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I am religious and believe in free will

70 (27.6%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

113 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (24%)

Total Members Voted: 249

[Putnam]

Holy crap how were priests actually the sanest people back in the day

[Loud Whispers]

Spoiler: okay i'm sorry, but i need to get this off my chest somewhere and I keep mucking up threads with it wherever it turns up (click to show/hide)

What happened to my mind that i find it completely, utterly impossible to understand how anyone could be religious?
I don't understand the point of believing anything like that, I don't understand how people reconcile the horrible morals in most religions with their current, often mostly independent morals, I don't understand why people would subject theirself to mystery, to something beyond truth¹, it seems self-destructive and worthless to me. I can see how Zen Buddhism, for example, is helpful, but you don't need the spirituality to do all that. Yeah, meditation and hypnotism are real, but real precludes spiritualism, you don't need any spiritualism because everything that actually exists has a real explanation. That's something completely fundamental in my mind, I guess, something so obvious that it never really needed to be said. Huh, maybe that's why. Can anyone give a serious explanation for why anyone would want to be religious, though? I can't think of any good reasons. I used to say to myself that piety was a virtue, but looking back that's just something I said, not ever actually believed, and every time I said that I just thought of the guy who held his arm up for years on end until it no longer functioned at all.

¹Though that's based on the idea that religion is irreconcilable with science, which... uh, it sort of is. I can't really think of anything religion can be other than something that one believes is true regardless of what is actually true.

It is quite easy to reconcile the horrible morals within your religion with your own independent morals when your religion understands human nature already, and the world without demonstrates itself to be nothing less cliché than stupidly evil
As for science =/= religion, nah, just fundamentalists

On-topic, free will: seems obviously false to me. There's nothing that could create free will that I know of within our current models of physics, and our current models of physics are hilariously accurate on the level of brains and neurons that make them up.

Our current laws of physics are both incomplete and almost certainly wrong somewhere, maybe everywhere lol
Heck, the assumption that energy cannot be made or destroyed must be wrong or else the big bang should just not have happened and nothing should exist

2spook8me

Spoiler: Reply to thing in happy thread (click to show/hide)

okay, but

Deuteronomy 13:6-11
Suppose someone secretly entices you—even your brother, your son or daughter, your beloved wife, or your closest friend—and says, ‘Let us go worship other gods’—gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known. They might suggest that you worship the gods of peoples who live nearby or who come from the ends of the earth. But do not give in or listen. Have no pity, and do not spare or protect them. You must put them to death! Strike the first blow yourself, and then all the people must join in. Stone the guilty ones to death because they have tried to draw you away from the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of slavery. Then all Israel will hear about it and be afraid, and no one will act so wickedly again.

and now the all-benevolent, infallible god can change his mind? how curious.

Benevolent doesn't mean without judgement, since you know, divine judge and all

[Orange Wizard]

To be fair, I would hesitate to call my God benevolent.

[Harry Baldman]

Being religious is a very appealing prospect in the general sense because you reject the pursuit of an answer in one way or another, and feel smarter for it.

For instance, the world is going to shit. But you don't need to worry. Soon we'll invent AI, and upload our everlasting minds and souls onto silicon substrates, and live forever in the unchanging internet wonderland that we have come to know and love. All the cool people will be there and you can look like whatever you want, and work on world-saving important problems without all those mortal flaws holding you back. In the digital world there will be no procrastination, no sense of wasted life, and your shining intellect that nobody else appreciated in high school will be raised to ever-higher heights as processing power increases logarithmically. The future is beyond our wildest imaginings, faithful disciple. But it will happen, and it will happen within our lifetimes! So write your essays, continue coding and hone your skills holistically, so that there will be a place for you in the glorious future where computer scientists finally get to rule the world forever. Have faith in Science. If Science is done faithfully and adhering to our infallible guidelines of rationality, all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.

It is an appealing course of action, as one can see, because most answers to questions you believe to be important are, in fact, beyond your ability to determine (no matter how smugly one may state otherwise, see preceding paragraphs and probably the current one, too). And since it is strictly irrelevant which non-answer you ultimately pick, you might as well pick the one that lets you go places, meet interesting people and sing your heart out in praise for a great and sentient creator, and one that has a very nice historic document to go with it.

[Rolan7]

... That's a great example which I've been guilty of.
I mean, there are reasons to think the singularity is *possible*, but that's pretty much the same as any other religion.  And the ideas are too soft to be disproven.

(Discounting literal interpretation of holy books, which is generally outright disprovable through contradiction or failed prophecies)

[Bohandas]

Spoiler: Reply to thing in happy thread (click to show/hide)

okay, but

Deuteronomy 13:6-11
Suppose someone secretly entices you—even your brother, your son or daughter, your beloved wife, or your closest friend—and says, ‘Let us go worship other gods’—gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known. They might suggest that you worship the gods of peoples who live nearby or who come from the ends of the earth. But do not give in or listen. Have no pity, and do not spare or protect them. You must put them to death! Strike the first blow yourself, and then all the people must join in. Stone the guilty ones to death because they have tried to draw you away from the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of slavery. Then all Israel will hear about it and be afraid, and no one will act so wickedly again.

and now the all-benevolent, infallible god can change his mind? how curious.

Benevolent doesn't mean without judgement, since you know, divine judge and all

Gonna have to call you out on that one. That's a straw man argument. He was talking about whether god qualifies as omnibenevolent and you subtly changed it to whether god qualifies as benevolent at all while still trying to construe it as the same question.



Personally I don't think a being could harm, or call for the harm, of any being for any reason (except if it was the only possible way to prevent an even greater evil; an exception which is categorically inapplicable to beings that are also omnipotent) and still qualify as omnibenevolent.

[Rolan7]

Spoiler: Reply to thing in happy thread (click to show/hide)

okay, but

Deuteronomy 13:6-11
Suppose someone secretly entices you—even your brother, your son or daughter, your beloved wife, or your closest friend—and says, ‘Let us go worship other gods’—gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known. They might suggest that you worship the gods of peoples who live nearby or who come from the ends of the earth. But do not give in or listen. Have no pity, and do not spare or protect them. You must put them to death! Strike the first blow yourself, and then all the people must join in. Stone the guilty ones to death because they have tried to draw you away from the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of slavery. Then all Israel will hear about it and be afraid, and no one will act so wickedly again.

and now the all-benevolent, infallible god can change his mind? how curious.

Benevolent doesn't mean without judgement, since you know, divine judge and all

Gonna have to call you out on that one. That's a straw man argument. He was talking about whether god qualifies as omnibenevolent and you subtly changed it to whether god qualifies as benevolent at all while still trying to construe it as the same question.



Personally I don't think a being could harm, or call for the harm, of any being for any reason (except if it was the only possible way to prevent an even greater evil; an exception which is categorically inapplicable to beings that are also omnipotent) and still qualify as omnibenevolent.

I read it as "Divine judges do good by punishing evil".  Which I think is a bad moral code - In my personal opinion, punishment is only good as far as it rehabilitates someone.  Eternal punishment is the worst example of course, but also it's not right to cut off someone's hand for stealing, if they can be taught not to steal some other way.  Punishment for its own sake is wrong.

But that's just, like, my opinion.  In Christian morality, sin does require punishment independent of actually fixing anything.

[Putnam]

Spoiler: Reply to thing in happy thread (click to show/hide)

okay, but

Deuteronomy 13:6-11
Suppose someone secretly entices you—even your brother, your son or daughter, your beloved wife, or your closest friend—and says, ‘Let us go worship other gods’—gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known. They might suggest that you worship the gods of peoples who live nearby or who come from the ends of the earth. But do not give in or listen. Have no pity, and do not spare or protect them. You must put them to death! Strike the first blow yourself, and then all the people must join in. Stone the guilty ones to death because they have tried to draw you away from the Lord your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of slavery. Then all Israel will hear about it and be afraid, and no one will act so wickedly again.

and now the all-benevolent, infallible god can change his mind? how curious.

Benevolent doesn't mean without judgement, since you know, divine judge and all

Gonna have to call you out on that one. That's a straw man argument. He was talking about whether god qualifies as omnibenevolent and you subtly changed it to whether god qualifies as benevolent at all while still trying to construe it as the same question.



Personally I don't think a being could harm, or call for the harm, of any being for any reason (except if it was the only possible way to prevent an even greater evil; an exception which is categorically inapplicable to beings that are also omnipotent) and still qualify as omnibenevolent.

Huh, when you bring that up I realize that I'm not sure where I got the idea that he's said to be omnibenevolent at all. Maybe (and this isn't a dumb "agree to disagree" maybe, this is an "I estimate a greater than 40% chance" maybe) I'm wrong about that particular part of the belief system.

And yeah, anything that would dole out the infinitely disproportionate punishment that christians tend to believe in (i don't think there's actually any real biblical evidence of eternal punishment?) is infinitely evil.

And yeah, punishment is entirely worthless unless it changes behavior. If it doesn't, then it's just cruelty. An infinitely-long punishment brooks no change.

Being religious is a very appealing prospect in the general sense because you reject the pursuit of an answer in one way or another, and feel smarter for it.

that's dumb

sorry, i mean I'm not sure if I can put that any other way, that's just sorta dumb. Feeling smarter because you worship your own ignorance? I can't think of any other way to put that concept other than "worshiping your own ignorance", either.

[singularity]

singularity stuff like what you describe is basically more religion, except that it worships Elon Musk or Ray Kurzweil or Eliezer Yudkowsky or whoever and so pretends not to be. You could say it's "better" because the thing you're worshiping is a possibility, but then you could say the same about UFO cults or Charles Manson, and then you're going way into crazy.

It is an appealing course of action, as one can see, because most answers to questions you believe to be important are, in fact, beyond your ability to determine (no matter how smugly one may state otherwise, see preceding paragraphs and probably the current one, too). And since it is strictly irrelevant which non-answer you ultimately pick, you might as well pick the one that lets you go places, meet interesting people and sing your heart out in praise for a great and sentient creator, and one that has a very nice historic document to go with it.

I can sorta see how one would get comfort in that, but I don't quite understand why anyone would want any answers to be beyond one's ability to determine, that sounds way more discomforting than comforting. If anything actually turns out to be intractable or unknowable etc. (like whatever goes on in black holes, most likely), we should probably say "that sucks" and move on to something useful instead of saying "in there lives God" or whatever.

On-topic, free will: seems obviously false to me. There's nothing that could create free will that I know of within our current models of physics, and our current models of physics are hilariously accurate on the level of brains and neurons that make them up.

Our current laws of physics are both incomplete and almost certainly wrong somewhere, maybe everywhere lol
Heck, the assumption that energy cannot be made or destroyed must be wrong or else the big bang should just not have happened and nothing should exist

2spook8me

No, I don't really accept that. We're way too precise on some things to be entirely wrong. Wrong somewhere I can believe, yeah, but it's probably not in the range of general relativity or quantum mechanics, especially between the orders of microns and meters (I.E where neurons and brains live), both of those things are fairly well-constrained and they both predict very well what's going to happen given some event or another (at least probabilisticly, in the case of QM).

Also, the assumption that energy cannot be made or destroyed is already known to be false globally, we know that for a fact, the universe is expanding and space has a minimum amount of energy per volume, which means that energy is constantly created at long distances. Not to mention the whole "could've already been there at the moment of the Big Bang" thing.

[Egan_BW]

If we cannot disprove god, then we must improve our instrumentation until we can.

[Teneb]

If we cannot disprove god, then we must improve our instrumentation until we can.

Or do prove that he exists. The problem with investigating something when you already have decided on the result is that you end up overlooking stuff.

Disclaimer: not abrahamic.

Anyway, even gods don't exist, I sure hope there is an afterlife (even if it is more of the same (actually, that'd probably be my preferred one)), because non-existence scares the crap out of me.

[Egan_BW]

Even if I shook his hand my self I'd still try to disprove her. If you can prove something is true than you simply lack the precision to disprove it.

[Putnam]

nah, i'd say that's approximately the point where you either accept the appearance of reality or become a solipsist

the very thought of becoming a solipsist makes me shudder

[Bohandas]

[singularity]

singularity stuff like what you describe is basically more religion, except that it worships Elon Musk or Ray Kurzweil or Eliezer Yudkowsky or whoever and so pretends not to be. You could say it's "better" because the thing you're worshiping is a possibility, but then you could say the same about UFO cults or Charles Manson, and then you're going way into crazy.

Agreed. Definitely.

A couple of weeks ago I actually came up with a short way to describe singularitarianism that more clearly shows what it actually is, and I'd like to share it with all pf you now (As I've been waiting for an excuse to):

"Basically it's the belief that the accelerating rate of advancement in computer technology will eventually lead to the invention of a messianic supercomputer which, depending on who you ask, will either descend from the heavens to solve all of our problems like at the end of a bad Greek play, or else usher in 1000 years of darkness."

[Egan_BW]

God from the machine. Fitting.
Hmm. What if all we need is a machine (a "crane") to lower a god down to the stage?

[Harry Baldman]

that's dumb

sorry, i mean I'm not sure if I can put that any other way, that's just sorta dumb. Feeling smarter because you worship your own ignorance? I can't think of any other way to put that concept other than "worshiping your own ignorance", either.

Rationality's difficult because people are dumb by default, with moments of productivity and intelligence sprinkled in there. I'm sure if one examines their own behavior they can easily find any number of things where they do not act as completely rational actors that further their own best interest. This is hardly news, is it? We do dumb things because they are easy, comforting, intuitive or otherwise appealing, not because they're the right thing to do.

Best part is, you can rail against this, but ultimately you're likely to settle back into the easier alternative, which is to not give a shit, reduce the phenomenon to a contemptuous generalization of human nature and thus adequately distance yourself from it in your own opinion, then go back to business as usual without effecting anything a hardcore rationalist would rationalize as positive change on a personal or societal level. You do nothing, and feel smarter for it.

singularity stuff like what you describe is basically more religion, except that it worships Elon Musk or Ray Kurzweil or Eliezer Yudkowsky or whoever and so pretends not to be. You could say it's "better" because the thing you're worshiping is a possibility, but then you could say the same about UFO cults or Charles Manson, and then you're going way into crazy.

A lot of things are basically more religion, is my point. Singularitarian thought is just a funnier example than most, given that most practitioners are probably as euphoric as internet dwellers can be. I mean, I used to buy into that shit myself, so I guess I think it's just a pithy way to give an example of eloquent ideologues that people disagree with less confidently and less often than they do with Paul the Apostle.

I can sorta see how one would get comfort in that, but I don't quite understand why anyone would want any answers to be beyond one's ability to determine, that sounds way more discomforting than comforting. If anything actually turns out to be intractable or unknowable etc. (like whatever goes on in black holes, most likely), we should probably say "that sucks" and move on to something useful instead of saying "in there lives God" or whatever.

I meant more on a personal level. Somebody might eventually find out what goes on in black holes. You almost certainly never will. Most of the complexity of existence remains and will remain a mystery to you for the duration of your natural life. And you are not alone. So you admit defeat and move on, whether in the form of "well, somebody smarter and better situated will get better instruments and find out eventually and tell me if I'm still alive" or "well, God works in mysterious ways and maybe I'll understand more in Heaven".

I don't think people actually dwell on the god of the gaps, as they call the phenomenon, so that poke at religion is a bit misaimed. They just say "god did it" and move on. Inconsistencies in religion exist because people didn't think them through very carefully or with correct information when they were created and often not even when they were codified. It's only when you get into serious apologetics and/or attempts at disproval that people start to dwell on things like flat-earthers, creationists, well-sourced atheists (I myself am a very poorly sourced atheist, thank you very much), Bible scholars and other assholes tend to.

There's also the way declaring something to be unknowable to you means you shift something from the category of "haven't found out" to "can't find out". So you bear no responsibility for never finding out and never acting appropriately. Once again, it's so you can easily move on rather than dwell.