The Good Bayesian

By definition someone for whom religion or spirituality is intensely personal is going to avoid talking to you about it. The fact that that in all the conversations about religion you have ever had, no-one has declined to participate on those grounds is hardly evidence that these people don't exist.

Hmmm, methinks you are moderately wrong about religious organisations being on the wrong side of 'every' moral issue in American history. You've heard of the Quakers - funny hats, oatmeal, social justice and all that.

I just don't see modern secular churches (ok so maybe you don't have those in the USA yet...) like the Anglicans as a major force for irrationality. When they bump up against science there are a few protests and then they cede ground, and explain any contradictions between scripture and reality by admitting scripture is mostly just stories.

This post feels out of accord with the Virtues. It feels like a debate brief against religion rather than a curious, light, humble, empirical exploration. "On the wrong side of every moral issue in American history"? "Denying the government billions in tax revenue"? This doesn't strike me as the talk of a truthseeker; rather, a polemicist.

Religion is true (vague, but you know what I mean I hope) with a very low odds ratio, perhaps 1-to-100k against? In any case way down in the hazy low probability region where the intuition has a hard time. Call it evidence of -70 to -40 decibels.

Religion net helps the total utility of humans in the present day with a still adverse but much higher odds ratio. I would be reluctant to go as far as -15 decibels.

It seems to me that you are conflating the two numbers.

Your first point about the claim of privacy is good, though.

I agree that the claim that religion is a solitary experience is nonsensical, and that religious organizations have some negative effects on society. However, I don't think it's true that religious organizations do more harm than good. It's probably true that religions do less good than comparable non-religious organizations would, but if you eliminated churches, many of the community service projects and other positive externalities they produce would be lost. Therefore, I have to dispute this claim:

Religious groups waste resources. ... Austin Cline claims that tax-exempt religious organizations own 20-25% of land in the US, denying the government billions in tax revenue.

The number given here is clearly the wrong order of magnitude; I think we would notice if one-fifth of all land in the country was owned by religious organizations! (Austin Cline, doesn't assert it directly, either; instead, he uses the weasel words "It is estimated that", with no source.)

If one wishes to argue that religions are bad because they waste resources, it matters how much they collect in donations, how much of it is put to good use, how much is wasted, and how much it would cost to collect the same amount of money in other ways. While I don't support everything that churches spend money on, I think that on balance they do more good than harm.

Religious pluralism and state-sponsored religions both harm society. Many competing religions contribute to social fragmentation and create useless discord (as opposed to the useful discord of, say, a free market). A single state-sponsored religion inevitably intrudes into citizens' privacy and the political process.

Competing religions may not be good for society, but they do seem to be good for religion. I read a fascinating article once (which I unfortunately cannot locate) which argued that the U.S.'s policy of free religion led to a competitive marketplace of different churches, which functioned as markets do to keep religion responsive to what people want, which kept religiosity strong down to the present day. Whereas in Europe, state religions were stagnant and stultified, and so the people gradually drifted away from them.

Eliezer only said that sacredness is private and individual, not religion.

I tend to AWYC, but this post really sounds like an angry death spiral in several places.

Not sure of where to ask this question, so I might as well ask it here. (Thought of some old entries that may fit better, but I don't know if comments posted there will get noticed.)

I'm writing an essay on why all religion is objectively false. It is basically a summary of some of Eliezer's main themes and reformulates in my words points found in posts like Outside the Laboratory, Burdensome Details, Dark Side Epistemology, and so on. As such, I feel a bit reluctant to post it in its full length here - I feel like I'd be preaching to the choir, and not contributing anything new. On the other hand, it may be useful to newcomers, and getting a certain lesson reformulated in some other fashion is always useful for learning.

So what I'm basically asking is - when it's done, should I post it in LW in its entirety, or should I just post a link? I realize that it doesn't really make that big of a difference which way I do, but for some reason I still felt like I should ask for the general opinion...

Quibble: do you really mean "theodicy"? I think "theology" would fit better.

I left out at least one obvious argument for the benefit of commenters.

Religious extremists blowing things up, killing people and trying to destroy the world in general?

I left out at least one obvious argument for the benefit of commenters.

Insurance?