[SEQ RERUN] Beyond the Reach of God

post by MinibearRex · 2012-09-14T05:54:09.516Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 2 comments

Today's post, Beyond the Reach of God was originally published on 04 October 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

 

Compare the world in which there is a God, who will intervene at some threshold, against a world in which everything happens as a result of physical laws. Which universe looks more like our own?


Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Use the Try Harder, Luke, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.

2 comments

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comment by ZenJedi · 2012-09-14T18:34:56.217Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

This might be my favorite essay by EY so far. Really excellent insights, which I hope every professed atheist is exposed to, because I’ve come across far too many people who call themselves atheists yet still act and think as if God exists.

EY’s weltanschauung sounds very similar Lovecraft’s “cosmicism," which is more or less where honest atheism seems to lead. However, I note that in the comments section EY says that he intends to “fix the universe,” which sounds completely insane to me. Don’t religions come into existence as a reaction to the bleakness of the universe EY describes? Is he now going to create his own religion of rationalist “universe fixing”? May the Void protect us from the universe-fixers! Thanks, but I think I’ll stick with my own (anti-)religion of “Zen-Cosmicism”…

Replies from: MixedNuts
↑ comment by MixedNuts · 2012-09-15T12:53:10.091Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

"But that doesn't make any sense. Why would anybody who knew what it was like want it to keep happening? How could somebody feel something that awful and not want to make it go away forever?" Key pleaded.

"It's a mystery to me," said Lace. "Maybe it's a matter of being used to it."

Fool! There is no Equilibrium! It is a word that you wizards say at only and exactly those times that you don't want to bother! It prevents you from giving food to the hungry, but not from filling your own bellies! Your friends are good enough to be healed, no threat to the Balance there, but the cripple in the streets must be left to suffer -