39 Comments

Liked just for the Scotus pu

Expand full comment

Glad I resubscribed. You are very entertaining.

As an aside, if you’re ever in Boston, you might like to meet a family that has both backyard chickens (one past henopause) living their best life, and little kids continously engaged in philosophical and other debates.

Expand full comment

Henopause lol!

Expand full comment

I don't think that all theists are stupid, far from it, like you said, many very high IQ people and smart philosophers are theists. However, I have the intuition that the vast majority of smart theists are strong motivated reasoner in a way that the vast majority of smart atheists and agnostics aren't. I.e they start from what they want to be true, and argue cleverly to it, rather than starting from obvious premises and seeing honestly where it leads.

I still think that theism is a completely insane view to hold (given the problem of evil) and I say that as someone who studied philosophy in academia and read Pruss, Koon, Rasmussen, Aquinas, Van Inwagen etc. Theists can be very smart but theism is a completely insane view. And the best explanation for why very smart people can hold such a crazy view, is, Imo, strong motivated reasoning.

Expand full comment

I think I'm motivated not to be a theist as I'm temperamentally pessimistic, strongly believed in atheism for my entire life, and still sometimes find theism intuitively repulsive.

Expand full comment

It seems to me like you've got yourself into classical theism by already being strongly committed to non-naturalism, and in particular a very strong form of moral non-naturalism (a strange belief that a VNM-rational agent will at some point suddenly magically stop behaving the ways the equations say it will) that is denied by 3/4 of other moral non-naturalists (per the PhilPapers survey).

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Sep 27
Comment removed
Expand full comment

What a strange thing to say. Imagine walking up to a UFOlogist type and saying "Why not just dismiss the UFO question and focus on theism instead?"

Expand full comment

I would say that this is merely a function of theism being the starting position. Most non-theist are non-theists via conversion, and have thus put a bit more thought into it. That’s just how all convert vs non-convert dynamics work.

Expand full comment

I would love to hear more of your perspective on this. I've always found the problem of evil to be very unpersuasive on a logical level, so I'd love to hear why you find it a decisive argument?

Expand full comment

Because the claim that a perfect being wouldn't allow child cancer, torture of innocents, Auschwitz, predation etc (for example) is as obviously true as 1 + 1 = 2.

Expand full comment

I'm genuinely surprised that you say that.

I think it's clearly not THAT obvious, because no sensible person believes that 1+1≠2, but billions (or at least many millions) of sensible people believe in the existence of both a perfect being and horrible evil.

Would you mind spelling out a bit more why you think the two are so clearly contradictory? Or maybe it's more of an intuition?

Expand full comment

First I think that the billions (or millions) of theists have not really considered seriously the philosophical implications of their view. So I don't really consider all those people to be very relevant there. But I agree that many sensible people who are educated on philosophy believe that a perfect being is compatible with those evil but don't reject that 1 + 1 = 2. To be honest, I think they are just highly confused about morality, although otherwise sensible.

The reasoning is basically the following :

1) Doing or allowing horrrible harm without justification is wrong. (moral axiom)

2) A perfect being doesn't act immorally. (from the definition of a perfect being)

3) Horrible harm happen without justification. (empirical fact)

C) A perfect being doesn't exist.

Expand full comment

3 is nonsense, you are in no position to judge what is and isn't "justified" among things that happen. You should also try to account for how a personal God would even remove these evils from a created physical universe of temporal conscious beings like us.

Expand full comment

What is the justification for why the holocaust had 12 millions victims instead of 11 millions ? What is the justification for letting Jeffrey Dahmer do what he did ? What is the justification for letting predation go on for x millions of years instead of x-1 milions of years ?

Expand full comment

Motivated reasoning would only make sense for those who wished to believe in a God to begin with: yet that is not the set of all intelligent theists. Take C. S. Lewis for example; he described his conversion from atheism to theism this way:

"The real terror was that if you seriously believed in even such a “God” or “Spirit” as I admitted, a wholly new situation developed. As the dry bones shook and came together in that dreadful valley of Ezekiel’s, so now a philosophical theorem, cerebrally entertained, began to stir and heave and throw off its gravecloths, and stood upright and became a living presence. I was to be allowed to play at philosophy no longer. It might, as I say, still be true that my “Spirit” differed in some way from “the God of popular religion”. My Adversary waived the point. It sank into utter unimportance. He would not argue about it. He only said, “I am the Lord”; “I am that I am”; “I am”.

"People who are naturally religious find difficulty in understanding the horror of such a revelation. Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about “man’s search for God”. To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse’s search for the cat. The best image of my predicament is the meeting of Mime and Wotan in the first act of Siegfried; hier brauch’ ich nicht Spärer noch Späher, Einsam will ich . . . (I’ve no use for spies and snoopers. I would be private. . . .)

"Remember, I had always wanted, above all things, not to be “interfered with”. I had wanted (mad wish) “to call my soul my own”. I had been far more anxious to avoid suffering than to achieve delight. I had always aimed at limited liabilities. The supernatural itself had been to me, first, an illicit dram, and then, as by a drunkard’s reaction, nauseous. Even my recent attempt to live my philosophy had secretly (I now knew) been hedged round by all sorts of reservations. I had pretty well known that my ideal of virtue would never be allowed to lead me into anything intolerably painful; I would be “reasonable”. But now what had been an ideal became a command; and what might not be expected of one? Doubtless, by definition, God was Reason itself. But would He also be “reasonable” in that other, more comfortable, sense? Not the slightest assurance on that score was offered me. Total surrender, the absolute leap in the dark, were demanded. The reality with which no treaty can be made was upon me. The demand was not even “All or nothing”…Now, the demand was simply “All”.

"You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?"

Expand full comment

I don't necessarily consider theists like Rasmussen, Pruss, or you stupid.

I just consider you to have a particularly good adaptation for arguing and rationalizing, where you come to rationalize one particularly absurd belief in a smart-sounding way. It's not surprising, given that this belief used to be extremely evolutionary adaptive until very recent times. In a way, you're playing a social status game is to see who can give the most eloquent and nice-sounding responses to interrogations about the existence of God. The perfect way of providing a "persuasive" argument for the existence of God is to be both vaporous and vaguely plausible. And that, obviously, is a very g-loaded activity, the success of which either makes or breaks perception of intelligence in your inner circle. A Facebook-meme theist fails this motivated reasoning test and rightly is perceived as stupid, whereas a theist like Rasmussen hits the vaporous+vague sweet spot, and is perceived as intelligent, either by his fellow theists or by fellow hyper-rationalizing non-theists.

Some theists are stupid, some are intelligent, and some are average. But all of them are wrong.

Expand full comment

Sophistry is a ubiquitous human pastime, alright.

Expand full comment

Asserting that theism is false and that theists are just rationalizing their view isn't an argument. People like Rasmussen, Pat Flynn, and Ed Feser have written books arguing for theism that you would need to argue against, not just assert their falsehood.

Expand full comment

I consider these books to belong to a class of wordcel motivated reasoning in defense of some obviously wrong theory, like books defending Flat Earth or labor theory of value, except your authors are held to some minimal standard of academic rigor. Although they might be written in an intelligent way and occasionally even signal high verbal intelligence to the reader, I feel confident in my presumption that these books would be of little substance. Very few academic books, if any, "prove" some positive philosophical thesis, be it theism or any other, especially if that thesis is related to revisionary metaphysics. For every argument, usually an equally persuasive counter-argument eventually is found. I trust the base rate here.

Expand full comment

It's hard for me to understand how ex atheists don't think this way about most of philrel. I understand theists participating in reflexive intellectual masturbation as a way to intellectually justify their obviously wrong beliefs, but really how come atheists do the same. I think philosophical atheists, mostly believe that this is all just intellectual navel gazing, but matthew might be in a different position where he takes these things too seriously

Expand full comment

If someone puts almost no weight on a priori claims a la “your existence is irrefutable proof of God”, then you would appear quite stupid. Even if a large number of people agreed with you, the reliance on a single kind of evidence could be perceived as a category error which makes you fundamentally out of touch.

And, let’s be real, the position that literally no evidence could disprove god is quite unbelievable. You shouldn’t sneer at someone for just saying that!

Expand full comment

I don't quite get what you mean by 'reliance on a single kind of evidence '. Do you mean that you cannot believe a theory if your belief mainly hinges on one Import fact, or one line of logical reasoning? And what is it that you are out of touch with when you do so?

Expand full comment

I think that particuliarly if one relies on a priori reasoning to create an argument for God that explicitly disclaims the role of experience in determining its validity, then people are more justified in calling you confused.

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Sep 28
Comment removed
Expand full comment

I believe you are right with regards to how selection bias is the most important driver of differences between ideologies (though I doubt atheists have any higher boinking rates than others

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Sep 27
Comment removed
Expand full comment

So you mean that there is no actual difference between a christian and an atheist? It is essentially like two people using synonyms for the same thing?

Expand full comment

My father once told me that Judaism doesn’t have a lot of patience for people who don’t believe in God, but there is ample room for debating about what *kind* of God exists. I always think of it when I encounter the kind of atheists you are describing here.

Expand full comment

I would recommend checking out Ed Feser and Graham Oppy's debate on youtube (more of a casual conversation) as well as their books and articles responding to one another. Philosophy of religion at the highest level, and much more rigorous than most of what you find in blogs and comment sections.

To be honest, I didn't think much of your argument against God from 2 years ago (re: theism is supposed to entail a perfect being but the world is imperfect. The error is assuming that anything created by a perfect being must itself be perfect in every respect.). Brian Davies book is an interesting treatment of this that is worth looking at.

Expand full comment

I would also mention Ed Feser as an excellent theist and philosopher of religion. His blog is very informative and he engages a mix of top atheist scholars (e.g. Graham Oppy) as a well as some internet folks. His books are approachable also.

Expand full comment

I wonder how many of the “theists are delusional” crowd believe in the religion of climate change?

(For those leftist atheists who will derisively write me off or call me a denier that the climate is warming, I refer to the dogmatic religion that we simply *must* implement leftist public policy prescriptions that will do massive harm to civilization and in particular to the world’s poorest billions who lack affordable available highly reliable energy, regardless of the harms they will cause or the very low probability that they will “fix” “climate change”.)

I submit they very likely correlate with people who smugly use phrases like climate deniers” and “misinformation” - phrases designed to shut down arguments rather than win them with rational arguments.

[Full disclosure: I’m an agnostic thisclose to atheist, and I think theists are probably wrong, and that many of them ain’t that smart, but that most aren’t delusional.]

Expand full comment

With all due respect, I don't think you've thought through the implications of your view. If it's so obvious that God and terrible evil can't co-exist that believing in him is akin to believing that 1+1≠2, then it's up to you to explain why lots of extremely philosophically competent people believe that God exists. It won't do to say that they are stupid or haven't thought it through, because they clearly aren't and they clearly have.

I'm not saying you're wrong about God's existence; I'm saying you're vastly overstating the force of the problem of evil.

As far as your reasoning, in what sense can we call premise three an "empirical fact"? I think that's the crucial part of your argument.

Thanks for the conversation

Expand full comment

Now that you’re theist, will you join any religion? Otherwise, and I shudder saying this in a blog about philosophy, but anyway: otherwise, what’s the point?

Expand full comment

1. Most theists and atheists are stupid.

2. Philosophers of religion are generally smarter than the median theist or atheist.

3. Philosophers of religion generally produce lower quality arguments than exist in other analytic philosophy subfields.

4. The general analytic philosophy approach to understanding the world is very flawed.

5. Theist philosophers of religion don't generally have good reasons for their beliefs, but they do have OK-ish reasons for their beliefs in the context of analytic philosophy, which is ultimately meaningless since analytic philosophy's general approach to understanding the world is very flawed.

Expand full comment

I don't think BBs argument explicitly disclaims experience. Actually, since it is based on Bayesian probability it should be easy to further update any probability after relevant new experiences

Expand full comment

You jest in calling Scotus a "Duns," but that is actually where the insult "dunce" comes from. It was a result of the later humanist thinkers reacting against medieval scholasticism and seeing those earlier scholars as, well, dunces. So the name of one of the most prominent scholastics became a term of abuse to call someone a dummy.

Expand full comment

I first read the subtitle as “Rasputin” - still thought it was a good point.

Expand full comment
Comment removed
Sep 27
Comment removed
Expand full comment

You remind me of a bit from Lewis's "Screwtape Letters" when the arch-devil is advising his student what to do if the human he is tempting finds a logical argument for God:

" I once had a patient, a sound atheist, who used to read in the British Museum. One day, as he sat reading, I saw a train of thought in his mind beginning to go the wrong way. The Enemy, of course, was at his elbow in a moment. Before I knew where I was I saw my twenty years’ work beginning to totter. If I had lost my head and begun to attempt a defence by argument I should have been undone. But I was not such a fool. I struck instantly at the part of the man which I had best under my control and suggested that it was just about time he had some lunch. The Enemy presumably made the counter-suggestion (you know how one can never quite overhear what He says to them?) that this was more important than lunch. At least I think that must have been His line for when I said “Quite. In fact much too important to tackle at the end of a morning”, the patient brightened up considerably; and by the time I had added “Much better come back after lunch and go into it with a fresh mind”, he was already half way to the door. Once he was in the street the battle was won. I showed him a newsboy shouting the midday paper, and a No. 73 bus going past, and before he reached the bottom of the steps I had got into him an unalterable conviction that, whatever odd ideas might come into a man’s head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of “real life” (by which he meant the bus and the newsboy) was enough to show him that all “that sort of thing” just couldn’t be true. He knew he’d had a narrow escape and in later years was fond of talking about “that inarticulate sense for actuality which is our ultimate safeguard against the aberrations of mere logic”. He is now safe in Our Father’s house."

Expand full comment

Your comment is well formulated but I have a hard time generalizing it to other situations.

What if a german officer, having discovered that Nazism was evil, decided to risk his life to assasinate Hitler?

What if a doctor, having discovered that vaccinations protect against small pox, decided to try to get all children in the wirld vaccinated?

Wouldn't your argument be equally efficient against those two?

Expand full comment