I have a question, though: According to Bentham, since we live in a world with physical laws, then this counts as proof of God's existence, then wouldn't it also count as proof of God's existence if we (successfully) lived in a world without physical laws (such as akin to Heaven), since how exactly would a world without physical laws actually function without God?
Presumably God could tell us how it would function, no? For instance, telling us that we can use our minds to place a ball or a jar at any location, or using our minds to allow ourselves to teleport ourselves to China and back.
Carrier has a decently sized braindead online following who think he's correct about everything and don't question him. Of course he's going to be hesitant to admit mistakes and backpedal on claims. Common Carrier stuffs.
In regards to the archon abandonment theory, the flaw with it still remains the fact that the archons that were designed were so extraordinarily flawed. Surely God, as an all-powerful and all-knowing being, could have designed flawed but better archons? He must have known ahead of time, for instance, that the archons that he would have produced would have failed to kill Lenin, Trotsky, Hitler, and Stalin, thus producing a whole lot of misery for the world. I don't think that connection-building with archons in the afterlife actually made the miseries of Nazism and Communism worth it. And I certainly wouldn't think that way if I was about to be murdered by Nazis or Communists, when I wouldn't even be sure that archons actually exist!
Also, maybe I missed something that you wrote (it's a very long post), but why would evolution be designed in such a way that produces things like cancer and genetic defects? And why would human reproductive biology sometimes be designed in a way that produces severely suboptimal outcomes, such as with the Magsino twins, who are attached to each other at the face?
BTW, your own existence is proof that your parents *likely* didn't use reliable contraception, but there are no guarantees, because even with a bilateral epididymectomy combined with a radical scrotal vasectomy and a bilateral salpingectomy, there might be at least one contraception failure somewhere in the world. But you're right that we should aim for the likelier options in the absence of more evidence.
Do you think that the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics is true? In other words, that a parallel universe is created for any possible action of ours? So, in one parallel universe, I eat lunch today; in another parallel universe, I don't eat lunch today. At least with such parallel universes, one could understand how every possible being could have come into existence. One's parents could have had sex at different points in time in different universes, et cetera. But still, a challenge with many-worlds remains falsifying it--or proving it.
BTW, I think that the argument is that in this universe--or at least in our observed universes, not in the multiverse as a whole--we have many planets devoid of life and so far only Earth is actually known to have life on it, right? Which I guess makes sense since the more planets there would be, the more likely that we'd get lucky on one of the planets and thus actually get life there.
"The psychophysical harmony argument (read more about it here—it’s a confusing argument) claims that the fact that consciousness pairs harmoniously with the physical—so that, for instance, when you have a desire to move your limbs, your limbs move—is likelier given theism than given naturalism."
But couldn't this simply be explained by evolution? I mean, I could imagine a human's body not responding to their brain/mental signals/desires, but such a configuration would not be evolutionarily advantagenous and should thus be selected out of the gene pool over the generations, no?
>On atheism, it’s pretty likely we’d be in a skeptical scenario. Default atheistic universes produce huge numbers of Boltzmann brains.
It's very difficult to make this argument work. If we *only* conditionalize on the existing laws of physics[1], then maybe you can argue that we're more likely to be Boltzmann brains than ordinary people. But we shouldn't conditionalize on these laws; rather, we should condition on our evidence for such laws being in force, and that evidence is going to include something like the overall reliability of our senses. And conditionalizing on that is obviously going to disfavor us being Boltzmann brains.
[1] AFAIK it's not actually 100% clear how possible Boltzmann brains are on existing physics. Moreover, even if they are possible, there will probably be infinitely many Boltzmann brains who live long lives with reliable sensory faculties (essentially living on worlds that are reincarnations of our own) - they just happen to arise less frequently in an asymptotic sense.
I think they would by default produce consciousness. But God has some clever way to make it so that people aren't probably BB's (e.g. making every particular person such that they're probably not a BB by using a chancy process, having the second coming, or just making BB's not conscious).
But you shouldn't do that; you should hold our evidence for the law structure in the background. And doing this will screen off naturalism from theism (or whatever) with respect to Boltzmann brains.
If our evidence E for our preferred theory of physics T includes the overall reliability of our senses, then E&T will predict that we're not Boltzmann brains regardless of whether naturalism is true or not, just like E alone will. Adding the physical theory that our evidence is evidence *for* isn't going to change anything.
(That said, you should never strictly speaking be conditionalizing on T at all, as it isn't truly part of our evidence. But in most practical contexts - which may not include this one! - T may be so close to being certain given our true evidence E that we can idealize things away and pretend we're conditionalizing on T and treat it as if it were one part of our background knowledge. But the rest of our genuine background knowledge E never gets thrown away.)
I have a question for you: Since we live in a world with physical laws and, according to you, this counts as proof of God's existence, then wouldn't it also count as proof of God's existence if we (successfully) lived in a world without physical laws (such as akin to Heaven), since how exactly would a world without physical laws actually function without God?
“Also, notably, I didn’t rate any of these [cosmological] arguments very highly” Okay, but my criticism of your Kalam rating would be that you presented WLC's version that uses A-theory, "begins to exist," that everything that begins to exist has a cause, that actual infinites are impossible, etc. These are controversial premises. I don't know why WLC continues to use them. Probably because he is just so convinced of their truth that he's willing to defend them also. But we don't need them. A stronger Kalam argument would be Pruss' version: (P1) Some things have causes. (P2) No causal loops. (P3) Causal finitism: no past-infinite causal chains (which is more moderate that saying there are no actual infinites) (C1) There is a first cause (from P1-P3). (P4) If there is a first cause, God exists. (C2) God exists. (from C1 and P4) [Pruss also presented a back up: Even if an infinite regress of causes were possible, there needs to be an explanation of the whole chain.] My proposal is to use Pruss' Kalam Cosmological Argument, not WLC's version.
This Carrier guy sounds like a real jerk!
I have a question, though: According to Bentham, since we live in a world with physical laws, then this counts as proof of God's existence, then wouldn't it also count as proof of God's existence if we (successfully) lived in a world without physical laws (such as akin to Heaven), since how exactly would a world without physical laws actually function without God?
If we were in a world with no physical laws we would have no way of knowing how it would function with or without God
Imagine Heaven, for instance: Would Heaven, as envisioned by many people, actually have physical laws?
Presumably God could tell us how it would function, no? For instance, telling us that we can use our minds to place a ball or a jar at any location, or using our minds to allow ourselves to teleport ourselves to China and back.
Carrier has a decently sized braindead online following who think he's correct about everything and don't question him. Of course he's going to be hesitant to admit mistakes and backpedal on claims. Common Carrier stuffs.
Can you please do me a small favor and post this link of Bentham's to Carrier's blog?
https://benthams.substack.com/p/carriers-extreme-blunders-continue
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/26502
I tried to do it myself but couldn't. I could post on his blog yesterday, but for some reason, it's not working today.
In regards to the archon abandonment theory, the flaw with it still remains the fact that the archons that were designed were so extraordinarily flawed. Surely God, as an all-powerful and all-knowing being, could have designed flawed but better archons? He must have known ahead of time, for instance, that the archons that he would have produced would have failed to kill Lenin, Trotsky, Hitler, and Stalin, thus producing a whole lot of misery for the world. I don't think that connection-building with archons in the afterlife actually made the miseries of Nazism and Communism worth it. And I certainly wouldn't think that way if I was about to be murdered by Nazis or Communists, when I wouldn't even be sure that archons actually exist!
Also, maybe I missed something that you wrote (it's a very long post), but why would evolution be designed in such a way that produces things like cancer and genetic defects? And why would human reproductive biology sometimes be designed in a way that produces severely suboptimal outcomes, such as with the Magsino twins, who are attached to each other at the face?
BTW, your own existence is proof that your parents *likely* didn't use reliable contraception, but there are no guarantees, because even with a bilateral epididymectomy combined with a radical scrotal vasectomy and a bilateral salpingectomy, there might be at least one contraception failure somewhere in the world. But you're right that we should aim for the likelier options in the absence of more evidence.
Do you think that the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics is true? In other words, that a parallel universe is created for any possible action of ours? So, in one parallel universe, I eat lunch today; in another parallel universe, I don't eat lunch today. At least with such parallel universes, one could understand how every possible being could have come into existence. One's parents could have had sex at different points in time in different universes, et cetera. But still, a challenge with many-worlds remains falsifying it--or proving it.
BTW, I think that the argument is that in this universe--or at least in our observed universes, not in the multiverse as a whole--we have many planets devoid of life and so far only Earth is actually known to have life on it, right? Which I guess makes sense since the more planets there would be, the more likely that we'd get lucky on one of the planets and thus actually get life there.
"The psychophysical harmony argument (read more about it here—it’s a confusing argument) claims that the fact that consciousness pairs harmoniously with the physical—so that, for instance, when you have a desire to move your limbs, your limbs move—is likelier given theism than given naturalism."
But couldn't this simply be explained by evolution? I mean, I could imagine a human's body not responding to their brain/mental signals/desires, but such a configuration would not be evolutionarily advantagenous and should thus be selected out of the gene pool over the generations, no?
>On atheism, it’s pretty likely we’d be in a skeptical scenario. Default atheistic universes produce huge numbers of Boltzmann brains.
It's very difficult to make this argument work. If we *only* conditionalize on the existing laws of physics[1], then maybe you can argue that we're more likely to be Boltzmann brains than ordinary people. But we shouldn't conditionalize on these laws; rather, we should condition on our evidence for such laws being in force, and that evidence is going to include something like the overall reliability of our senses. And conditionalizing on that is obviously going to disfavor us being Boltzmann brains.
[1] AFAIK it's not actually 100% clear how possible Boltzmann brains are on existing physics. Moreover, even if they are possible, there will probably be infinitely many Boltzmann brains who live long lives with reliable sensory faculties (essentially living on worlds that are reincarnations of our own) - they just happen to arise less frequently in an asymptotic sense.
If you hold our basic law structure in the background the fact we're not BBs is evidence for theism.
How does your understanding of consciousness interact with Boltzmann brains? Do you think that brains reliably produce consciousness?
I think they would by default produce consciousness. But God has some clever way to make it so that people aren't probably BB's (e.g. making every particular person such that they're probably not a BB by using a chancy process, having the second coming, or just making BB's not conscious).
Having the second coming in what sense? Returning to Earth like Jesus allegedly promised?
But you shouldn't do that; you should hold our evidence for the law structure in the background. And doing this will screen off naturalism from theism (or whatever) with respect to Boltzmann brains.
Well in total you update on all the evidence in stages.
If our evidence E for our preferred theory of physics T includes the overall reliability of our senses, then E&T will predict that we're not Boltzmann brains regardless of whether naturalism is true or not, just like E alone will. Adding the physical theory that our evidence is evidence *for* isn't going to change anything.
(That said, you should never strictly speaking be conditionalizing on T at all, as it isn't truly part of our evidence. But in most practical contexts - which may not include this one! - T may be so close to being certain given our true evidence E that we can idealize things away and pretend we're conditionalizing on T and treat it as if it were one part of our background knowledge. But the rest of our genuine background knowledge E never gets thrown away.)
Wait sorry are you talking about the relative probability of us being BB's given theism vs naturalism or whether naturalists should be skeptics?
I have a question for you: Since we live in a world with physical laws and, according to you, this counts as proof of God's existence, then wouldn't it also count as proof of God's existence if we (successfully) lived in a world without physical laws (such as akin to Heaven), since how exactly would a world without physical laws actually function without God?
Primarily the latter, but I added that what I was saying has implications for both.
“Also, notably, I didn’t rate any of these [cosmological] arguments very highly” Okay, but my criticism of your Kalam rating would be that you presented WLC's version that uses A-theory, "begins to exist," that everything that begins to exist has a cause, that actual infinites are impossible, etc. These are controversial premises. I don't know why WLC continues to use them. Probably because he is just so convinced of their truth that he's willing to defend them also. But we don't need them. A stronger Kalam argument would be Pruss' version: (P1) Some things have causes. (P2) No causal loops. (P3) Causal finitism: no past-infinite causal chains (which is more moderate that saying there are no actual infinites) (C1) There is a first cause (from P1-P3). (P4) If there is a first cause, God exists. (C2) God exists. (from C1 and P4) [Pruss also presented a back up: Even if an infinite regress of causes were possible, there needs to be an explanation of the whole chain.] My proposal is to use Pruss' Kalam Cosmological Argument, not WLC's version.
"Why are disembodied minds the best minds to have?"
Presumably because they can last indefinitely and don't rot, decay, or weaken with age?