Religion's Claim to be Non-Disprovable

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

The people of Israel are wavering between Jehovah and Baal, so Elijah announces that he will conduct an experiment to settle it - quite a novel concept in those days!  The priests of Baal will place their bull on an altar, and Elijah will place Jehovah's bull on an altar, but neither will be allowed to start the fire; whichever God is real will call down fire on His sacrifice.  The priests of Baal serve as control group for Elijah - the same wooden fuel, the same bull, and the same priests making invocations, but to a false god.  Then Elijah pours water on his altar - ruining the experimental symmetry, but this was back in the early days - to signify deliberate acceptance of the burden of proof, like needing a 0.05 significance level.  The fire comes down on Elijah's altar, which is the experimental observation. The watching people of Israel shout "The Lord is God!" - peer review.

And then the people haul the 450 priests of Baal down to the river Kishon and slit their throats.  This is stern, but necessary.  You must firmly discard the falsified hypothesis, and do so swiftly, before it can generate excuses to protect itself.  If the priests of Baal are allowed to survive, they will start babbling about how religion is a separate magisterium which can be neither proven nor disproven.

Back in the old days, people actually believed their religions instead of just believing in them.  The biblical archaeologists who went in search of Noah's Ark did not think they were wasting their time; they anticipated they might become famous.  Only after failing to find confirming evidence - and finding disconfirming evidence in its place - did religionists execute what William Bartley called the retreat to commitment, "I believe because I believe."

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 and grasshoppers having four legs.  (Which is a metaphor for...)

Back in the old days, saying the local religion "could not be proven" would have gotten you burned at the stake.  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.)  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.  The orthogonality of religion and factual questions is a recent and strictly Western concept.  The people who wrote the original scriptures didn't even know the difference.

The Roman Empire inherited philosophy from the ancient Greeks; imposed law and order within its provinces; kept bureaucratic records; and enforced religious tolerance.  The New Testament, created during the time of the Roman Empire, bears some traces of modernity as a result. You couldn't invent a story about God completely obliterating the city of Rome (a la Sodom and Gomorrah), because the Roman historians would call you on it, and you couldn't just stone them.

In contrast, the people who invented the Old Testament stories could make up pretty much anything they liked.  Early Egyptologists were genuinely shocked to find no trace whatsoever of Hebrew tribes having ever been in Egypt - they weren't expecting to find a record of the Ten Plagues, but they expected to find something. As it turned out, they did find something.  They found out that, during the supposed time of the Exodus, Egypt ruled much of Canaan.  That's one huge historical error, but if there are no libraries, nobody can call you on it.

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 which nonetheless fit into the same framework of evidence.  A boy falls down and froths at the mouth; the cause is an unclean spirit; an unclean spirit could reasonably be expected to flee from a true prophet, but not to flee from a charlatan; Jesus casts out the unclean spirit; therefore Jesus is a true prophet and not a charlatan. This is perfectly ordinary Bayesian reasoning, if you grant the basic premise that epilepsy is caused by demons (and that the end of an epileptic fit proves the demon fled).

Not only did religion used to make claims about factual and scientific matters, religion used to make claims about everything. Religion laid down a code of law - before legislative bodies; religion laid down history - before historians and archaeologists; religion laid down the sexual morals - before Women's Lib; religion described the forms of government - before constitutions; and religion answered scientific questions from biological taxonomy to the formation of stars.  The Old Testament doesn't talk about a sense of wonder at the complexity of the universe - it was busy laying down the death penalty for women who wore men's clothing, which was solid and satisfying religious content of that era.  The modern concept of religion as purely ethical derives from every other area having been taken over by better institutions.  Ethics is what's left.

Or rather, people think ethics is what's left.  Take a culture dump from 2,500 years ago.  Over time, humanity will progress immensely, and pieces of the ancient culture dump will become ever more glaringly obsolete.  Ethics has not been immune to human progress - for example, we now frown upon such Bible-approved practices as keeping slaves.  Why do people think that ethics is still fair game?

Intrinsically, there's nothing small about the ethical problem with slaughtering thousands of innocent first-born male children to convince an unelected Pharaoh to release slaves who logically could have been teleported out of the country.  It should be more glaring than the comparatively trivial scientific error of saying that grasshoppers have four legs.  And yet, if you say the Earth is flat, people will look at you like you're crazy.  But if you say the Bible is your source of ethics, women will not slap you.  Most people's concept of rationality is determined by what they think they can get away with; they think they can get away with endorsing Bible ethics; and so it only requires a manageable effort of self-deception for them to overlook the Bible's moral problems.  Everyone has agreed not to notice the elephant in the living room, and this state of affairs can sustain itself for a time.

Maybe someday, humanity will advance further, and anyone who endorses the Bible as a source of ethics will be treated the same way as Trent Lott endorsing Strom Thurmond's presidential campaign.  And then it will be said that religion's "true core" has always been genealogy or something.

The idea that religion is a separate magisterium which cannot be proven or disproven is a Big Lie - a lie which is repeated over and over again, so that people will say it without thinking; yet which is, on critical examination, simply false.  It is a wild distortion of how religion happened historically, of how all scriptures present their beliefs, of what children are told to persuade them, and of what the majority of religious people on Earth still believe. You have to admire its sheer brazenness, on a par with Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.  The prosecutor whips out the bloody axe, and the defendant, momentarily shocked, thinks quickly and says:  "But you can't disprove my innocence by mere evidence - it's a separate magisterium!"

And if that doesn't work, grab a piece of paper and scribble yourself a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card.

Comments

[Robin Hanson]

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?

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

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.

[TGGP]

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

[Omkar]

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.

[Hopefully Anonymous]

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.

[Anna]

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

[Riley Gutzeit]

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?

[michael vassar]

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.

[Robin Hanson]

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.

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

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.

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

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.

[Richard Hollerith]

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.

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

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.

[Hopefully Anonymous]

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.

[Richard Hollerith]

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?)

[Richard Hollerith]

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

[ed]

>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?

[Matthew C.]

. . .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.

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

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?"

[Joseph Hertzlinger]

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.

[Anna]

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

[Paul Gowder]

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.

[Joshua Fox]

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.

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

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.

[ed]

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

[Lawrence B. Crowell]

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

[Lee Corbin]

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?

[Lawrence B. Crowell]

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

[G.K. Chesterton, The Thing]

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

[Lawrence B. Crowell]

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

[David J. Balan]

Eliezer, you shouldn't have chased Anna away.

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

David, I've dealt with her before.

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

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.

[Anna]

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

[eye-of-horus]

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.

[Kathryn Laskey]

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.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

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.)

[J.]

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.

[Nick Tarleton]

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

[Chris]

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.

[Caledonian]

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.

[Benquo]

@ 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.

[TGGP]

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.

[DB]

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

[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

[g]

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?

[DB]

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.

[Chris]

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.

[DB]

Chris,

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

DB

[g]

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.