From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Apr 03 2003 - 15:33:38 MST
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
>> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>>
>>> Samantha Atkins wrote:
>>>
>>>> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> 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.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> But wouldn't your criteria mean that God would have to be a being
>>>> among other beings within the framework of what, to be God, would
>>>> be God's creation? I guess you're safe from theism because this
>>>> looks like a clearly impossible hoop to jump through.
>>>
>>>
>>> Does not follow. God could be the framework, or could be outside the
>>> framework, or whatever it is the theologians insist on. The only
>>> requirement for consilience is that the explanation be consistent.
>>> Physics is consilient with biology, for example, and physics is not a
>>> lifeform among other lifeforms.
>>
>>
>> So what does a purported creator being consistent with the creation
>> look like? Or is that not the criteria you would use?
>
>
> An example of inconsistency is the assertion that God predates all
> physics and existence, yet contains complex dynamic structure, and
This isn't an inconsistency if one understands instead that the gods,
being the foundation of mind, exist before the mind exists, and
therefore were present before the mind started observing. And since
they are the foundation of mind, whenever one tries to create a new
concept, some pre-verbal (usually pre-conscious, but that's a bit
undefined) god is activated to manifest the idea. It removes time from
the centerpoint of consciousness, but then that's consistent with what
the "deep psychologists" have found. "I" is a quite abstract creation,
and can't be an early part of the creation of mind.
> behaves in an anthropomorphic fashion, showing emotions that are the
> signature of sustained natural selection in a game-theoretical context.
Well, this I believe to be a mistake. People always try to make
something unknown into something familiar, so they tell stories that
cause the gods to appear as if they were people, but this doesn't
connect with their reality, and most gnostics of whatever persuasion,
and even most who were only liberal theologicians, would agree with this.
> The simplest explanation for memes containing such assertions is that
> they are the confabulations of storytellers who lacked the scientific
> knowledge and investigative mindset to detect the inconsistencies in
> their own stories, and simply made stuff up that sounded good to them,
> while transparently ridiculous from the view of later centuries. It
> is conceptually possible that despite such storytelling having a clear
> and consilient explanation as fiction, there is nonetheless some even
> simpler explanation under which it is true. But I am not holding my
> breath.
There's the fiction, and then there's the reality. Both exist. But the
reality doesn't look much like the fiction, because the "numenous"
qualities don't translate into the story form at all well, but they are
what makes the visitations significant, not the pedestrian events that
occured.
> Similarly, the successive theological rationalization of such
> confabulations farther and farther away from the original unpalatable
> fictions has produced a great deal of extremely vague spirituality.
> This vague spirituality allows people with moderate levels of
> scientific literacy to deceive themselves without believing things so
> blatantly ridiculous that they would lose their self-respect. But
> such defensive rationalization is not any more likely to be correct,
> nor will the new fictions produced be able to fool anyone with a
> higher level of scientific knowledge or less eagerness to be deceived.
I've certainly run into that. But this isn't evidence that this is all
that exists.
-- -- Charles Hixson Gnu software that is free, The best is yet to be.
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