"Is there a God" for noobs

Either God exist, or it doesn't. Therefore, either theism or atheism is false.

Note that some versions of what people mean by God are very vague. So at that level, it may not be a meaningful question.

Before I say anything, I'd like to say that convincing other people to become atheist is really hard. Really hard. I wish you the best of luck if you want to go through with it.

I think that if someone isn't already atheist, explaining to them why they should be will need to cover a lot of ground before its likely to work, and will probably need to be really long.

You never know until you correct a previously false belief. If you care about anything, you should try and hold only true beliefs, because one false belief can be enough to destroy what you hold dear.

This conclusion isn't obvious to non-LW readers, so you should try unpacking your thinking a little bit. I think you should stick a real life example in here to make it more tangible, ideas like this tend to be glossed over when read casually.

one false belief can be enough to destroy what you hold dear.

Many people hold beliefs dear.

If someone proposes you to adopt one, do not drink that cup, it's poisoned.

If you have any advice about how to detect flaws in reading, tell them how. Most people would that they shouldn't adopt obviously fallacious modes of thought, but most don't know that they have cognitive biases built-in.

Note that all three answers share a common structure.

Most people will not leap to probability from this.

Also, it might help to make it clearer that "I don't know" means that you spread out your probability.

There is hope however: if we are both reasonable, don't have flaws in our reasoning, have roughly equal access to evidence, and honestly attempt to reach the truth together, then we will eventually agree. At least one of us will radically change his mind.

Let's say that halfway through such a quest, you are still 99.999% confident the Earth is spherical, but I am only 60% confident. It means two things:

I changed my mind. We still disagree. This time, the disagreament is not as srong, but still significant: you estimate that flat Earth is barely worth considering. I on the other hand, think sailing West means 40% chances of falling at the edge of the world, which is just too risky.

This sweeps all of the math behind Aumann's Agreement Theorem under the carpet, and does so before people are convinced of the whole probability as belief point.

Also, there are very many visceral reasons that someone disagreeing with you feels like they're attacking you which you don't address.

Other notes:

I'd suggest that you talk about what constitutes proper evidence for a belief. Almost every religious person I know insists that something in their life shows them that God exists. I suggest mentioning (and explaining) belief in belief.

I hope that helps.

Belief in God is just a symptom, and comparatively unimportant at that (it serves as a focus of cultural development of anti-epistemology, but probably not significantly in individual people). You should heal people's epistemology instead, the God issue will resolve on its own as a result.

Using belief in God as an example while teaching good epistemology is a bad idea, because it activates the existing anti-epistemology, which would interfere with the education. Confronting belief in God would be an advanced exercise, performed after your skills become sufficiently strong.

This is meta dangerous.

Most people probably wouldn't know what that means; I suggest a change to increase accessibility.

I suspect the best approach is not a lengthy, coherent argument - but planting a seed of doubt. They'll object strenuously and often stupidly, but it'll stick in their minds.

Read this review of a TV show on the historicity of the Bible. When someone starts by presuming a television show about actual history and archaeology is an "attack" and says, as if it's a debate-winning argument, "there isn't much point trying to attack a religion using facts" ... you're not in the rational zone, but in the "foundations of my world are rocking somewhat" zone.

(This is why I really like the notion of planting seeds of rationality - it's like the difference between exposing someone to radiation and feeding them radioactive material. Perhaps that's not the very best analogy ;-) )

Nitpick: Can you give some context or say who's speaking in the quote about spherical Earth-ism being of the devil? For a moment I thought there was supposed to be a different speaker in the second paragraph and I got confused.

Substantive comment: I think this is a good thing to have out there to show to the theists who hide behind "but God's existence isn't a scientific question!" On the other hand, don't be disappointed if you get no apparent success. I went though a phase of talking to religious people on the internet, and I never got anything out of it. From what I've heard, most people who lose their religion came to question it on their own, and then saw some atheist material.

Your “Me believing in Flat Earth” paragraph is not showing the consequences of a false belief but of a (probably strawman for your audience) religious-and-false belief; I expect it to offend rather than illustrate, and considered in the overall structure of the essay, I think it brings in the topic of religion too soon.

I have found that the logical approach like this one works much more rarely than it doesn't, simply because it appears that people can manage not to trust reason, or to doubt the validity of the (more or less obvious) inferences involved.

Additionally, belief is so emotional that even people who see all the logic, and truly seem to appreciate that believing in God is completely silly, still can't rid themselves of the belief. It's like someone who knows household spiders are not dangerous in any way and yet are more terrified of them than, say, an elephant.

Perhaps what's needed in addition to this is a separate "How to eschew the idea of god from your brain" guide. It would include practical advice collected from various self-admitted ex-believers. Importantly, I think people who have never believed should avoid contributing to such a guide unless they have reasons to believe that they have an extraordinary amount of insight into a believer's mind.

On the other hand, your estimate may be very close to 50%. Just to be sure, are you positive that the evidence at your disposal is that balanced? It is not stronger one way or another?

This is quite feasible. It's not because the evidence towards the existence of a god is balanced. It's because the evidence towards your bias is balanced.

Each time you make an observation, you have to estimate the probability and use that to update your priors. Unfortunately, the probabilities will be in error. If the error were random, the error would be proportional to the square root of the number of observations. Unfortunately, some of the error is bias, and it correlates. The error increases exponentially with the number of observations.

That explanation is kind of shaky, but it can be shown easily. A lot of people are very certain about whether or not there is a god, but a good chunk of them are completely wrong. The error in their confidence is huge.

Nitpick: you use the term "odds" as if it were a synonym of "probability".

If you care about anything, you should try and hold only true beliefs, because one false belief can be enough to destroy what you hold dear.

If you provide an argument for this statement, then your article will be much more persuasive. Firstly, some of the things people "care about" are their beliefs. Secondly, there are (seemingly plausible) pragmatic arguments for holding certain beliefs regardless of their truth value. For instance, according to Harry Gensler, William James argued that:

The belief in God gives practical life benefits (courage, peace, zeal, love, etc...).

All beliefs that give practical life benefits are pragmatically justifiable.

Therefore, the belief in God is pragmatically justifiable.

I'm working on a way to explain this concept to the nice strangers who stop by my house from time to time.

Written for the LW audience:

The problem with the God hypothesis is that it is indistinguishable from innumerable other stories that can be made up to explain the same phenomena, and whose validity is supported equally well by the evidence.

For example: I once made a tuna sandwich, ordinary in every way except that it had the special ability to create the universe, both past and future. It was not God, which I verified by eating it. This is the tuna sandwich hypothesis for the existence of the universe (TSH).

The TSH is superior to the God Hypothesis in two important ways: first of all it was tasty; and second, the theory is much simpler. Instead of needing all kinds of crazy special attributes like omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience, the tuna sandwich only requires the special ability to create the universe for all time; so it is a more likely explanation for the creation of the universe. In other words the likelihood that God created the universe is relatively lower than the TSH due to the joint probably of all the claims that the God hypothesis makes about God. All that existence you enjoy (or suffer from) is better evidence for the TSH.

This can be repeated for the other phenomena attributed to God, and instead of "tuna sandwich" you can pick anything -- for example any real number -- which makes the set of choices uncountable.

Given the other possibilities, the likelihood that the God hypothesis is true is infinitely small; which rational systems will round to zero.

I am looking for a way to make this easier for a layman to understand, and to make it less offensive to those with strongly held beliefs.

"Now imagine I believe the Earth is flat, and you believe the earth is (roughly) spherical. Those two beliefs are mutually contradictory. Clearly, one of us is mistaken."

Nitpick: . The given beliefs are contradictory but not exhaustive. At least one of the disputants is mistaken, but both could be wrong. The earth could have another shape.

I think theist and atheist can reasonably be defined to be contradictory and exhaustive. Agnostics do not affirm an alternate opinion about whether God exists, they're simply undecided.

You might want to add something about asking what betting odds one would take on a proposition being objectively true to determine how much probability one assigns to it since one might find giving such odds easier than making a probability estimate from 0 to 1.

Overall, how someone who've never read Less Wrong nor Dawkings might react to that?

wince

Agnosticism is less comfortable than it sounds. First, agnostics disagree with both theists and atheists. Second, any significant evidence should mostly turn them into either theists or atheists. And the importance of the question suggest they should seek such evidence.

Speaking as an actual agnostic, I don't think this is correct. The agnostic position is not "I am unsure whether God exists." The agnostic position is "The answer to this question is unknowable, and my time is better spent on questions that can be answered."

I also think you need to spell out why the question is important, since it is not obvious to me. I know classical philosophy isn't really in favor on Less Wrong, but as I see it, Euthyphro's Dilemma pretty much eliminates the relevance of God to normative ethics, and I'm not sure why else we should care.

Truth is universal

Actually the nature of truth is an unresolved and debated question.

There are reasons to discount the concept of absolute truth.

Take your example:

I happen to wear black socks at the time of this writing. Believe it or not, that's the reality, so "Loup was wearing blacks socks when he wrote this" is true for everyone, including you. Even if you believe I'm lying, I am wearing black socks. You can't be absolutely certain of this fact, but a fact it is.

Your statement is true as assessed from a certain context; if assessed from other contexts it might be false. For example, under a different light source your socks may appear to blue due to illuminant metameric failure, or may even glow due to phosphorescence.

Truth can only be determined from the context of assessment.

For those that disagree I'll take your down-votes, but please also comment, pointing me to references if possible; I'm actively researching this aspect of epistemology.

So, you're saying that if I open myself up to doubting God, the devil might snatch my soul. Nice try, but you're going to have to do better than that!

Here is perhaps the largest issue when it comes to discussing religion with someone else: are you discussing theology? Arguments like this seem to suppose that you are- I mean, why else would people profess belief in God? That rabbit hole is worth contemplating.

There are some people who are so sure about something 100%, but some are not. They assume there is no 100% proof of God. Whether our future is determined by more number of decisions with 100% accuracy? Not always. But even when dealing with everyday life we do not always have to require 100% accuracy.

It is an art to analyze and decide. Its strength lies not on getting a solution 100%, but with our limitations in finding solutions or answers which are not 100% it can lead us to overcome the problem or even put us in the future in the best condition that can be earned, and it's just through using only accuracy equal to less than 100%.

It's a matter of proficiency that can only be proven after a period of time. It's unique, personal, that's why this is the art of making wise decision.

When faced with the possibility, there is a way to face possibility is to let one of possibility and see if it leads to something more definite. Diversity in the future will narrow the chances of the possibility of something, and it will clarify for the possibility of something (from the past) in the future.

I consider there is God. I have proof of existence of God. You may try to read at: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/51d/there_is_god/