Maybe Theism Is OK

My views on religion have ... drifted ... a lot over the last year on Less Wrong. It isn't that any specific belief has changed, but all of my amorphous impressions about religion have shifted so that whereas I used to think that religion had value and even "deep wisdom" hidden away here and there, if only I could find it, I now consider this much less likely. I do believe value and deep wisdom can be found co-locally with religion, but this seems in spite of, rather than because of, religiosity.

The problem with religion is epistemology and authority. Being right about a few things (the golden rule, ritualising big life events) doesn't make you right about the other things (bigotry, detrimental policies due to unchecked idealism).

However, I still have the same objections to 'new atheism' I began with. Perhaps now I can describe them more effectively.

I think that the Non-Existence of God is the weakest and least relevant argument that New Atheists make, but it is the one they focus on nearly exclusively, especially with theists.

The non-existence of God is a weak argument because -- especially depending on how you define God -- it's not clear whether God should exist or not. It's also a weak argument because it polarizes the discussion and builds defensive walls in ways that questioning other beliefs would not. I think it would be most effective to allow that God exists -- as say, the "first cause", whatever it is -- and then try and deduce together what his properties are. They're pretty unexciting given a scientific worldview...

The non-existence of God is an irrelevant argument because the problems of religion aren't belief in God, but problems with epistemology and authority. Telling a theist that God doesn't exist sounds most absurd to a theist, but if you ask a theist whether humans sometimes interpret God incorrectly, they'll have to admit 'yes'. So you would already be where you wanted to be -- at a place where they are also wondering, how do human beings make sure they interpret reality correctly?

I am looking forward to a talk next week given by a theist at a nearby college 'giving a response to New Atheism'.

I have also decided to go to a Unitarian service this Sunday. On my way home from work on Tuesday, I saw a billboard that said, "If you like free coffee and discussion, join us". That night I was thinking, "I like coffee" and, "I like discussion" but worried about what they could discuss that would be of interest to me, given my burgeoning discomfort with religious thinking. On my in to work this morning, I read the other side of the billboard that read, 'This week's topic: Atheism". So I'm definitely going.

Over the next week, I'll share the main points and my impressions of the talk and the Sunday gathering here in this thread.

First, I think we're all tolerant of religion and most other kinds of irrationality. There is a difference between tolerance and respect.

Second, there isn't much difference between beliefs that are contradicted by empirical evidence and beliefs that have no evidence for or against them, but are a priori very implausible. Both have a very low likelihood of being true and should therefore be considered false by rational people.

Third, I don't see how conceding that one's beliefs are irrational excuses the irrationality (unless we're talking about mind states that are beyond our control, like phobias). In most cases, such a concession is a symptom of a deeper, more insidious kind of irrationality. After all, what do theists mean when they say that their beliefs aren't rational, but they believe them anyway? Obviously they don't use the word 'rational' the way most of us do. Usually they mean that they know that their beliefs aren't supported by logic or evidence, but they believe there are 'other ways' of discovering truth, which is just smoke to hide the fact that they don't want to question their beliefs.

As a least convenient world exercise, what is the most rational belief in God that you can think of?

Most reasonable theisms:

• The "we are in a simulation" argument.
• The "we are God's entertainment" religion.

Most reasonable religious views:

• Believing in absolute morality, without adequate justification; possibly as a pragmatic matter.
• At the other extreme, being purely hedonic (we could call this Dionysianism, but the spelling is horrific).
• Believing a priori that rationalism is necessarily always the winning strategy.

the only plausible version of theism is one in which intelligence came into the universe in a lawful way -- ie, not intelligence first. Even if intelligence did not originate from natural selection here on earth, it must've originated roughly that way somewhere. Maybe that lead to a singularity, to superintelligences, to beings capable of understanding the physics of their universe at the deepest most fundamental level, who decided to create their own universes for fun. Not parsimonious, not constrained by evidence, but at least not as wildly, screamingly absurd as "intelligence came from nowhere and decided to start a universe"

Now that I have seeped in Less Wrong for another month, I would like to revisit the question of theism. I have always defined God to myself as "whatever is minimally required to make sense" since I have an innate belief that things should make sense. So I found it interesting that at Less Wrong, it is consistently maintained that nothing extra is needed. I found this idea very attractive and I have spent many hours here trying to learning what kind of world view is held here.

It has certainly been a challenging study in inference to figure out what Less Wrong is about. I'm only beginning to understand what "rationality" is (i.e., the core, fundamental principles) and I may only infer what it is by observing the arguments that rationalists make, considering of course the obvious complications that rationalists are not perfectly rational nor is there a single "rational" view.

I've observed sincerely, I think, to some extent, and I induce that the probability that "rationality" is a meaningful, self-consistent, complete theory is tiny. Do you guys know this? I suspect so, because there are ribbons, here and there, of the suggestion that meaning is actually indeed too much to ask of authentic observation of "reality".

It is not obvious, of course, that any theory developed by human beings must be consistent and complete and meaningful. Perhaps, by some metric, rationality is as good a theory as another.

But theism. I don't know if the assumption of God is necessary for a consistent and complete theory, but certainly it would be sufficient? I think I've heard from Bayesians before that God is not impossible, just extremely unlikely. Your argument from the beginning has been that belief in God is not justified. Yet, if belief in God results in a meaningful theory, isn't that more justified than a set of beliefs that result in a meaningless theory?

Perhaps "God" is not the missing element required to make "rationality" consistent and complete -- however, anything that I can think of adding that might fix the theory could be eliminated by exactly the same arguments that you use to eliminate belief in God. (For example: Truth. Love. Quality. etc.)

I'm hoping that someone here is much wiser than me and can point me in a fruitful direction. Can you validate the existence of the inconsistency I speak of, in your terms, and explain how you resolve it?

I agree that it's not productive to have a pile-on whenever someone writes something that implies they hold a religious belief, but that doesn't mean religion is "nearly rational".

what is the most rational belief in God that you can think of?

One could imagine someone with a suitable archeological background reaching the conclusion that there used to be one or more interventionist gods around. These gods either lost interest in us or died out prior to modern times. If you take testimony from Biblical times seriously, it doesn't prove beings exist now who are immortal or omnipotent or able to perform magic, but it does suggest some people thought such beings existed in the past and if you take their testimony as more than good storytelling you might conclude the existence of a sort of trickster deity a few thousand years ago., one that made a lot of false claims or had fase claims made about it, but that also could do a few cool tricks based on abilities no longer evident today.

There is but one issue with religion in my sense. Religion limits humanity's, and individuals', potential to become more.

Why ? Because religion is based upon flawed premises, flawed priors. Aside from those, religions can be perfectly logical and rational. Some of the best rationalists I've heard about, or met, were religious persons, and were held close to optimally rational views inside their religion's worldview.

If God exists, as well as if there's an afterlife, a paradise, hell, final judgment, absolute morality, if we have immortal souls, if the physical world is but a test, etc. then it is rational to, working inside that system, optimize our lives as best as possible, to live virtuously. And, yes, religion's purpose, inside that system, is to help people to become "more" than they are, to realize themselves. A goal similar to ours rationalists, a goal you can see in almost any active individual or group of individuals.

The moral compass of a Catholic is, ideally, the idea of "what can I do to grow further in love, towards others and myself ?". This is good, but since the very definition of love contains a part referring to something that doesn't exist (God), the whole idea has a flaw that can make it become incoherent in the long term; paradoxical.

Even worse, since it isn't easy to follow that moral compass, they have a guide, a reference, the Word of God, the Holy Bible. What is in that book, is presumed to be true. Just in the same way that a scientist presumes that what he can observe of the world around him, is true. Based on that, both would use their best judgment to try and understand that observed truth, for themselves, to make sense of it. But you can certainly see the issue with presuming that the Bible is the absolute word of God, basing your actions upon your best understanding of it, if that book isn't, after all, the Word of God, but only the work of human priests and early philosophers, a few millenia ago ?

Whenever people want to obtain something of reality, usually a better life, but fail to get the correct picture of what reality is, they harm themselves, and others too in the process. Religion (and not just catholicism, but religion in general) holds a lot of short and mid term benefits, both for individuals, and society as a whole. But it places a hard limit on our potential to develop and attain that better life, and that can be felt on the long term.

Then again, human beings are known to discount long term benefits for shorter term ones.

There is a big difference between acknowledging that we are all irrational to lesser and greater degrees and in different ways, and saying we should tolerate identified irrationalities. The point is to overcome irrationalities, not to find rationalizations for them.

Saying that religious beliefs should be shielded from rational inquiry (as long as we're "willing to drop them...") seems like a slippery slope that leads to being rational about the things you've always wanted to be rational about and keeping all the irrationalities that you happen to like.

As a least convenient world exercise, what is the most rational belief in God that you can think of?

The most rational belief in God I've encountered is probably this characterization of the Mormon God. I have no idea if it resembles the official doctrine at all, but it's far more coherent than most theistic dogma I've run across.

A) Could it be rational for a person to hold beliefs that are independent of empirical observation if (a) the person concedes that they are irrational and (b) is willing to drop them if they prove to not be useful?

Assuming that it is irrational to hold irrational beliefs, part (a) negates (A). (b) begs the question as to what their use is and what else can achieve that use. If something rational can achieve the same thing, would it not be superior?

I think for (A) to be true you have to allow for rational beliefs that are independent of empirical observation.

B) Could it be rational for a person to hold unusual beliefs as a result of contradicting empirical observations?

If "unusual beliefs" simply means "not what most people believe," sure. Tying this to religious experiences and beliefs is a bit of a jump since you are beginning to place categorical restrictions to the beliefs. An argument can probably be made that there is no such rational religious belief. I have not seen it yet, but I have not looked around for one.

I would like to argue that there could be a more tolerant view of religion/theism here on Less Wrong. The extent to which theism is vilified here seems disproportionate to me.

Some of the difficulty may be that words like "tolerant" and "vilified" imply malice or hate. I see little reason to hate bad religious beliefs any more than other types of bad beliefs.

I have had the opposite experience that many people on this website seems to have. I came to Less Wrong as a firm atheist, but realized that I did not seem to have any personal basis for this belief. After I read this article, I decided to take a serious look at possibilities for a deity.

One thing I considered was that during the big bang, an equal amount of matter and antimatter should be produced. Matter and antimatter are attracted to each other and react to become photons upon impact, so there should not be any matter or antimatter in the universe.

Science has two possible explanations for this, but one results in too much matter while the other would result in too little. Therefore, to the best of my knowledge science has no rational explanation for the amount of matter in this universe.

On the other hand, I could create a belief that a deity decided to make photons decay in a manner that results in only matter, and left the universe alone after.

Obviously, the Bayesian probability for this is very weak, but it is also the only theory that I see that has any chance of being true, so it is one that I, as a rationalist should believe in.

Remember, in the middle ages, theism was the rational belief, as atheism did not have as much support. This is the same. I do not expect this theory to last, or even be true, but it has the highest probability of being correct.