Religion's Claim to be Non-Disprovable

Very well written, as usual. But many other modern institutions have analogous ancient institutions that look rather silly by modern standards. Consider trial by combat in law, or ancient scholastic obsessions with the "true" meaning of ancient texts. If lawyers and academics can disavow these ancient practices, while still embracing a true essence of law or academia, why can't religious folks disavow ancient religious practice in favor of some true essence that makes sense in modern terms?

1) Because they'll say with their lips, "Oh, well, I just want the true essence" and then go on denying homosexuals the right to marry because it's the word of God.

2) What's left, exactly?

3) Nazism would have been unexceptional if it had been an ancient religion instead of a modern government. Why can't modern Nazis disavow ancient Nazi practice in favor of some true essence that makes sense in modern terms?

4) Why not start your search for the true essence in Lord of the Rings, which dominates the Bible both ethically and aesthetically? Or Harry Potter? Or Oh My Goddess?

And above all,

5) Because it's a fantastically elaborate way of refusing to admit you were wrong.

The difference is that ethics are not falsifiable. This leads me to believe there are no ethical truths.

To Robin: I think the central problem is that religion makes claims, not arguments, and then changes its claims when they become untenable. But since claims are all religion has got, it doesn't really have an essence to keep constant during this process. Perhaps one could argue that the method of making claims is what the essence is, like the scholarly or lawyerly method/mentality. This is hard for me to swallow, though, since the religious method of claiming is just "because God says so," which doesn't strike me as a permissible essence. Similarly, religious people like to talk about "faith" as the essence, but this is circular.

Eliezer, it's a good point, and hopefully writings like these will get the skeptic community (much larger than the reduce existential risk community) buzzing about "bayesian reasoning" as the proper contrast to religion. But it seems to me that religion has already been slayed many, many times by public intellectuals. The cutting edge areas to address, the "hard" areas, are things like universal adult enfranchisement to select policy makers and juries as finders of fact.

Eliezer: "did religionists execute what William Bartley called the retreat to commitment, "I believe because I believe."

Yes, they believe because they believe. Have you taken the time to ask why? Oh, my apology, I wasn't aware I wasn't knowledgeable enough to post.

Anna

Eliezer: Those who espouse any separate magisteria seem to me to consistently espouse only two: science and religion. Other scientific questions, even contentious, fervently-believed ones that impact morality and public policy, are subject to the normal rules of science. Yahweh's existence gets a magisterium, but global warming, aptitude equality among races and sexes, and the extent of neural activity in fetuses do not. At least, nobody admits they do. Do you believe any secular beliefs are protected by NOMA, perhaps by another name? Is there a generalized lesson that secular opponents of cognitive bias should learn from this, beyond the universal application of science?

From a practical perspective, it seems to me that we need religion to bolster the arrogance of the non-religious. It seems a-priori impossible that I could be right when my opinions go strongly against social consensus. I am thus tempted towards a weak form of philosophical majoritarianism http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/03/on_majoritarian.html but then I remember religion and it sets me back on the right track.

Eliezer, imagine you knew two people who both did embarrassing stupid things when they were young, and that one person you excused with "boys will be boys" or "the folly of youth", while the other you told to anyone that would listen that you would never trust or associate with a person who did such a terrible thing. This would seem to be playing favorites, unless perhaps the difference is that one person repented of their youthful acts while the other did not.

Similarly, you seem to be playing favorites in allowing lawyers and academics to disavow their silly ancient practices, while insisting that religious folks today take responsibility for ancient foolish religious claims. Sure your criticism sticks to those who refuse to disavow those ancient claims, but I think we should treat differently those, like Unitarians, who to do so disavow.

My main problem is that I find it hard to understand what such people are in fact claiming. At least I understood the ancient foolish claims, mostly.

Robin, I would indeed put someone who called themselves a Unitarian in a different class from someone who called themselves a Zoroastrian or Christian. It's still a big blatant mistake, but so long as the person is willing to take strict personal responsibility for their own moral judgments, it's a less urgent matter.

You can call yourself a scientist and disavow association with Newton by standing up and saying, "Newton was wrong, and I know better, because I come from a superior culture." But then you certainly cannot call yourself a Newtonian. Likewise you cannot call yourself a "flat-Earther" and disavow association with the idea that the Earth is flat because you are pursuing the "true essence" of flat-Earthism. You could repudiate all scripture and still call yourself spiritual, but there would still have to be that moment of repudiation, of admitting you were wrong.

Actually, Robin, come to think of it, you may be executing an inappropriate shift between levels of abstraction.

Science is not the same as a particular scientific theory. Any particular scientific theory is subject to the Bayes-law, the rules of evidence, and may be destroyed by contrary evidence; any particular scientific theory is disprovable. This is what people mean when they say "Science is falsifiable." They're referring to every particular instance of science, not the abstract category Science. Red is a color, blood is red, blood is not a color.

When someone says "I am a scientist", they (should) mean that they identify with the rules of evidence, not with any particular theory. You can disavow past specific scientific theories, and still remain a scientist, so long as you avow the rules of evidence. A lawyer can disavow trial by combat, and still avow justice, but then they cannot call themselves a medievalist.

Similarly, when I talk about "religion's claim to be non-disprovable" I mean the claim that specific religions like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Unitarianism are non-disprovable.

What is the category that includes both the Bhagavad-Gita and the Twelve Virtues of Rationality? I'm not sure there is one. But it certainly isn't the category "religion". Atheism is not a religion. They are both answers, perhaps, albeit answers to different questions using different methods. Maybe the superspace should be called "answerism". Perhaps you could reject Christianity but try to answer the same sort of questions Christianity did using a completely different method, i.e., "How old is the universe?" = "Six thousand years, because it sounds cool" -> "13 billion years, because we went out and looked using telescopes", while still legitimately calling yourself an "answerist". But you would then have rejected religion as a general method of answering; permitting science, democracy, and personal acceptance of responsibility for moral arguments, to answer various questions formerly answered by scripture.

I'm going to focus on one word in your comment: "democracy".

So, you would permit "democracy ... to answer various questions formerly answered by scripture"?

It makes me sad to learn that. I am strongly opposed to the idea that counting votes is a good way of arriving at ordinary or moral truth (unless perhaps one is very picky about whose vote counts).

Of course, that pernicious idea --Majority Rule-- is so prevalent in our world that I would not bother to voice my objection except that you are the leader of a project that if successful will impose on the entire future light cone decisions that will have the same unbendable and irreversible character that physical law now has. This property of irreversibility is quite unique to your project. (There are other project that would impose irreversible conditions, namely sterilization of the biosphere, if they fail or go wrong, but yours is the only one I know of that would do so if you succeed.)

What makes my agony and my sadness particularly acute is the knowledge that up to the age 19 or so, you wrote about ultimate ends in ways I found completely benign and lovable. I refer of course to documents like TMOLFAQ, which apparently you are now so ashamed of that you have removed it from the web.

Oh how sad it made me to read your Collective Extrapolated Volition document, with its horror of disenfranchisement, plus your speculations about extending the franchise to non-human primates, as if the very contingent, accidental, particular political religion of our times were a universal law of the universe that no rational agent with sufficient time to grow wise could object to!

Oh yeah: nice series of blog entries. Thanks for writing. And know that I know that it is only because your commitment to unambiguous publication of your beliefs that it is possible for me to snipe at you in this way.

Hollerith, read the Old Testament. Scripture used to make the laws. Not just when to bring sacrifices, but the death penalty for kidnapping, how much to pay a man for raping his daughter, that sort of thing. That's the function I was referring to as being taken over by "democracy", which, yes, we all know isn't perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than scripture. If you assumed I meant that democracy could dictate morality, that just goes to show how unconsciously people accept the Big Lie of the Bible being an ethical philosophy.

Richard, I share your concerns, as expressed in past posts to this blog. Great to see someone else (non-anonymously?) expressing them. I have a longer response on my anonymous blog.

I was riffing off of a few words you wrote here to make a point about CEV, about which I have strong feelings. I'll restrict my future comments about CEV and AI to more appropiate forums.

(Are there adults who consider themselves qualified to comment here who have not read the Old Testament as part of their basic education?)

HA slipped in. HA: I will read your blog with great relish.

The earliest account I know of a scientific experiment is, ironically, the story of Elijah and the priests of Baal.

What do you mean by "I know of". Do you mean an account that you have evidence for? If yes, what evidence is that? Or do you mean the earliest recorded? Surely there were early ones recorded. Korach and the 250 men?

. . .I would not bother to voice my objection except that you are the leader of a project that if successful will impose on the entire future light cone decisions that will have the same unbendable and irreversible character that physical law now has.

How exquisite to read something like this in a thread attacking the absurdities of the narratives of religious beliefs. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Matthew, standard reply is at Rapture of the Nerds, Not.

Robin, I've expanded on my objection #5 to your "Why can't they still embrace the true essence?"

I've recently been trying to think of how to explain non-Euclidean geometry (or, what's worse, Cantorian set theory) to ancient Greek mathematicians. Is today's mathematics the same as their mathematics? After all, ancient Greek mathematics made falsifiable claims about actual measurements.

My apology, it's a long post but they are my final thoughts.

Eliezer: "Robin, I would indeed put someone who called themselves a Unitarian in a different class from someone who called themselves a Zoroastrian or Christian. It's still a big blatant mistake, but so long as the person is willing to take strict personal responsibility for their own moral judgments, it's a less urgent matter."

I'm not really clear as to why? Do you not think Unitarian has some affiliation to Zoroastrian or Christianity? Where do you think moral judgements come from? The laws written in any given literature are clear interpretations as to what was going on in that particular time frame, that does not mean they where right or wrong, it means they exist for a reason.

Eliezer, I believe you are a smart, highly inquisitive individual but your expertise does not reach the realm of belief as you clearly demonstrate an ignorance in regards to religion, spirituality, enlightment or such pretense. Please read more thoughts in regards to religion within history, scriptures, books, psalms, philosophy, psychology, etc., before judging the belief of belief. Your video example of the Jesus Camp was an awakening for me as I acknowledged that not all individuals are aware of the science behind religion and in fact, religion may be used as a source of irrationalism. The bias approach you took was in only refering to the "kooks" of religion instead of realizing that there exists many that are religious that don't exhibit that behavior. Within the context of kooks, I understand the need to promote Atheism but that does not mean that Atheists are more rational than the Christians if both have not done the research to understand the possibilities within the religious context.

Anyhow, it's been a pleasure. Thanks Robin (and many fascinating contributors) for creating Overcoming Bias. It might not appear but I have learned a great deal about bias. If your intention was to teach, you are doing a great job. At first, it was hard to grasp the concept but with time i've learned quite a lot.

It's time for me to go as I can't possibly stay and listen to people talk about overcoming bias and yet reply "your not smart enough to undertstand", that kinda contradicts the whole idea.

Without being aware, thanks to the many that have aided in my education.

Take care and I wish you well, Anna

So I take it you don't like Kierkegaard? Humph.

Seriously, though, I wonder to what extent it's really possible to argue people out of religion. And I strongly suspect it's close to zero.

Is the function of a post like this (and Dennett's books on the subject, and everything Dawkins has done in the last N years, etc. etc.) less to persuade and more to -- well -- call it argument as attire? By hammering out yet another strong argument about the overwhelming dumbness of religion, you, and Dennett, and Dawkins (and sometimes I) self-identify as a member of the atheist-intellectual-sciencenerd tribe.

A peripheral correction:

They found out that, during the supposed time of the Exodus from Egypt, Egypt ruled Canaan. The tribes would have fled to find Pharaoh's armies already at the destination.

When Egypt ruled Canaan, it was through vassal kings and not with large garrisons (although there were occasional Egyptian governors and forts). Egyptian rule was weak, partial, and often broke down completely: There were kings opposed to Egypt, the vassals were not always loyal, and all kings were under attack from each other and from nomads. Some of these nomads may even be connected by name to the "Hebrews." It is not clear that Egypt would have truly "ruled" Canaan at certain dates which could be suggested for the Exodus.

None of this says that the precise Biblical story is true, nor damage your argument significantly, but the historical record does not suggest that flight from Egypt to Canaan would be quite so absurd as suggested here.

Paul, since "rationality" for many people is a function of what they think they can get away with, I think there is winnable territory in terms of making belief in a scriptural religion - Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Scientology, etc. - socially less acceptable within the science/engineering community. If people know that saying "I believe in this 2,500-year-old culture dump" will be met by people saying, out loud or silently, "How incredibly stupid", they will be more reluctant to do it. One small step toward waking up out of the long nightmare. If people are not socially expected to think, they will not think.

Joshua, thanks, fixed.

Eliezer, are you intentionaly ignoring my comment posted @ August 04, 2007 at10:58 PM ?

This involves the issue of whether religion, or the claims of religion are an emperical matter. I would certainly say that the claims of religion are. The Tanach is full of references of how there are pillars upholding the Earth and a vault of heaven making the "firmament." Adonia opens portals in this vault to let the waters pour forth and Hoah flood take place. Of course we do understand things better. NASA has no problem of rockets running into some sort of dome.

Cosmology and quantum gravity are pointing to how the occurrence of the universe is a quantum tunnelling process (Heisenberg uncertainty etc) and if so the origin of the universe is random and spontaneous. In fact the totality of mass-energy in the universe may be zero. Thus nothing in total was created. What we call existence are local deviations away from the vacuum state. Is a God needed in this? I don't think so.

Of course there is biological evolution as well. Creationists might cite our ignorance on the origin of life, but that is simply an unanswered question. If Galileo and Kepler had shrugged their shoulders and said that God must organize the planets we'd still think angels push the planets around.

I think there is no God. I don't know that there is no God, nor do I believe there is no God. There simply are no credible reasons or empirical evidence that suggests even remotely that God exists.

The empirical impact on religion has been brutal since the time of Copernicus. Religion has consistently lost its intellectual authority over the last 400 years. The last major defeat it suffered came from Darwin, and quantum cosmology will doubtless deliver the next damaging blow.

It is hard to know how to comment about ethics. I tend to think that ethical systems die after they both lose their intellectual basis, and in the wake of many dead bodies having been stacked up because of that ethical principle. Margaret Atwood's "Handmaid's Tale" is a stark look at a future theocratic America. And some of these fundy types are pushing for things similar to this. If something of this nature takes place, religion will fade into the night once the regime has been swept away or imploded under its own weight.

Until such time the "essence" of religion, eg Jesus gift of salvation etc, will persist. Other people will do what I call shave the point to persist in creationist arguments. The claims of religion can be falsified, and in turn credible reason for the existence of a God removed. But believers always ressurect psuedo-empirical evidence for religion. It is like shooting ducks in a shooting gallery: You can shoot them down, but the damned things keep popping back up.

Lawrence B. Crowell

Robin asked "If lawyers and academics can disavow these ancient practices, while still embracing a true essence of law or academia, why can't religious folks disavow ancient religious practice in favor of some true essence that makes sense in modern terms?"

In "Retreat To Commitment", Bartley described the (at the time) very large and very powerful group of liberal Protestants who did so disavow ancient views, and look what it got them: demographic replacement by the faithful, by the Evangelists. It only looks like religious folks are different. In truth, after a while we no longer see many folks representing those newer, weaker memes. Isn't it just normal evolution?

I suspect that the origin of religion is deep in our evolution. Stories about spirits and totems of a landscape may well have their basis in the evolution of our linguistic ability. These "nature religions" are ways that information about an environment are communicated from generation to generation. This can be argued to have a survival benefit and something that is selected for. It has been with more recent development of complex social structures (towns, agriculture, empires etc) that these nature spirits became compressed into larger gods and eventually into God, or various notions of that concept.

If we are to use the meme idea of how such ideas persist, we need to not just consider the internal consistency of their logic (eg seen in mathematics, physics etc), or their empirical validation, but their psychological compulsive nature as well. Mathematics and science have elements of such compulsion, but at the end of the day reason triumphs over what might be called wishful thinking (compulsion). This compulsion may have its basis in our neocortical evolution. There just may be neural circuitry that needs to be fed mystical stimulus, and some people seem to need more of this stimulus than others.

Religion is purely psychological, and that people can continue to raise falsified notions of creationism illustrates their unwillingness to abandon something of a compulsive nature. The alcoholic in so called denial might come to mind. Creationism has become a political topic --- if they can't win in the science arena they will try in the halls of power.

I suspect that monotheistic religion will be around for a while. The vast and rapidly growing populations in the underdeveloped world are ample soil for the sewing of theological seeds, to invoke the parable in Matthew's Gospel. OTOH, such Protestant efforts to teach these people reading, of course to read the Bible, will mean that some will end up reading Darwin or Stephen Hawking.

Lawrence B. Crowell

Now what we have really got to hammer into the heads of all these people, somehow, is that a thinking man can think himself deeper and deeper into Catholicism, and not deeper and deeper into difficulties about Catholicism. We have got to make them see that conversion is the beginning of an active, fruitful, progressive and even adventurous life of the intellect. For THAT is the thing that they cannot at present bring themselves to believe. They honestly say to themselves: "What can he be thinking about, if he is not thinking about the Mistakes of Moses, as discovered by Mr. Miggles of Pudsey, or boldly defying all the terrors of the Inquisition which existed two hundred years ago in Spain?" We have got to explain somehow that the great mysteries like the Blessed Trinity or the Blessed Sacrament are the starting-points for trains of thought far more stimulating, subtle and even individual, compared with which all that sceptical scratching is as thin, shallow and dusty as a nasty piece of scandalmongering in a New England village.

Thus, to accept the Logos as a truth is to be in the atmosphere of the absolute, not only with St. John the Evangelist, but with Plato and all the great mystics of the world. To accept the Logos as a "text" or an "interpolation" or a "development" or a dead word in a dead document, only used to give in rapid succession about six different dates to that document, is to be altogether on a lower plane of human life; to be squabbling and scratching for a merely negative success; even if it really were a success.

To exalt the Mass is to enter into a magnificent world of metaphysical ideas, illuminating all the relations of matter and mind, of flesh and spirit, of the most impersonal abstractions as well as the most personal affections. To set out to belittle and minimise the Mass, by talking ephemeral back-chat about what it had in common with Mithras or the Mysteries, is to be in altogether a more petty and pedantic mood; not only lower than Catholicism but lower even than Mithraism

Nope, this is not my cup of tea! I find far greater intellectual insight in working with modular forms, Jacobi theta-functions and algebraic or projective varieties. Applying these to understanding quantum codes makes them even more interesting.

I find religious services maybe only a bit more interesting than scrubbing the water marks off the bathroom and kitchen sinks and fixtures.

Lawrence B. Crowell

Eliezer, you shouldn't have chased Anna away.

David, I've dealt with her before.

Ed, I mean that no earlier example came to mind off the top of my head. Korach doesn't include a symmetric experiment with an experimental and control group, etc. But I didn't exactly search exhaustively.

Eliezer: David, I've dealt with her before.

That's news to me. We've never dealt anything. You haven't ever questioned anything, you already presumed.

Take care Eliezer;) Anna

I always marvel that religions which were empire-forming ideologies, historically late arrivals, whose common foundations are very much this-worldly, continue to charm otherwise intelligent people.

Zarathustra, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, each presents a silly moralistic cosmic dualism (Good/Evil, God/Devil, religious/secular, permanent/transitory). Ahura Mazda, Yahweh, God, and Allah are ethical equivalents of comic book super-villains.

And this pulp fiction enjoys fanatical cult followings.

Eliezer, your overgeneralized claims about religion are untrue. I expect more of a post in a forum dedicated to overcoming bias and seeking truth.

Sure, there are plenty of Biblical literalists in the world. But that's just one variety of religion. It's not what religion IS. Buddhists, Unitarians, Reform Jews, liberal Protestants, and many other self-identified religious people would object strenuously to your characterization of religion. Unitarians, liberal Christians and Jews treat the Bible as God-inspired allegory, to be understood in the historical context of the people who transmitted it orally and wrote it down. They do not view it as literal truth. Buddhism, one of the world's largest religions, makes no scientific claims and doesn't have any holy scriptures. Regarding your statements to the effect that religion is incompatible with tolerance of homosexuality, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (the Reform Jewish rabbinical organization) has officially supported gay marriage since 2000, and ordains gays and lesbians as rabbis. I could go on, but I rest my case.

Well, one aspect of this that I find amusing in a mildly infuriating way is the common sort of understanding of "atheism" that seems to be largely based on a rejection of what someone learned in their fifth grade Sunday School classes. Kathryn above makes exactly this point (although I'd claim that Buddhism makes specifically scientific claims: that following certain practices based on a certain understanding of the Nature of Things, leads to greater peace of mind and less suffering.) But then she nails it by noting that the claim that "religion" is invariably incompatible with tolerance of homosexuality is simply untrue, even among adherents of a religion in the Abrahamic tradition.

Just yesterday I was reading a well-recommended apologia that similarly claimed "religion" was incompatible with finding meaning in life from a sense of immanence, as opposed to transcendence. It wasn't bad as an argument, but it depended on a statement of the meaning of "religion" that defined it in terms of transcendence, thereby excluding the various monist, animist, and pantheist traditions from American Indian religion to Shinto and Hinduism. One might charitably ascribe the circularity of argument to ignorance, instead of intellectual dishonesty, but either way it's fatally flawed.

In any case, though, the underlying question appears to be either (1) can a literal interpretation of the claims of Old Testament miracles and cosmogony be seen as consistent with current scientific knowledge, or (2) is religious "knowledge" compatible, commesurable, with scientific "knowledge" in any way, or are they so different as to form completely distinct and separate magisteria?

The answer to (1) is, pretty clearly, mostly no. Why mostly? Because there are logically sustainable interpretations that could be "true" --- they're just ones that completely undercut the scientific mode of thought --- like the notion that Deity would create the world in seven days, 6014 years ago, with built in fossils, pre-created illusions of distant galaxies, etc, so that the universe would be in all ways indistinguishable from one that around in a Big Bang tens of billions of years in the past. But that leads directly to the conclusion that the answer to (2) must be "yes", by a Gödelian argument. A Superior Being who could do (1) --- which is inescapably true of any God capable of doing the Old Testament thing --- must also, inescapably, be able to construct a universe in which any experimental verification of Its existence would be answered "no", if that is Its wish. Similarly, such a Superior Being must be capable of constructing the universe in such a way that any attempted falsification of Its existence would fail.

But then, if A can neither be falsified by experiment, nor can its converse be falsified, it's simply outside of the domain of "scientific" knowledge; it cannot be evaluated in scientific terms. Which is to say, it's a separate magisterium. (Notice that this doesn't say any statement in that separate magisterium is true. It's just part of a different system.)

TGGP:

Presumably you think that the statement, "X is a truth only if falsifiable" is true. Is this statement falsifiable?

It isn't falsifiable on empirical grounds. It might be falsiable on a priori grounds, though I bet that's not what you have in mind. If you admit of a priori grounds, though, you've opened the door back up for ethics despite it not being empirically testable.

"X is a truth only if falsifiable" can be a useful rule of thumb rather than a statement that is true or false.

Eliezar, something of a 'rant' ? 'the people who invented the Old Testament stories could make up pretty much anything they liked'.... overlooking that we're talking about oral traditions committed to writing centuries later. Of course the domain covered by the books of the old testament covers law, social customs, and a whole bunch of stuff which is now the domain of other institutions. Of course ideas have moved on in most of those domains. I'd be more interested in reading your ideas about why the fears, insecurities, and identitiy issues so many of us face in an age of increasing change and complexity are leading to a 'back to the 17thC', 'back to the womb' type increase in clinging to both 'believing' and 'believing in' this particular dragon in the garage. This is not just a US phenomenon, we're seeing it in the UK also. Derision won't help, nor, most certainly, will logical argument.

But then, if A can neither be falsified by experiment, nor can its converse be falsified, it's simply outside of the domain of "scientific" knowledge; it cannot be evaluated in scientific terms. Which is to say, it's a separate magisterium. (Notice that this doesn't say any statement in that separate magisterium is true. It's just part of a different system.)

No, it's entirely unreal. This 'superior being' would have created an entire timeline in which it did not intervene, because it erased any influence it had over events from that timeline, so from any perspective within the timeline, an observer could only conclude that the being did not exist.

If it were impossible even in theory to detect this being from within the timeline, then the being wouldn't be in the same universe as the events in that timeline, and wouldn't actually exist.

@ Paul Gowder:

"I wonder to what extent it's really possible to argue people out of religion. And I strongly suspect it's close to zero."

I was argued of religion. An epistemic argument is what did it -- the "God" I "believed in" turned out to be a nearly meaningless concept.

J, I generally treat non-falsifiable statements as basically being meaningless in an objective sense but possibly revealing something about the speaker. Your statement about true statements was somewhat like a definition, and it is pointless to try to falsify a definition, they merely permit people to discuss something using the same term.

Eliezar,

Thanks for a thought-provoking post. I do, however, have some criticisms:

1) Not to be snarky, but you obviously aren't talking about "religion." You are discussing Christianity. Clearly you cannot disprove Hindu on the basis of disproving the Old Testament (if you had disproven the Old Testament, which I don't believe you have).

2) You mention Christ once: to call his miracle into question. Other than that, He is a footnote. Everything necessary for salvation, however, from a Christian perspective, is contained in the New Testament. Should we discard the Old? No. But historical accounts unchallenging to modern sensibilities were no more the intention of Old Testament writers than was "Origin of the Species" intended to be a religious text. If you wish to disprove Christianity, you would probably do better to start with the life and claims of Jesus Christ. If you merely wish to introduce the possibility of doubt into the conversation, I doubt any thinking Christian would argue with you.

3) You mention twice that the Old Testament doesn't display a sense of wonder at the complexity of the universe. Consider if you will Yahweh's address to Job at the end of the book. How does your assertion stand up to that text?

4)There are some category-confusion errors evident here. For instance, you mention the ethical problem of "slaughtering...innocent...male children," as though the Israelites themselves did the slaughtering. This is a theological, and not an ethical question. If you propose to discuss theology, how do you propose to do so? As a cultural construct? There are some thorny problems built into judging the actions of a God that you also deny exists.

5)The sense of your post seems to be that if some portions of the Old Testament can be falsified or called into question, then Christianity (or, as you euphemistically put it, "religion") can be disproven. You are applying to the scientific method to historical/cultural accounts of the world; something rarely done. But fine. My challenge to you is this: can you quantify the exact criteria that the biblical account would have to meet in order to be falsifiable?

You reference in this post a link to another post, in which the authors of this (fascinating) site admit to failing their own test of bias. They note that, like Christians, they strive for an unbiased view of the world, while occasionally failing in their own lives. The principle (a theoretical lack of bias) is therefore not abandoned despite evidence to the contrary.

Could the same courtesy not be extended to religious adherents?

Regards,

DB

Apologies; in point 5 I said you referenced the following link. You did not in this post. However, it does exist on this site: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/08/we-are-not-unba.html

DB, what makes you think Eliezer is talking only about Christianity and not equally about Orthodox Judaism? (Hint: look at his name, or his past postings here.) In fact, how can it make sense to say (1) he's definitely talking specifically about Christianity even though (2) he says "religion" instead and (3) Jesus is only a footnote?

I think you're clearly right that there's some sense of the wonder of the universe in YHWH's speech to Job, and also in (e.g.) Psalm 19. But I don't think Eliezer's point is much dented by this: he's saying that although some religious folks now like to say that religion is all about the awe and wonder and beauty of the universe, those weren't major themes until recent times. Look even at those two passages, which I think are about the best the Bible has to offer in this department. In Job the awe-and-wonder-and-beauty is strictly subordinated to the real job at hand, which is reminding Job of how much bigger and cleverer and stronger God is than him, so he should just shut up, OK? (Job does just shut up, and repents in dust and ashes for daring to question the Almighty, which when you consider what the Almighty has done even on the book's own terms seems rather beyond the call of duty. But I digress.) In Psalm 19, again the real point of all the stuff about natural beauty is to make a point (though a more congenial one to most of us these days) about the relationship between God and us; and the best way the Psalmist can find to follow up his musings on stars and sun is to say (so far as I can make out) "hmm, now, what else is like the stars and the sun? Ah yes, I know -- the Law!" The Law, with its magnificent provision for rape victims to marry their rapists. The Law, with its beautiful declaration that people whose genitals have been damaged are to be excluded from the congregation. Slender pickings here for anyone who would claim that religion is all about awe and wonder at the created world.

I don't understand what category error you think Eliezer is committing when he declares himself unimpressed at God's alleged slaughter of all firstborn Egyptian males. And there are no thorny problems built into judging the alleged actions of a god whose existence you deny; the argument just goes like this: "If your religion is correct, then a perfectly good being did this and that and the other, and those things are obviously not good. Therefore, I reject your religion as ethically unfit for decent human beings". Of course it's open to you to argue that actually slaughtering thousands of innocent children is a good thing when YHWH does it, but it's not an easy argument to make with a straight face.

I don't think Eliezer says that if some bits of the OT can be called into question then Christianity is refuted. He says that a whole lot of the OT (and the NT), taken as it was originally intended and continued to be interpreted for centuries, has been shown to be almost certainly wrong. Not quite the same thing.

If "the principle" behind this site were that (say) Eliezer is, in fact, unbiased, then it would deserve to be abandoned on presentation of weighty evidence to the contrary. But it isn't; it's that reducing how biased we are is usually a good idea, and the fact that all the principals here admit that they have biases is no evidence at all against that. What courtesy, exactly, are you saying should be extended to religious adherents?

G,

Sure, he could be talking about Orthodox Judaism. But even if that is taken in conjunction with Christianity, it hardly comprises "religion." But if his intention is merely to show a test case, I concede the point.

I can't help feeling that these "awe and wonder" religionists are straw men. Awe and wonder, from a Christian perspective anyway, are only part of what is offered in scripture.

It's a categorical error because it assumes an equivalent relationship between God and people. (It also ignores the context of the occurence, but that's another issue) We aren't always to do as God does. That's the difference between ethics and theology. Another question is, why should this occurence be singled out as factual when the rest of the OT is taken as suspect?

How do we know how the OT was originally intended? What specific things have been misinterpreted for centuries?

The parallel that I'm making is between one (apparently unproven) principle: people can be unbiased, or at least that bias can be reduced, and another (apparently unproven) principle: the biblical account could be true. If we say that certain evidence (people have been unable to eliminate bias in themselves) doesn't disprove the first principle (lack of bias is achievable), then we might extrapolate that some evidence (there are archeological and theological difficulties in the OT) doesn't disprove the second.

I'm left in 'awe and wonder' at the literalism of the debates going on here. The OT is a bunch of mythology and folklore, so, what else is new ? The NT is a heterogenous collection of Roman imperial propaganda, Jewish apocalyptic propaganda, and perhaps, some vague recollections of what a good man once said. So ? What does any of that have to do with logical categories ? Eliezar is guilty, as Anna pointed out, of mixing up the crudest OT literalism with any and every other level of religious experience and expression. I understand that, he was traumatised at age 5. Perhaps that also explains the violence of his reaction to Anna. The only interesting debate on the 'singulsrity' of religion is exactly the same debate as that on the 'singularity' of consciousness. Either there is a 'watcher', in the void, behind all thought and image, which constitutes the irreducible core of my consciousness , as for instance Daniel Dennett would not agree, or there is not. If there is, then there is a basis for religion. If there is not, then there is a basis for saying that we will never know final causes nor final intents, and what the hell.

Chris,

Do I understand, then, that you reject the possibility of revelational knowledge of the divine?

DB

Yeah, perhaps they're straw men. There seems to be a bit of a shortage of non-straw defenders of (serious) religion, though. I mean, there are the fundamentalists and the young-earthers and such -- I'm focusing on Christianity because that's the religion I know best; maybe things are different with other religions -- who are (sometimes) clear and (usually) forceful but also obviously wrong. And there are the woolly liberal types who mostly refrain from saying anything too testable.

Unless a religion is simply going to degenerate into power-worship, you can't just say "no fair applying ethical standards to God". If you believe in a god whose behaviour fits my notions of psychopathic evil, then I'm not going to be interested in worshipping him, and I decline to regard that as a cognitive failing. (Of course some actions might be almost always wrong when done by humans but sometimes right when done by God. But that's an argument that actually needs making in each case. For that matter, some actions might be almost always wrong when done by you but sometimes right when done by me, but if I murder your spouse or smash your house with a wrecking ball then you're going to insist on some actual evidence before believing that I had mysterious sufficient reasons.)

Why single that episode out as factual? Well, firstly I'm not sure anyone is doing. Factual or not, the story is presumably there for a reason and is meant to be taken seriously one way or another. Secondly, there's the little fact of its being the story behind possibly the single most important of all Jewish religious festivals, and one of the founding myths of the Jewish people, and also something appropriated in a big way (albeit metaphorically) by Christianity. So if what's at the centre of the story is an act of atrocious evil by the supposedly good God who's the hero of the story, it seems like that might be worth noticing.

(And, really. What a story. God visits all these horrors (culminating in the death of every firstborn) on the Egyptians, most of whom didn't have anything to do with the Israelites' woes. Why does he have to do these things? Because nasty mean Pharaoh won't Let My People Go. And why won't he? Well, er, because "God hardened Pharaoh's heart". Splendid. What a fine moral example for us all.)

I don't know what evidence Eliezer has for how the Bible (the OT in particular) used to be used.

Your last paragraph is puzzling. If the alleged principle is that "people can be unbiased" then the response is that no one at all is claiming any such thing, so it doesn't seem like making that parallel with "the biblical account could be true" is any use to you. But if it's that "bias can be reduced" then you've offered no evidence against it, whereas there is in fact ample evidence that "the Biblical account" is not true.

And it's not a matter of proof, but of evidence; not a matter of possibility (as in "the biblical account could be true") but of probability. You appear to be offering an argument that something can be possible even though there's a bit of evidence against it. Well, yes, obviously, but Eliezer isn't saying (and neither am I) that Orthodox Judaism or not-outrageously-liberal Christianity is impossible because there's some evidence against it; but that it's very improbable because there's lots of evidence against it.

Hi DB, no I don't. I 'believe' in its improbability, if you're talking voices out of a burning bush. On the other hand, I would look for some commonality in the revelations to different peoples at different times. I would, for instance, strongly reject the notion of a chosen people, or a chosen time, for such revelation. I would also be very wary of any categorisation of the notion 'divine'. Different levels of consciousness, yes. 'God Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth', perhaps a little too simplistic. Final cause ? The 'divine revelation' as understood by Hindu Yogis tempts me more than any other.

G,

I don't propose to defend Exodus 11. It's a difficult passage from within a theological framework (which I'm sure you recall), but even more difficult when taken in isolation from the whole counsel of scripture. I struggle with it myself, and I suspect I'm meant to do so. But I do have to insist that we either differentiate between ethics and theology, or admit up front that there is a commitment to assuming God is made in man's image, and not the other way around.

I fear that in my zeal, I may have drifted into waters I didn't intend to swim in. Eliezer's point is that religion can be disproven. How does he prove it can be disproven? By showing aspects of a particular religion(s) that are disprovable.

Do I agree that religion can be disproven? Sure, some of it. It really depends on what we count as religion. What I really found myself reacting strongly to was the paragraph that begins

Back in the old days, people actually believed their religions instead of just believing in them.

Perhaps I did violence to his thought, but my point is that all of us, I think, believe in things (believe them despite contrary evidence). (I understand that he may have meant that people believe despite a sense of the futility of belief. To me, this is not belief. Doubt is not the same as despair. If there is no content to the belief, and no content believed, then it is nothing but superstition and lies) To me, the idea of reducing bias smacks of an anxious, pre-Kuhnian rationalism--a return to Platonic ideal. Ironically, as a Christian, I found myself occupying Sophistic territory. To reduce bias is actually to substitute one bias for another. For instance, we might reduce the bias we find in interpreting things through a Christian lens by substituting the bias of a scientific, rationalistic lens (which aspires to a non-lens, but is a lens nonetheless).

My goal is not to prove Christianity here, but to express doubt at the idea that it is disprovable merely by these machinations.

Chris,

I'm intrigued by your comment about the bible being folklore, and especially that the NT is propaganda. I suppose if we take Jesus to be a Jewish revolutionary, I could see the Jewish apocalyptic propaganda, but where do you find the Roman imperialist propaganda?

Best,

DB

DB, I think you're making a false dichotomy, and I don't see how your position avoids your religion degenerating into power-worship or something equally unpalatable. Why do you worship and serve God? Because he's good? Bzzt, nope, because you've made "good" completely content-free when predicated of God. Because he's big and powerful and created the world? Power-worship. (Would you worship the devil if he were more powerful than God?) Because he's saved you from your sins? Mere self-interest. (If the devil could make an even better offer -- save you from your sins and provide you with a billion dollars, or whatever -- would you worship him instead?)

Also: If you don't trust your notion of goodness to tell you whether or not God would engage in genocide or mass murder on a feeble pretext, why do you trust it to tell you whether or not he'd supply you with deliberately deceiving scriptures, traditions, revelations, etc.?

I can't speak for Eliezer, but I expect he'd agree with me on this: yes, sure, there are religions that can't be disproven, or even have strong evidence offered against them. (Or for them.) I think he's saying only (1) that it's not true that religion as such somehow doesn't interact with evidence in such a way as to be disprovable, and (2) that some religions with a great many adherents saying that they can't be disproved are -- to be as generous as possible -- the descendants of religions that were disprovable, and it sure looks as if the adjustments that may have made them non-disprovable were made in direct response to the appearance of credible threats of actual disproof.

(Of course "disproof" in that paragraph is shorthand for "being rendered very improbable by weighty contrary evidence".)

Of course all of us believe some things despite being aware of what ought to be sufficient contrary evidence. Put a little differently: all of us are irrational sometimes. That undisputed fact doesn't tell us anything about whether it's ever right to believe things despite a heavy preponderance of contrary evidence, or when it is if so.

If you find the idea of trying to become more rational and less biased "anxious" and outmoded and otherwise disagreeable: well, fine, that's up to you. I've suggested before (in conversation with someone else) that maybe there should be a site at www.embracingbias.com for those who take that view. But then, what are you doing here? :-)

I think "Christianity" is too vague a term to denote something disprovable (or provable). But, again being as generous as possible, some varieties of Christianity do make statements about the world that could be supported or undermined by evidence, and typically it turns out that it's the latter. And these aren't freaky culty fringe versions of Christianity, but perfectly mainstream versions -- except that in some circles nowadays what's considered mainstream is something that would have been considered majorly blasphemous to just about any serious Christian from the start of Christianity through to a couple of centuries ago at the latest.

Of course that needn't bother you; plenty of things that are widely and solidly known now would have astonished the scientists of a couple of centuries ago, and that doesn't discredit science. The difference is that Christianity, or any other revealed religion, is backward-looking in a way that (for instance) science isn't. Unless you reckon that God has revealed everything to you directly, whatever reasons you have for believing in Christianity rather than (say) some sort of vague deism or something vaguely Christian but lavishly heretical have to go via the beliefs of the church through the ages, or the Bible, or some other thing that establishes continuity with the ancient Christian tradition. And that is somewhat discredited if it turns out that until very recently almost all Christians believed (as part of their religion) a bunch of false things.

DB, all I can or will say about the Bible being folklore is that to the best of my knowledge it occupies a similar position in the literary history of its culture as, say, the Mahabharata or the Mabinogion or the Kalevala do in theirs. Those more expert than I could comment the Babylonian texts prefiguring the Biblical ones, or the implications of the diversity in the Dead Sea scrolls. An alternative approach is simply to consider the diversity of types of text constituting the OT. Rich and various it is, but most of it has nothing much to do with Divinity (Numbers, Deuteronomy, Judges, Kings, Chronicles....not much transcendence there).
I certainly overstated my case concerning Roman imperial propaganda (late nights ), however, Constantine did have a heavy hand in the selection of the texts that constitute the NT, and it's no accident that a hierarchical, centralised church, with HQs in Rome & Constantinople, was imposed over, for instance the Copt or Irish monastic models, which had the fault of being non-authoritarian.

G,

Thanks for challenging me here. In an effort to avoid insisting too much, and leaning too much on the goodwill of all involved, I'll let that be the last word.

Thanks, Chris.

Best,

DB

OK. (Interesting discussion. Thanks.)

Well said, G. Ordinarily Overcoming Bias frowns on comments this long but this is worth an exception.

I hope the priests of Baal checked that it was indeed water, and not some sort of accelerant.

If you show me the dead body of Jesus Christ, I will give up being a Christian.

Kellen:

What evidence would convince you that something you were shown (e.g. a pile of bones, some dust on a sidewalk, or anything else) were the dead body of Jesus Christ?

Well,

I certianly stumbled into something here. I was actually looking up ojectivity and bias in relation to Accounting. But anyway...

I tend to agree with most of you in that I find it difficult to believe in something I have no proof of. Now, I am not even attempting to say I am an expert in either religion or athiesim, or much of what was discussed here. However, I will relate what I once said in a discussion with someone else.

We fell on the discussion of religion in the abstract. I tend to feel that much of what goes on in the world, i.e. wars, strife, conflict etc. is merely a reflection of our animal tendencies. At the risk of stepping on some toes here, in truth, we are nothing more than evolved mammals. We go to war, or beat up the neighbor for looking at, or sleeping with, our spouse, seek out money and power, because that is in the nature of almost every creature alive on earth today. By that, I mean we go to war or put up fences to "stake out our territory", much as a dog pees on a bush to warn another dog away. Simplified, yes, but you get my meaning. We seek power, because most social animals have a heirarchy of leadership, i.e., leader of the pack. And so on and so forth. The pack would fall apart without social laws and acceptence of the leader. And the pack is necessary to hunt and survive. It all comes back to survival...our evolved sense of ourselves is what leads us to attempt to create or build or discover...and cats are just as curious as we are. This is because learning about our world helps us to survive. We seek medicines to combat deseases, because this ensures the survival of our species. We look for better weapons, better ways to make money, defend ourselves etc., because this also leads back to survival.

The argument I was presented with was fairly simple. It is not all about survival, because if that were the case, it would be too depressing. Huh... So, there must be a purpose to all that we do because we want there to be one? There must be life after death, because otherwise there would be no meaning to all that we do, and that is just too depressing to consider? I might hate that I will face a great deal of debt once I graduate school, but wishing it otherwise does not mean I will be debt free. Wanting meaning in our lives, or a divine purpose to what we do, does not make it true. Once we die, we're dead, and we won't much care about what we did on earth anyway...unless of course you believe in heaven and hell. And I find that theory to be more like the story of the boogey man, told to frighten children into obeying their parents. "You will be eaten by the boogey man if you do not do what I say", is a form of control much on the lines with: "you will go to hell if you do not believe what I say"...and religion is the ultimate form of control. Up to the point when the children or the congregation says "I don't believe you."

In any case, as I said, I am hardly qualified to enter into a deeper debate. I understand that the purpose of this post is to reduce bias. Many religions offer many useful concepts, both in the context of morality and ethics...but morality and ethics also differ from culture to culture and country to country. As do religions....

Thank you for allowing me an opportunity to voice my opinion. I fully expect to be disagreed with.

Ga.

"not one single passage of the Old Testament will you find anyone talking about a transcendent wonder at the complexity of the universe"

Eli, Not sure what you'd consider "the Old testament", but just to be fair to tanakh:

Psalm 8:3-9 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?

On a different note, Bob Aumann explained his religion by "orthogonality" in an interview; not sure if that was in the same sense as you're using it here, but made as much sense as the trinity to me (none).

I quoted Eliezer, along with other experts, on either side of the issue, here:
Can science prove or disprove the existence of God?

Jesus Christ is not about magisterium. The many attributes the author brings forth are made by man, of course they fail. The bible absolutely can override all laws of man, because man makes laws for power and other reasons. No law of Christ breaks any man made laws.

The bible has more errors in it than the words in the entire book. relatively speaking it actually is the most accurate historic text ever written. If the book was declared perfect, everyone would worship the bible and not even read the book. The purpose of Christ and the "gist" of the bible is "relationship", "faith", and "love", not math proofs and equations.

God's intellect is incomprehensible and it is my opinion that we place too much weight upon our level of logical understanding. In fact, i would venture to guess, that what we think is "illogical" is limited by our own intellectual capacity. Our head would explode most likely, especially after Eve ate the apple and inherently made us stupid. [we use less than 90% of our brain]. that is another discussion. i think that tree of knowledge made us stupid not smart. notice the theme of opposites.

Faith is the belief in the unproven, unseen...etc. Faith bridges the gap between our logic and non-logic.

The answer to the validation of Christ's validity requires faith. The enemy "Satan" promotes rationale, logic, and proof to combat Christ. Satan wants everyone to think it is a "red devil" imaginary figure only to marginalize Christ. Satan is the creator of every other "religion" including the word itself. Satan is the ultimate form of deception. Getting you to prove, rationalise, compute, and divert all your energy upon the lesser weighted form of "logic" and not the larger component, "non logic".

that is the game. Satan represents: doubt, confusion, anger, fear, denial, greed, impatience, insecurity, despair, among other things. his "edge" is [patience and human interaction and spurring arguments, hatred.] getting people to bicker as the house burns down.

Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and God [the trinity] represent: truth, peace, clarity, simplicity, love, patience, relationship.

fear is not of God.

the author cannot state the matter cannot be proven or disproven. this is neutral and weak. God says, be either hot or cold, but not in between. this alone presents how weak the argument of this article is.

if one is going to make a statement against God, there needs to be much much more meat on the bone. Our galaxy alone is massive, and we relatively non-existent in terms of size or scope. my guess is our understanding of anything is 1 part logic relative 99,000 parts what we consider illogical.

The vast majority of religions in human history - excepting only those invented extremely recently - tell stories of events that would constitute completely unmistakable evidence if they'd actually happened.

I wish there were a version of this article that discussed religions invented extremely recently.

an atheist argument in support of an almighty god. this is not meant to be a straw argument but rather a (hopefully) rational aspect on the futility of disproving religion and god.
To set out what i currently think i understand about Eliezer's argument, He conceives as god as the programmer. our reality is akin to the matrix and God is they guy who has total control. He can rewind his scenario, review it as a whole, and can basically do anything he wills. With this definition in mind, Eliezer takes roughly two or three methods of disapproval. 1) disapproval by confirmed falsification of observed events. ie: our world is not in fact, riding on four elephants standing on a turtle swimming through the great unknown. (disapproval by photo of earth quite clearly hanging in the darkness of the universe suspiciously absent of turtle) 2) this one i am shakier on his use of, but I would call it disapproval by logical impossibility. ie: questions such as can god create a rock that he cannot lift? or the simple proof by non appearance, if he proves himself through non interference then miracles are proof of his non existence ( I will note that i have heard my first example to be flawed) 3) proof by Ethical observation. Using rationally derived ethics as a prior, we compare those to God's observed actions (ie killing first born sons to make a point) and compare to see where they do not match.

Unfortunately, all of these disproofs (with the exception of the third to a certain degree) are all based on a simple prior that is on shaky ground itself, which is my (hopefully correct) assumption of Eliezer's model of God. I'm not entirely sure at which point all powerful lost its meaning, but I'm relatively sure that from a strict assumption of "all powerful" i would anticipate seeing an entity that is more than capable of bypassing logical impossibility IE: god can preform acts that under Bayesian reasoning come out to more that 100% and on top of that can preform them in our reality without breaking it (yet another case of over 100%). In the end it leads back to the original Descartes questions of doubt, how can we be sure of anything and the answer turns out, we can't. All powerful means all powerful. For a lesser illustration of what i mean, see the flying spaghetti monster, who changes experimental results as they happen so that everything we have ever tried has been systematically falsified to make it look like we live in an ordered and structured universe when we don't.

I found this site through the posts on decoherence and many-worlds; I haven't yet read them all, and look forward to doing so. Also enjoyed the posts on Bayesian rationality.

But I was disappointed by this one. The main reason is that it implicitly reduces all religious phenomena to matters of belief, which I think is a mistake.

To be clear about where I'm coming from: I don't hold any religious beliefs. Nevertheless, I think that much of what goes on in religion is psychologically or sociologically beneficial. And I think that religious language is often misconstrued (by religious and nonreligious people alike) as expressing beliefs, when it actually (or also) functions in other ways. (It expresses certain kinds of attitudes and perspectives.)

Eliezer's main point is to deny that religion can't be disproven. In order to do this, he paints a picture of religion as essentially a set of beliefs. Addressing people like me who want to save some non-epistemic subset of religion, he says "The orthogonality of religion and factual questions is a recent and strictly Western concept." I want to make two points about this.

The first is that even if it's true, it says nothing about the value of modern people pursuing such non-fact-based activities. Explorations of attitudes and global perspectives can be pursued via religious language in much the same way as it is pursued in non-religious art, literature, poetry, etc. Eliezer takes "ethics" as the core of the non-fact-based questions. His argument against religious ethics is that the Bible contains elements that conflict with contemporary ethics, which has "progressed" since the Bible was written. The argument simply ignores the fact that religious ethics also progresses. In other words, Eliezer implicitly focuses on fundamentalist religion; but many modern religious people explicitly treat the Bible as a literary background to rational reflections taking contemporary attitudes and insights into account. Eliezer seems strangely unaware that many modern religious people have fought against slavery, for women's rights, gay rights, etc.

In fact, he seems unaware that such rational revisions of traditional attitudes have been going on for thousands of years--and this leads into my second point: the separation between myth and morality is not something new. The prophets Hosea and Amos explicitly reject mythology when it overshadows morality; they make fun of people who think that animal sacrifices can atone for bad deeds, or that religion essentially depends on anything beyond morality. The book of Deuteronomy contains many revisions of earlier material in Exodus, turning laws from a mythic to an ethical rationale. And the Talmud contains countless examples wherein Biblical morality is reversed, explicitly or implicitly.

So I think Eliezer is doubly wrong about the orthogonality of religion and factual questions.

I clicked on a link in this post to "believing in". I expected to find an acknowledgment of the purely non-epistemic sense that this phrase often carries ("I believe in the right to organize","I believe in myself", "I believe in America"). Instead I found arguments against people who hold factual beliefs without or despite evidence. But I would hypothesize that many people who affirm beliefs without evidence are actually just affirming an attitude which they are used to expressing in the misleading belief-language. For many, "belief in God" expresses solidarity with a particular community and a set of attitudes toward the world and other people.

The main fault I find with Eliezer's analysis is that it appears blind to the literary character of many Biblical texts. He says "The vast majority of religions in human history…tell stories of events that would constitute completely unmistakable evidence if they'd actually happened." But this is also true of literature in general. It in no way implies that authors or readers of the stories take them literally. Anybody who thinks that Ezekiel literally expected bones to rise from graves, or that the author and audience of the story of Balaam's ass took it differently from, say, Aesop's stories, is operating with a deficient view of how stories work.

Final point: Eliezer sets himself against those who posit "wonder" as a basis and/or effect of religious language. He finds no (or very little) wonder in ancient texts. But from a philosophical point of view, I would nominate a different emotion as the essential religious category: gratitude. The most positive attitude toward the world or one's life must contain gratitude, even when what one is grateful for is something as vague as life itself, and even if one posits no metaphysical entity toward which one is grateful. And ancient religion certainly expresses such global gratitude.

Excellent article, I enjoyed it a lot.

One thing bothers me. What the hell are children told to persuade them to belief in a God, anyway? I don't remember what mine told me; I became atheist at the age of like 10 and even that is a very fuzzy memory. Basically I remember that as soon as non-belief became apparent to me as an option, belief has struck me as completely lacking in justification; a big unanswered "why" - all the more annoying because for some reason asking "why" was not considered reasonable among most people I talked to (other children and adults). I have very little memory of myself-as-believer, though I know I was one.

So is there some general data on what parents tell children to persuade them? I imagine it'll prove very silly, but I'm curious.

vERY GOOD, but it does not deal with the greater problem. I can prove beyond any doubt (and disprove whoever claims the opposite), that people need the warm fuzzies they receive from the fundamental aspects of relgion: God, pentitude, heaven/hell, etc. I challenge somebody to invent a type of rationality that satisfies the need for the warm fuzzies when presented to minds that are inherently opposed to derive such from rationality. Then, and only then, will religiosity wither. Otherwise, my dear writer, you are preaching to the choir.

One of the core beliefs of Orthodox Judaism is that God appeared at Mount Sinai and said in a thundering voice, "Yeah, it's all true." From a Bayesian perspective that's some darned unambiguous evidence of a superhumanly powerful entity. (Albeit it doesn't prove that the entity is God per se, or that the entity is benevolent - it could be alien teenagers.)

I think this phrasing, particularly of the parenthetical portion, is a low-level but still present existential risk, because the temptation it creates for teenagers such as myself to actually say in the future "This is your god speaking" to an alien world is enormous. The potential negative consequences this could have on said alien world is astronomically enormous.

I think there's a way to prove god non-existent. We would have to prove that our universe (before the big bang model) is in some other form of 'space' that existed infinitely into the past. If god is 'beyond time and space' like they say, then he's not on our level. Therefore if we can find an infinite 'top' level and prove that he isn't there, then there's no way that god could exist. Something that has no beginning can't have a creator that 'start's it.

Maintenance: The link in the opening sentence no longer exists.

...it could be alien teenagers.

+1 for that imagery alone. I'm still chuckling over that one.

Still, I think that there is a difference between ethics and all the other magisteria that the Christian religion was forced to shed: ethics is prescriptive, not descriptive. Thus, someone could claim, f.ex., "I have the right to keep slaves, my holy book says so, end of story", and you couldn't exactly dispute that (though you could stop him by force, hopefully). By contrast, if he said, "the Earth is flat, my holy book says so, end of story", all you have to do is show him some orbital photos, and you'd dispute his claim.

BTW, there are quite a few religions in the world; Christianity is not the only one. They all make all kinds of wacky claims, but some of them are quite a bit more progressive than Christianity, while others (f.ex. some flavors of Wicca and Buddhism) prescribe no moral/ethical judgements at all.

What happens however, if one simply goes at the very core of monotheism and states "God exists, created the Universe (by Big Bang if you like), from which life arose because he built the laws of physics that way. And he will someday end the universe and create a new one with only the souls he judges good." What part of that can one disprove exactly? I'm not saying it is a valid theory, it isn't exactly because it can't be disproven. I don't know you, but the christians I know don't use the bible as their strict code of ethics and don't believe in creationism. Of course one could substitute "Flying Spaghetti Monster" for "God" in the sentence above, but the fact remains that one can never disprove that a supernatural being exists.

This, for me, means that such an existence is orthogonal to reality, and therefore one might as well ignore it. For others it means, that they might as well believe in it.

There is no better example of bias than religion.

The Creation Myth defies the dogma of "mysterious ways".

I believe the universe has always and will always exist, with merely allowances for matter approaching either 2 or 3 dimensions.

Creation from infinite power to our finite power is mathematically impossible, by definition. Creation from a finite power to lesser finite power could be understood, using scale - like reading a map or envisioning the planet Jupiter. Thus with some future understanding of the "creation", "mysterious ways" lies fall apart.

Also - the so called Great Flood would have created a pressure level at the bottom of the oceans that would have killed pretty much all the life there - which we know to have thrived (and evolved), uninterrupted, for many millions of years.

And - repeatable genetics studies point to the cradle of humanity having existed some 200,000 to 150,000 years ago somewhere around modern day Ethiopia, which is a long ways from the Tigris or Euphrates (the Garden of Eden). What is considered modern man come from an individual with an advantageous mutation for improved speech.

I have many more arguments against religions, but I'd be mostly repeating things on this website and others.

Very helpful. Although, I think a more accurate "something" would be control of who gets into that fanciful country club in the clouds with a perfect view of their "heathen" friends burning like crispy bacon strips. Ethics is already gone, the true core is fear-mongering, manipulation, and salvation. I hope exceptions to this exist but I've never encountered a western religion that didn't threaten, demand obedience, and promise me salvation in return.

In case anyone is confused by the differences between Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Mormonism, I'll pass along this amusing comment:

Think of it like a movie. The Torah is the first one, and the New Testament is the sequel. Then the Qu'ran comes out, and it retcons the last one like it never happened. There's still Jesus, but he's not the main character anymore, and the messiah hasn't shown up yet.

Jews like the first movie but ignored the sequels, Christians think you need to watch the first two but the third movie doesn't count, Moslems think the third one was the best, and Mormons liked the second one so much they started writing fanfiction that doesn't fit with ANY of the series canon.

I fail to understand you. I recall a phrase you often use "What can be disproved by science should be," or something along those lines. But, aren't you just fooling yourself? Unlike the Harry Potter of your stories, the odds of you finding immortality in your lifetime is slim to none (and as you pointed out in the problem of fun, even that would ring false eventually). So tell me, why aren't you in abject despair over your fate? There's nothing you can do, and nothing you do makes a difference. On that premise, wouldn't you reason that it's pointless to even try? Furthermore, you are pushing this belief onto other people. Now, I know, I know, "What can be disproved by science should be," is probably your response. But even if you're not crying yourself to sleep, isn't it likely that someone else is? And if nothing makes a difference in the end, then why are you taking the hope away from these people's lives?

Back in the old days, there was no concept of religion being a separate magisterium. The Old Testament is a stream-of-consciousness culture dump: history, law, moral parables, and yes, models of how the universe works. In not one single passage of the Old Testament will you find anyone talking about a transcendent wonder at the complexity of the universe. But you will find plenty of scientific claims, like the universe being created in six days (which is a metaphor for the Big Bang), or rabbits chewing their cud. (Which is a metaphor for...)

As far as glaring scientific errors regarding rabbits, saying that they chew their cud is relatively mild. At one point, there was a tradition in medieval Japanese folk Buddhism claiming that rabbits were actually birds, that their ears were actually wings (or in some sources, feathers), and that they "flew" by hopping. This was all apparently meant to circumvent dietary restrictions that prohibited eating of mammals but allowed for poultry. As a result of all this, the Japanese language uses the same counter word for both birds and rabbits.

The Old Testament [...] was busy laying down the death penalty for women who wore men's clothing

But Deuteronomy 22:5/Deuteronomy#22) says nothing about the death penalty. It's just an abomination, which presumably means, "You're going to hell, but we won't necessarily stone you."

A better argument would be, "The Old Testament [...] was busy laying down the death penalty for victims of rape."

"If there be a damsel that is a virgin betrothed unto a husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them to death with stones; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbor's wife: so thou shalt put away the evil from the midst of thee." -- Deuteronomy 22:23-24, ASV/Deuteronomy#22)

I guess they thought it unlikely that the girl tried to scream or that she was threatened with immediate violence. And if she's not already engaged (28-29), she is forced to marry her rapist without the possibility of divorce.

The Roman Empire did have libraries. Thus, the New Testament doesn't claim big, showy, large-scale geopolitical miracles as the Old Testament routinely did. Instead the New Testament claims smaller miracles…

Here you are making the claim that Old Testament miracles were bolder and more daring than New Testament ones because the Old Testament writers felt they could get away with a lot more because they knew that their contemporaries lacked the means to verify or discredit their claims. You imply that if not for the fact the Romans were better record keepers, the New Testament would be filled with more outlandish passages about God obliterating whole nations (i.e, Rome) or maybe more Red Sea splitting episodes.

The assumption you are making here is that the New Testament writers were more careful to avoid making easily falsifiable claims because people during their time had the means (libraries and records) to easily discredit them. I agree that people did have the means to discredit the claims of the New Testament writers but I disagree that their claims were any smaller or showy than the claims of the Old Testament writers.

For example, when the Apostle Paul, who wrote at least 1/3 of the New Testament, was addressing King Agrippa, a Pagan King, he spoke of the verifiability of his statements in a positive light.

For the king knows about these matters, and I speak to him also with confidence, since I am persuaded that none of these things escape his notice; for this has not been done in a corner.”—Acts 26:26

One of those things that Paul was telling King Agrippa about was the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is arguably the boldest and most daring claim of the entire scriptures, Old and New Testament. Think about it. It’s a claim that a public figure experienced a very public execution, rose from the dead 3 days after being confirmed dead and ascended to heaven in front of 500 eyewitnesses. Paul spoke this boldly in front of a Pagan King who was very familiar with the events he was talking about and had the resources to verify the facts. By the way, he spoke this while his life was on the line.

There were many eager and motivated enemies of Christianity who had all the means necessary to squelch the outlandish claim of resurrection. The whole Christian faith rests on this miracle of the resurrection of Christ. According to Paul’s own words, Christians are the most pitiful creatures alive if the resurrection did not truly occur (1 Cor. 15:19). Surely, the enemies of the faith wouldn’t have missed any opportunities to discredit the claim that Christ resurrected. If they could, they would have gladly produced the dead body of Christ and ended the whole Christian religion overnight. The New Testament writers also named real places and people in their accounts. Many of these people and places were still around by the time they committed the Gospel accounts to paper. Surely, unbelievers familiar with the events and people involved could have pointed out lies and deceptions before they continued to spread.

In addition, all the disciples suffered dearly, even to the point of the cruelest martyrdom, believing they will one day resurrect physically the same way they saw their Lord resurrect. It makes sense that people will die for something they think is true but have no way of verifying (suicide bombers dying for the promise of 70 virgins in paradise), but it doesn’t make sense for people to die for something they know is a lie invented by themselves (the disciples and the resurrection of their Lord). I wouldn’t put myself or my family at risk of death for the sake of something I fabricated, knowing it isn’t going to gain me guaranteed wealth, fame, or power. This absurd thing is exactly what people imply the New Testament writers were willing to do.

When assessing the eye witness accounts of the New Testament writers it would be unreasonable to not consider that they might have actually just been telling the truth. But I know….that’s just too scary of a thought.

What is the rational response to something like this? Because I still don't know what to think.

http://thedivinemercy.org/message/stfaustina/graces.php

I met Ms. Digan in person, and there's a bit more to the story than is told on the site; the two most important things are that 1) the doctors who examined her were not, as the site implies, Catholic stooges, just normal doctors, most of them atheist; and 2) her son, a very young child at the time, came with her to Poland and stayed behind in the room, and also experienced a healing--he had some sort of degenerative muscular disorder which prevented him from moving unassisted, and when they returned to the hotel he was sitting up, coloring in a coloring book.

Seriously, wtf?

If any God or Gods with relevance to the human condition and actual power exist, probably the very first thing we can tell about them is that they don't want to make themselves known or believed in -- or they could easily make themselves known.

So, conditional to said existence, the majority of the remaining weight of probability is that they prefer to be disbelieved in. So why contradict them? It sounds dangerous to believe in powerful beings when they don't want you to believe in them-- much like trying to uncover a powerful conspiracy that doesn't want you to discover it.

I happen to read this article just now, while this quote from the Dalai Lama is still fresh in my mind:

All the world’s major religions, with their emphasis on love, compassion, patience, tolerance, and forgiveness can and do promote inner values. But the reality of the world today is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate. This is why I am increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether.

(originally published on facebook, so no source but you can look it up easily)

Now I can even less believe the Dalai Lama said that, and the realization came from within the religion institution itself (or at least one the more prevalent ones)

Thank you for writing this. The points you made here help make all of the jumbled thoughts I've had about religion cohere better. A pity that the members of my family who are still religious aren't willing to accept any alternatives to their worldview — I'd enjoy sharing this essay with them. I'll discuss it with those who are more like me, instead.

The link to "Bayesian reasoning" is broken.

Corrected Bayes explanation link: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes/

I recommend that the title is changed to Judaism´s Claim to be Non-Disprovable or something like that. Eliezer can´t just talk and talk about Judaism (I bet he was raised as a jew since he almost always refer to judaism) and then call this article RELIGION´s claim. I know that he is well aware of all kinds of uncommon religions, so I se no reason to be this arrogant.

EDIT: I deserved a downvote here, since EZ also refers to christianity in some respect, even though that is of course not a big thing, since christianity from a historic perspective is a continuation of judaism. So let me update, because my critic is still valid and it is important.

1) Unless you are familiar with every religion in the world, you can´t logically make this claim. I don´t know every religion so I don´t know if it is false or true that all religions claim to be non-disprovable.

2) Even if it is true that all religions claim to be non-disprovable, and all the points in the article are valid, it is still a fatal error to present a hypothesis using only one or two religions as an example. Especially when they are connected to each other. You don´t claim a scientific hypothesis to be true based on just one specific observation, you can´t pick one data and check if it is true and ignore all other data, however likely they are to also confirm the hypothesis. So even if EZ is making perfectly sense, which I assume he is, it is still arrogant and unscientific to write an argumentative article this way.

3) Will this article convince any non-abrahamic religious believer? Will a buddhist see the logic in the article? Will this article help to convince anyone at all, that is not an atheist and therefore already get it? I think that it would surely help to provide examples that can be proved to apply to all religions.

Unless you are familiar with every religion in the world, you can´t logically make this claim. I don´t know every religion so I don´t know if it is false or true that all religions claim to be non-disprovable. I think that it would surely help to provide examples that can be proved to apply to all religions. It would give the article more of the credibility it deserves.

Even if it is true that all religions claim to be non-disprovable, and all the points in the article are valid, it is still a mistake to present this hypothesis using only one or two religions as an example. Especially when they are connected to each other.

(You don´t claim a scientific hypothesis to be true either, based on just one specific observation. You can´t pick one data and check if it is true and ignore all other data, however likely they are to also confirm the hypothesis. So even if Eliezer Yudkowksy is making perfectly sense, which I assume he is, it is still arrogant and unscientific to write an argumentative article this way. If nothing else, it is unnecessary.)

Will this article convince any non-abrahamic religious believer? Will a buddhist see the logic in the article? Will this article help to convince anyone at all, that is not an atheist and therefore already get it?

I've heard the story of Elijah and the Priests of Baal being told as one of the first experimental swindles, rather than the first experiment. It goes something like this: Elijah: Pours 'water' on his pyre. Pyre: Catches on fire Priest of Baal: "Wait was that water or oil? If I pour some of your 'water' on my pyre maybe it will light too..." Elijah: "Put them to death before they can invent repeatability testing."

The water being oil part is so obvious that it reads less like a 'God turned water into fire' story and more like a 'look how dumb those Baal worshipers were, we totally tricked them' story. I've heard it told both ways though.

I really appreciate your argument about the differences between claims made in the old and new testament.

Unfortunately, I generally expect to read rational and thought provoking facts here and was slightly disappointed. There are some facts which simple google searches seem to refute (such as rather large Jewish populations were ever enslaved in Egypt) and arguments that lean on sentiment against practices supposedly endorsed in the Bible which are either not actually endorsed in the Bible (such as slavery which while being a Hebrew practice, is never endorsed by the 'words of God,' which generally seem to indicate God's disappointment with Hebrew behavior). It seemed as if this article was written due to some perceived opportunity to masquerade an emotional anti-religion argument as an informative article about a specific problematic religious apologetic.

That aside, I was truly interested in views on non-disprovable claims. It is just as easy to claim I am living in an artificial reality with randomly generated laws of nature built as a science experiment. Well developed and non-obvious insight regarding such belief could help me map some more territory.

Incidentally something like the defence at the end has actually been used. In 2006, a Northern Irish terrorist called Michael Stone, only just out of prison, was charged with attempted murder after trying to force his way into the Stormont parliament building while armed with a gun and home-made explosives.

It seemed an open and shut case, but in court his defence was that, despite having all the ingredients of an act of terrorism, this wasn’t one at all, but a work of performance art - a mere simulation of an act of terrorism for aesthetic purposes.

As it happens, Stone was indeed quite a noted & talented artist, having taught himself to paint during his previous spell in prison.

Nonetheless judges ruled his testimony to be ‘wholly unbelievable’, and sentenced him to 16 years in jail.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/6193169.stm

One thing I see is that people take the fact that some pieces of their religion are of a nature that can be neither proven nor disproven and assume that that absolves them from having to justify any of it.

Believing in a supernatural master of our universe isn't any more unreasonable than believing we live in a simulation instead of the top-level reality.  Neither supposition can be definitively shown to be true or false without access to an outside view of the universe itself.  That's not something we're likely to accomplish any time soon.

But does that automatically translate into your particular religion correctly ascertaining the will of any such master so strongly that you don't need to justify it somehow?

Insofar as some of the ancient religions were based on a search for the truth they can make reasonable starting points.  But many people take that ancient finger pointing toward the truth and instead of looking toward the shining city in the distance, shouldering their packs, and setting off to continue the journey, they sit down and suck on what's really just a road sign and tell themselves they're "glorying in its Majesty"...

this reminds me of a quote by C. S. Lewis

“Others may have quite a different objection to our proceedings.
They may protest that intellectual discussion can neither build Christianity nor destroy it. They may feel that religion is too sacred to be thus bandied to and fro in public debate, too sacred to be talked of - almost, perhaps, too sacred for anything to be done with it at all. Clearly, the Christian members of the Socratic think differently. They know that intellectual assent is not faith, but they do not believe that religion is only 'what a man does with his solitude'. Or, if it is, then they care nothing for 'religion' and all for Christianity. Christianity is not merely what a man does with his solitude. It is not even what God does with His solitude. It tells of God descending into the coarse publicity of history and there enacting what can - and must - be talked about.”

[EDITED to add: The following was written in response to a comment that has now been deleted -- not, I believe, by its author. The comment took exception to what Eliezer said about moral horrors in the Bible.] 

The problem with biblical ethics isn't that the Bible describes things that we now find morally terrible, it's that it endorses things that we now find morally terrible while claiming (or being claimed) to speak authoritatively for a perfectly good god.

So no one is complaining that the Bible says Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers. They're complaining about things like Exodus 21:7-10 (where God, speaking through Moses, provides instructions on how best to sell your daughter as a sex slave) or 1 Chronicles 13:9-10 (where the Ark of the Covenant is being transported, and the oxen stumble, and some well-meaning chap puts out a hand to steady it -- and God himself strikes him dead for it) or 1 Samuel 15:1-3 (where God, speaking through Samuel, commands an outright genocide of the Amalekites as a punishment for something their ancestors had done) or Deuteronomy 22:28-29 (where God, speaking through Moses, commands that when a man rapes a woman who is neither married nor betrothed, he pays a fine to her father and she becomes his wife). These aren't merely reporting that moral atrocities happened; they are endorsing and even commanding moral atrocities in the name of God.

From which a reasonable person will conclude that one of three things is true. (1) These documents are not in fact providing reliable information about the god they claim to speak of and speak for. (2) The god in question has moral values so different from ours that we should very decidedly not be worshipping that god. Or (3) the god in question has moral values that have changed radically since those documents were written, in something like the same way as humans' values have changed. Of these, #1 seems much the most likely, and there is plenty more evidence for it (e.g., the discrepancies between biblical accounts of historical events and the best information we can find about them from other sources) but any of them would mean that these documents do not give us a trustworthy account of how we ought to live.

I'm a decade and a half late, but I'd like to say thanks for this essay. It was my first exposure to someone else using a principle I now hold pretty dear, which comes out in words similar to "A belief you can't prove is a hallucination"^[1]. I had intuition before, but now I can explain the statement "If you think you can't prove something in any way, you're unjustified in believing it, although it may coincidentally be true".

A side opinion of religion. Religion is not just the old testament, new testament, or kuran. It's more like a phenomenological and narrative-laden way of describing the world. For ex- a group of people who live on an island automatically believe that the world is a piece of land floating on the water, and they are standing under a dome of a blue sheet of the sky, the center of everything. Because that's what their individual and shared experience will be at that moment.

This is not very useful for sending rockets to the moon, but it is very useful to navigate or survive in harsh conditions. It also keeps the history of the people in shared stories. It builds the culture, the food, the clothing, the rituals, etc. Yes, most of what is written in all religious books is factually and scientifically wrong, as you would expect because they didn't have the means of understanding them. But there's some everlasting truth also. It's not written well so it's easy to misinterpret.

The claim that religion is a separate magisterium that can neither be proven nor disproven is a big lie indeed. But it is not the lie of RELIGION per se. Some religious people believe it (perhaps more than in the past) while many others don't. Just as some non-religious people believe it and some don't.

"Not only did religion used to make claims about factual and scientific matters"

This is a typo → did religion use