From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Tue Apr 01 2003 - 18:37:50 MST
Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> I did have one friend who was a much greater atheist
> even than me. He was so incredible in his devoutness
> that he claimed God would *never* succeed in convincing
> Spencer of His existence. At every point, Spencer would
> always suppose it to be something he ate, or some other
> source of hallucination.
Given the previous statistical correlation of such subjective experiences
to their corresponding realities, interpreting an apparent miracle as a
hallucination makes sense, unless God provides a consilient explanation
instead of just random miracles. Obviously since I *don't* expect to
hallucinate, ordinarily, God doing random unimaginative miracles *would*
be significant evidence, and the probability of theological propositions
would go up. But it's not enough evidence to promote the probability to
higher than "it was something I ate". Unless, again, there's a consilient
explanation. According to the religious worldview, it's not that my
worldview is exactly right *except* that God exists and nothing else is
changed; my worldview contains other flaws that lead me to think God's
existence is anything less than obvious. So if their worldview is
correct, I am persuadable; it's just that it would take more than the
sensory experience of random miracles. I would also need the other
revised beliefs that tell me to interpret sensory miracles as the actions
of a consiliently existing God, rather than hallucinations or an enclosing
simulation.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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