as "Christians hold God as an axiom." Still, "otherwise intelligent Christians" leave the church all the time so it doesn't seem to be an axiom for them either. At this point we're left with "anyone who has studied the church, and not left it, holds God's existence as an axiom" which seems unfalsifiable given how much we've warped the definitions at this point. It's easier and more accurate to just say "some people are very confident that Christianity is correct" than to claim that anyone who disagrees with you must only do so because their adoption of axioms prevents them from taking contradictory evidence seriously.
If I offer someone the choice between $100 or $1, they have a choice, even if they will take the $100 every time. I don't see how knowing beforehand somehow removes the choice itself.
I'm not convinced that the limits of Quantum Uncertainty are so limiting at all. The butterfly effect means that even a single atom out of place will almost certainly lead to vastly different outcomes over long enough time scales.
Not that it matters anyways. If our decisions are caused by purely physical phenomena, whether they are predictable or not is irrelevant--either way they are perhaps not truly "ours." At the same time, if they are purely physical, there's the hard problem of consciousness to deal with. I am self-aware, as I assume you are too. I remain unconvinced that consciousness is a property which properly-arranged atoms can produce from nothing. You can define away consciousness the same way you can define away free will--"it's actually just an illusion caused by the underlying atoms"--and doing so seems incorrect.
Do you believe you have moral worth? Do you believe your experiences matter? If so I'd contend that you and I are on the same page. Consciousness exists, as does free will, at least for all intents and purposes.
Basically the entire reason I hop into these debates is to try and focus attention onto this specific point. Pascal's Wager, Free Will, Theodicy, etc. are all interesting debates (and somewhat valuable) but in the end all that matters is our actual estimation of which theories are most valuable/likely. I've worked hard to determine the truth through the scientific method, and would be happy to do so again as part of some double crux. In the meantime, drive-by half-baked philosophy is just annoying and compels me to respond.
Really? What else did you want me to focus on, given that you initially said:
On:
Yeah, divorce all the usual connotations of choice, and you can get away with that. This is about as meaningful a "choice" as observing a sorting function move a before b when sorting a list alphabetically in some programming language.
Give me a MRI machine, a team of neuroscientists and neurosurgeons, and about a billion dollars worth of funding for everything else, and I'll find a way to falsify it. Given that all of those are sorely lacking, you're welcome to agree to disagree. Hardly a more difficult task than finding a new particle by building a new SOTA particle accelerator, shame that nobody wants to do it.
I certainly believe I have moral worth and that my experiences matter, but I only claim that as a fact about my own philosophical predilections, not something with any claim to be objective. If you happened to disagree, I wouldn't even go so far as to dispute that, except if it arose as an inherent contradiction in your own value system.
Until further evidence arrives, it seems to me perfectly alright to assume it will prove as explicable as electricity, elan vital, the Aether and the like. I know which approach is directionally correct, or at least where the smart money goes.
Oh and answer this please, if you're so intent on claiming that I'm not addressing counter-arguments or queries.
What do you mean what else do I want you to focus on? I want you to focus on the separation definition, which is the one you responded to, rather than whining about how it's not mainstream enough to be worth responding to even as you respond to it. Where did I even imply you should focus on something else? I brought up "you aren't engaging with counterarguments" because even in your original response you weren't engaging with the guy's fairly mainstream definition of hell, instead choosing to turn up your nose, ignore it, and go after easier prey.
Please name one connotation of "choice" which this example ignores. If your stance is that "choice" necessarily implies "it's unclear which option will be chosen," that's not a normal connotation of the word.
You're ignoring my actual point. You claimed that "otherwise intelligent Christians" hold God as an axiom. I mentioned the obvious counterexample, which is that plenty of people who truly do study the doctrine later leave the church. What I said about your point being "unfalsifiable" was a complaint that you keep moving the goalposts. Leave the goalposts in place and of course it's falsifiable--I falsified it in my previous comment.
IMO if you don't believe in philosophy as objective truth, you philosophically believe that moral values are not objective truth. Therefore you don't believe you have objective moral worth. Is this correct?
I'm a bit disappointed you ignored the last part of my last comment. Debating is fun, and double cruxes are quite difficult, but really all we're doing here is wasting time if we're not willing to empirically test each other's beliefs.
You're right, I'm giving this more attention than it's worth, but then again I do that for many things on The Motte.
Most people consider that the necessity of assigning blame or punishment hinges a great deal on whether a person could have possibly made a choice counterfactual to what was observed. Hence the exclusion from the death penalty of people who are insane, because they lack "choice" or even understanding. I don't, even if I endorse criminal justice for other reasons, such as an empirical reduction in crime by dissuading those who would commit it if there was no penalty. The "possibility" of there even being another choice is ruled out by the determinism of the universe, at least for all practical purposes, and the illusion persists only because we can't dispel it with with the tools available.
Of course.
If you still can't see what I'm pointing at, my claim is that those who stay after sober reflection and an accurate understanding of modern science have priors on the existence of God which, if not outright axiomatic, are close enough that I don't care to quibble. This is a fact of modernity, a scholarly monk in the 12th century certainly has less science available to choose a materialist alternative.
You are falsifying a view I do not hold, at least after I explained myself quite clearly.
I presume that this edit was too late for you to have read, so please address that now. What evidence could I, or any living assemblage of humans, with a budget of several billions or even a trillion at hand, muster to dissuade you? If you can't answer that, while I can, then there's no room for a double crux in the first place.
Rest assured I have exceedingly low expectations of changing your mind, or vice versa, I consider atheist debate on the Internet to be a moderately enjoyable pastime. All I seek from it are inconsistencies in my own worldview, not that I've spotted any today.
I don't care about the attention you're giving it. My complaint is that you seem to be looking for a soapbox to make points about religion without listening to or internalizing the counterpoints. It's fine for you to care deeply about this and disagree, but repetitively making the same points without even acknowledging your opponent's points (as I pointed out you did by equating his perspective of hell with the one you have in your head) is annoying.
As far as "impractical" purposes, again, I'm not sure the universe is fundamentally deterministic, given the nature of quantum mechanics. The only way to salvage [the illusion that free will is an illusion] is to basically say that people are not brains. "It wasn't actually you that made that decision, it was the atoms in your brain." This is extremely unsatisfying, considering that "you" are the atoms in your brain, and therefore, "you" can make decisions.
And now we get to the actual axioms. I can see why you'd believe this, or believe that moral objectivism is an illusion, but to me this is self-evidently false. People simply have objective value. If the world ceases to exist, something of value will be lost, even without people around to quantify that value.
I don't love the framing of this question. If an organization with billions of dollars devoted all its resources to persuading me of something, I would be very reticent to actually be persuaded, even if the evidence seemed convincing. Presumably it could find or manufacture very good evidence for either side. Besides, people and organizations can't always just produce evidence, especially evidence which may be of a deeply personal nature.
To be very clear, I'm not yet 100% sure that my church is true. For one thing, if I were 100% sure, I wouldn't be making some of the decisions I currently make, such as playing videogames, watching inappropriate TV shows, or wasting time on this forum. This is basically what I mean by "faith"--whatever the strength of beliefs you profess, your actions are what really determine the strength of your belief in God.
My church teaches a very simple way of coming to know the truth. Live morally, and God will give you more knowledge. Accountability is based on knowledge--you can't be blamed for decisions you don't understand--which is why you generally don't obtain knowledge until you're ready for it (until you are morally developed enough to receive it and act upon it). Were this pattern to break--were I to become much more moral than I am now, without a corresponding increase in both understanding and in tangible evidence of God' existence--I would consider that proof positive that I was wrong about religion.
I have also tested more scientific methods, including listing out all prayers, whether the prayed-for thing happened, and my probability estimate of whether it would have happened had I not prayed. These turned out strongly in prayer's favor, but I like the previous approach more--it feels more trustworthy to me. Even though I do track prayers, on the rare occasions when I don't get what I ask for I still often feel momentary doubts that God exists. This is a personal moral failing, but it should show you that my belief in God is not as strong as I would like it to be, or as you think it is. If enough prayers went unanswered for long enough I fear that that might also cause me to lose my faith.
Keeping in mind that God doesn't want to give you more knowledge than you're ready for, what would be enough evidence to convince you that I am right? I'm telling you, straight up, you don't want to be visited by an angel or witness any equivalent level of evidence. Morally it would not change you very much (you would still have the same weaknesses etc.), but it would make you far more accountable for all the bad moral decisions you make in life, and in particular you would actually go to Hell if you later convinced yourself it was a hallucination or something.
There is a path to be followed, and I'm confident that each step on that path provides enough evidence to justify testing out the next step. I'd encourage you to try that path out yourself, and I assure you that if that path ever fails for me then that will be evidence enough that the conclusions which the path points towards (religion etc.) are not correct.
I did no such thing in the first place.
Alright, you want a concrete example? Some people, or rather a lot of them, operating under a fundamentally flawed definition of choice, routinely suggest things like fat shaming or telling depressed people that lying in bed all day are "choices", and hence their decision is worthy of opprobrium. They don't do the same when the cause is less vague, because barring the odd idiot, nobody goes around telling a diabetic that they're at moral fault for not having a working pancreas, and they ought to will their glucose levels back to normal. A mechanistic understanding of a phenomenon often prevents that assignment of moral fault.
Given that I know that everything is mechanistic, that means that I don't go around blaming people for the same, at least in situations where the act of blaming isn't going to make things better.
The sense of choice is entirely an illusion, your every action is determined by the precise configuration of the universe before you made it, updating according to the laws of physics. You couldn't have done otherwise, nobody can.
Remember when I called it a useful social fiction? I think crime ought to be punished even though the actions of a given criminal were entirely contingent on the above, if in expectation punishing them would lead to lower crime.
Therein arises a malign prior.
Okay then. This conversation has gone well past a leisurely waste of time into outright futility. If no evidence that anyone can plausibly muster with enormous resources can convince you otherwise, then you're effectively immune to further evidence.
Jesus Christ. Good for you that you bothered, but I regretfully inform you that no end of RCTs on the effectiveness of prayer have only confirmed the null hypothesis.
Maple syrup on a shit sandwich. For the properties of God almost universally acknowledged by most Christian denominations, the omnipotence and omnibenevolence part, from his perspective it makes no fucking difference whether I was indoctrinated with vague evidence by a Church or woken up with a handie from an Angel. He knows with absolute certainty whether or not I'm going to Hell before creating me, and in the event that I do go to Hell, he's entirely responsible for it. No point fucking around, that's just sociopathic.
I'm going to call it here, at least it was good practise in the event that I have the misfortune to run into Mormon missionaries in the States.
Starting to look like you're not engaging in good faith here.
No, I don't, I want you to tell me what was wrong with my concrete example, which you said relied on "[divorcing] all the usual connotations of choice". I've been very clear about that and you've dodged the question twice now.
The example you gave doesn't have anything to do with knowing the result of a choice ahead of time anyways. It's just a mostly unrelated example of your perspective, which while valuable, has already been shared in this thread.
Your response had much more to do with your own conception of hell than with his, as I mentioned. If you disagree, please explain why rather than just saying "nuh-uh".
Not what I said, and you know it. You wanted that answer ("people who disagree with me are immune to the truth") so badly you refused to hear what I said as anything else. I don't think the hypothetical should ever convince anyone of anything--an institution whose goal is by definition to convince you of something regardless of the truth of the matter should not be trusted. In that situation the only rational course of action would be to commit to epistemic learned helplessness regarding any information such an organization presented to you.
Besides that, I did address the hypothetical in the spirit in which it was intended, and you ignored that. Meanwhile you didn't even try to respond to the same question turned on you.
Unless you actually think they'll sound anything like me (they don't), this sounds less like something you really believe and more like something you're just saying as a sort of quasi-insult. Nice one.
As I mentioned, this only applies if you don't consider your brain to be "you". The idea that "you would never have made a different choice" means choices do not exist is wrong. As I said, everyone will choose $100 over $1, but the choice is still a choice, and is fundamentally up to them (unless you define their neurons as not being "them").
Like I said at the beginning, agency is what gives moral virtue value. If anyone is created without the capacity for evil, they also lack the capacity for good. Supposing God does know where you're headed before you're created, as I've been arguing that still doesn't mean you were forced into making those decisions. You still have the capacity for evil and good, and you determine which you choose; that choice is just known beforehand. To deny you the right of existing and making those choices would be to deny you your agency.
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...I hesitated to do so before, but I'm going to offer this link; it might be relevant to your interests, as it parallels the current conversation fairly closely. Upon checking the upstream thread, I see that the conversation string was actually initiated by you and @self_made_human in the first place.
Keep up the good work.
Thanks, that was a pretty good discussion. I don't 100% agree (I think when it comes down to it there is a little more objective truth to which axioms should be adopted than you seem to imply) but definitely an enlightening read.
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