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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   25447 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024

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I stopped believing in God because of a confluence of philosophical arguments - the conceptual incoherence of "free will", severe difficulties for substance dualism as a philosophy of mind (would it necessarily violate the causal closure of the physical? how does it handle hypothetical split-brain cases?), and in general the alleged evidence for religion not passing the "smell test" and having a similar epistemological profile to other discredited phenomena like ESP and cryptids.

Counterargument: you are going to die, the concept of caring about truth more than happiness is incoherent in a world without objective value, and so you really ought to cleave yourself to whichever tradition forms the greatest happiness in yourself and your loved ones. The Good is always and forever sovereign over the Truth because it is only via the Good that we care about the Truth, and indeed, we can dwell endlessly on how the Genesis narrative presents this, and how our goal is really a renewal of paradise (from the Persian word walled garden)

the concept of caring about truth more than happiness is incoherent in a world without objective value, and so you really ought to cleave yourself to whichever tradition forms the greatest happiness in yourself and your loved ones.

I think that's a complex issue and the proper response varies on a case by case basis.

I will note though that I only have so much control over my beliefs. I can't just will myself to believe that modus ponens is false, or that I don't exist, or that people can fly. There's a give and take with what the world imposes on me by force.

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