I’m Catholic and of late not particularly happy about it. Through reading much of the LessWrong material and noticing the ubiquity of atheists here, my confidence estimates in the relevant religious questions have declined. In response, I spent a few days searching online for pro-atheist or at least pro-agnostic-versus-Catholic evidence and ended up very disappointed in what Google turned up. It’s an amusing and puzzling experience to be disappointed about one’s own deconversion failure.
I don’t want book recommendations unless they’re damn good. Almost invariably they’re not aimed at me anyway, but at fundamentalist-types: my religious education was actually pretty decent quality, so such books have so far ended up being a waste of time.
Ideally, what I want is somebody who can present a case for atheism adapted for a non-fundy Catholic, take my objections seriously, and not give up for a while until we reach some conclusion. Almost as a separate issue, I’m curious whether it would resolve to a change of mind or halt at incompatible priors.
I’m interested. One question before we go further, though—you describe yourself as ‘a non-fundy Catholic’. Would Pope Benedict XVI agree that you are Catholic, or are you using another definition? (I don’t mean to offend, but I have personal experience with a ‘Catholic’ who doesn’t believe in an afterlife—too much doublethink hurts my brain sometimes.)
but I have personal experience with a ‘Catholic’ who doesn’t believe in an afterlife
It occurs to me that such a person should behave exactly the same way as an atheist (except perhaps when making bets about isomer concentrations in dinosaur fossils). A god who doesn’t treat you differently based on whether you worship him is an irrelevant god!
A god wouldn’t necessarily wait until you’re dead to punish or reward your behavior. In the Old Testament, God seems to prefer to provide feedback for the living.
The catholic God in particular does most of his control by alleged threats after death. Punishment and reward in during life appears to be minimal. (This differs vastly from the descriptions of other gods and even the belief of past, particularly pre-christian, believers in the same god.)
Catholicism in particular has doctrines that hinge very strongly on the existence of an afterlife. If a person who identifies as Catholic professes not to believe in an afterlife, my confidence that they adhere to other common Catholic doctrines is reduced.
That isn’t necessarily true. I might believe in a god whose doctrines are maximally moral (either in the consequentialist sense that living according to them will maximize overall value, or in some deontological sense I don’t entirely understand) but who won’t treat me any differently if I worship him. Such a god is relevant to my behavior, in that what I ought to do given his existence is different from what I ought to do given his nonexistence.
That’s what I said. The fact that he does behave like an atheist is the annoying bit—I knew he went to Catholic school, but actually wasn’t aware he still considered himself Catholic until the topic of my atheism happened to come up.
As far as I can tell, he believes exactly the same things I do about basically everything—yes, even dinosaur fossils. He just considers himself Catholic, and says he ‘believes in God’. If there ever was a more freeloading belief, I haven’t met it.
While I’ve never actually heard the term “Catholic atheist” as I have “Jewish atheist,” it wouldn’t actually be that surprising -- “Catholic,” much more so than the generic “Christian”, is a cultural signifier as well as a purely religious one.
Indeed. In Ireland, especially Northern Ireland, religion is far from the only major difference between the two main groups (Catholics/Nationalists/Irish/people who say “Derry”/people who say “haitch” and Protestants/Unionists/British/people who say “Londonderry”/people who say “aitch”, for lack of any completely satisfactory one-word labels for the groups.)
(My spell checker is clearly Protestant, as it flags “haitch” as incorrect.)
I wouldn’t be so weirded out if that were the case, I can understand that. The problem is that it isn’t being used as a cultural signifier—he never goes to Mass, none of his friends are Catholic and he didn’t raise me to be Catholic. (It occurs to me to mention at this point that the person in question is my father.)
My ‘atheist coming-out’ was a deeply strange conversation, not least because I wasn’t aware I had been in a closet.
Reminds me a bit of my father. My dad has basically said that he doesn’t think there is anything after death, and that what you do in life does not matter- so long as you do not ‘get caught.’ While I cringe at his lack of morals, I do question why he considers himself Catholic. He does not go to church, does not pray, and holds the church in contempt.
I can see that it is not a cultural signifier, so my idea is that he fears creating any problems within the family. Other people in the family might outright ostracize him for openly stating his beliefs without the mandatory “but I’m a Catholic!” added in at the end. Perhaps it is a similar situation? I can’t actually say, since I do not know your father. It’s simply a stab in the dark.
Hi pedanterrific,
Yes, the Pope would agree that I’m a Catholic, although that’s hardly an essential feature. For specificity, I’m a practicing Roman Catholic who can recite the Nicene Creed in good faith. PMs/emails preferred.
Maybe? It depends somewhat on what sort of a case you want made.
If I accept that beliefs are justified insofar as evidence differentially supports them relative to competing beliefs, and I ask whether a belief that a deity exists that has the properties attributed to it by (for example) Catholics is justified, it follows that I should look for evidence differentially supporting that belief. If I don’t find such evidence, I should conclude that such a belief is not justified; if I do find it, I can go on to ask other more detailed questions about that belief.
If you agree with that, and you’re in the position of having looked for such evidence and found it (or found plausible candidates for it), then sure, I might be interested in working that through with you. Who knows, perhaps you’ll convince me as well.
OTOH, if you don’t agree with that, we probably don’t have enough common ground to even get started.
Shortly after I was introduced to LessWrong, a local philosophy meetup that I sporadically attended held a meeting on the topic, “What would it take to convince you of God’s existence?”. Given my background on the other side of the question, I naturally prepared a lengthy list of the sorts of evidences I would look for to convince me that God doesn’t exist. (Sadly, no one else at the meetup seemed interested in an evidential approach and just answered “absolutely nothing” to the original question or maundered on about supposed past lives, so I didn’t get any critiques there.)
Nevertheless, it’s quite plausible I missed some important possible tests or mistook the data, and that’s where a chavruta would fit in.
I’d actually like to back up a step from there, if it’s OK with you.
It seems likely to me that many of the items you list as evidence of the non-existence of the referent of “God” as understood by your form of Catholicism would also be evidence of the non-existence of the referent of “God” as understood by my form of Judaism. (For convenience, I will hereafter refer to those referents as the Christian God and the Jewish God, respectively.)
If that’s true, it creates something of a problem, since while I would agree that seeking evidence for the nonexistence of X and failing to find it constitutes evidence (not proof, but evidence) for the existence of X, if the evidence you’re seeking and failing to find is also evidence for the nonexistence of Y then failing to find it is equally evidence for the existence of Y. So, if the evidence you identified would demonstrate the nonexistence of both the Christian and the Jewish Gods, then failing to find that evidence would be both evidence for the existence of the Christian God and evidence for the existence of the Jewish God.
And the same goes for many other denominations’ Gods.
Which would be fine, if your goal was to explore the existence of some kind of God, who might not be the Christian God… but it doesn’t sound like that’s where you’re coming from.
And if X and Y are mutually exclusive, then the whole thing becomes rather a muddle.
So it seems it’s important to find, not only evidence that supports the existence of the Christian God (such as failing to find evidence of Godlessness) but also evidence that differentially supports that existence, relative to the existence of other Gods (say, one of the Hindu Gods, or the God of some religion neither of us has ever heard of).
OK. So, I return to my earlier statement: if I want to know whether a belief in the Christian god is justified, I should look for evidence differentially supporting that belief. If I don’t find such evidence, I should conclude that such a belief is not justified; if I do find it, I can go on to ask other more detailed questions about that belief.
The obvious next question, then: what evidence differentially supports that belief?
“What would it take to convince you of God’s existence?”
I suspect that one of two things was going on. They may have not really cared to talk about the supernatural but were intending to use that extreme case as a springboard to talk about evidence and belief in general. Alternatively, if they thought the topic as phrased was apt, likely they were not sufficiently deft at dealing with and unpacking unhelpful terms like “God”.
no one else at the meetup seemed interested in an evidential approach
You should have abandoned sharing your list (hard to do after putting effort into it) and discussed why an evidential approach was better than their approaches at a philosophical level. If you don’t have a separate long mental list of why it is, then even if it is the right approach, you shouldn’t feel too superior over people using the wrong approach who can’t justify their philosophical approach because you can’t justify yours either, you just know how to use it.
You should have abandoned sharing your list (hard to do after putting effort into it) and discussed why an evidential approach was better than their approaches at a philosophical level.
Eh, I’m fine with analytic philosophy. It seems like an essential toolset. The only sense in which an evidential approach seemed superior to me was that it felt less like cheating. I’ve encountered dozens of definitions of “God”, and it’s easy to pick a definition such that the entity necessarily exists or necessarily doesn’t exist. Doing that and stopping there is cheating, I think, because it’s not the sensus fidelium regarding what and who God is. Plainly Catholicism does use (by habit, not dogma) a small set of definitions of necessarily existing entities, but it’s far from obvious that they are (or can be) the same entity, and quite dubious that those entities have much in common with Yahweh.
I’d like to give this a try on a specific topic.
I’m Catholic and of late not particularly happy about it. Through reading much of the LessWrong material and noticing the ubiquity of atheists here, my confidence estimates in the relevant religious questions have declined. In response, I spent a few days searching online for pro-atheist or at least pro-agnostic-versus-Catholic evidence and ended up very disappointed in what Google turned up. It’s an amusing and puzzling experience to be disappointed about one’s own deconversion failure.
I don’t want book recommendations unless they’re damn good. Almost invariably they’re not aimed at me anyway, but at fundamentalist-types: my religious education was actually pretty decent quality, so such books have so far ended up being a waste of time.
Ideally, what I want is somebody who can present a case for atheism adapted for a non-fundy Catholic, take my objections seriously, and not give up for a while until we reach some conclusion. Almost as a separate issue, I’m curious whether it would resolve to a change of mind or halt at incompatible priors.
Any takers?
I’m interested. One question before we go further, though—you describe yourself as ‘a non-fundy Catholic’. Would Pope Benedict XVI agree that you are Catholic, or are you using another definition? (I don’t mean to offend, but I have personal experience with a ‘Catholic’ who doesn’t believe in an afterlife—too much doublethink hurts my brain sometimes.)
It occurs to me that such a person should behave exactly the same way as an atheist (except perhaps when making bets about isomer concentrations in dinosaur fossils). A god who doesn’t treat you differently based on whether you worship him is an irrelevant god!
Isn’t part of the catholic belief structure that god occasionally grants prayers?
A god wouldn’t necessarily wait until you’re dead to punish or reward your behavior. In the Old Testament, God seems to prefer to provide feedback for the living.
The catholic God in particular does most of his control by alleged threats after death. Punishment and reward in during life appears to be minimal. (This differs vastly from the descriptions of other gods and even the belief of past, particularly pre-christian, believers in the same god.)
Catholicism in particular has doctrines that hinge very strongly on the existence of an afterlife. If a person who identifies as Catholic professes not to believe in an afterlife, my confidence that they adhere to other common Catholic doctrines is reduced.
Hence ‘Catholic’ in scare quotes, yes.
That isn’t necessarily true. I might believe in a god whose doctrines are maximally moral (either in the consequentialist sense that living according to them will maximize overall value, or in some deontological sense I don’t entirely understand) but who won’t treat me any differently if I worship him. Such a god is relevant to my behavior, in that what I ought to do given his existence is different from what I ought to do given his nonexistence.
That’s what I said. The fact that he does behave like an atheist is the annoying bit—I knew he went to Catholic school, but actually wasn’t aware he still considered himself Catholic until the topic of my atheism happened to come up.
As far as I can tell, he believes exactly the same things I do about basically everything—yes, even dinosaur fossils. He just considers himself Catholic, and says he ‘believes in God’. If there ever was a more freeloading belief, I haven’t met it.
I have touched on a related subject in another thread.
While I’ve never actually heard the term “Catholic atheist” as I have “Jewish atheist,” it wouldn’t actually be that surprising -- “Catholic,” much more so than the generic “Christian”, is a cultural signifier as well as a purely religious one.
Indeed. In Ireland, especially Northern Ireland, religion is far from the only major difference between the two main groups (Catholics/Nationalists/Irish/people who say “Derry”/people who say “haitch” and Protestants/Unionists/British/people who say “Londonderry”/people who say “aitch”, for lack of any completely satisfactory one-word labels for the groups.)
(My spell checker is clearly Protestant, as it flags “haitch” as incorrect.)
I wouldn’t be so weirded out if that were the case, I can understand that. The problem is that it isn’t being used as a cultural signifier—he never goes to Mass, none of his friends are Catholic and he didn’t raise me to be Catholic. (It occurs to me to mention at this point that the person in question is my father.)
My ‘atheist coming-out’ was a deeply strange conversation, not least because I wasn’t aware I had been in a closet.
Reminds me a bit of my father. My dad has basically said that he doesn’t think there is anything after death, and that what you do in life does not matter- so long as you do not ‘get caught.’ While I cringe at his lack of morals, I do question why he considers himself Catholic. He does not go to church, does not pray, and holds the church in contempt.
I can see that it is not a cultural signifier, so my idea is that he fears creating any problems within the family. Other people in the family might outright ostracize him for openly stating his beliefs without the mandatory “but I’m a Catholic!” added in at the end. Perhaps it is a similar situation? I can’t actually say, since I do not know your father. It’s simply a stab in the dark.
There is the possibility of feeling gratitude, respect, or love for one’s Creator. Your feelings in that regard would make God very relevant.
If there were a Creator of the Universe, and he wasn’t the usual monotheistic Celestial Psychopath, I’d feel some gratitude.
Hi pedanterrific, Yes, the Pope would agree that I’m a Catholic, although that’s hardly an essential feature. For specificity, I’m a practicing Roman Catholic who can recite the Nicene Creed in good faith. PMs/emails preferred.
So, did you get my PM?
Maybe? It depends somewhat on what sort of a case you want made.
If I accept that beliefs are justified insofar as evidence differentially supports them relative to competing beliefs, and I ask whether a belief that a deity exists that has the properties attributed to it by (for example) Catholics is justified, it follows that I should look for evidence differentially supporting that belief. If I don’t find such evidence, I should conclude that such a belief is not justified; if I do find it, I can go on to ask other more detailed questions about that belief.
If you agree with that, and you’re in the position of having looked for such evidence and found it (or found plausible candidates for it), then sure, I might be interested in working that through with you. Who knows, perhaps you’ll convince me as well.
OTOH, if you don’t agree with that, we probably don’t have enough common ground to even get started.
Hi TheOtherDave,
Shortly after I was introduced to LessWrong, a local philosophy meetup that I sporadically attended held a meeting on the topic, “What would it take to convince you of God’s existence?”. Given my background on the other side of the question, I naturally prepared a lengthy list of the sorts of evidences I would look for to convince me that God doesn’t exist. (Sadly, no one else at the meetup seemed interested in an evidential approach and just answered “absolutely nothing” to the original question or maundered on about supposed past lives, so I didn’t get any critiques there.)
Nevertheless, it’s quite plausible I missed some important possible tests or mistook the data, and that’s where a chavruta would fit in.
I’d actually like to back up a step from there, if it’s OK with you.
It seems likely to me that many of the items you list as evidence of the non-existence of the referent of “God” as understood by your form of Catholicism would also be evidence of the non-existence of the referent of “God” as understood by my form of Judaism. (For convenience, I will hereafter refer to those referents as the Christian God and the Jewish God, respectively.)
If that’s true, it creates something of a problem, since while I would agree that seeking evidence for the nonexistence of X and failing to find it constitutes evidence (not proof, but evidence) for the existence of X, if the evidence you’re seeking and failing to find is also evidence for the nonexistence of Y then failing to find it is equally evidence for the existence of Y. So, if the evidence you identified would demonstrate the nonexistence of both the Christian and the Jewish Gods, then failing to find that evidence would be both evidence for the existence of the Christian God and evidence for the existence of the Jewish God.
And the same goes for many other denominations’ Gods.
Which would be fine, if your goal was to explore the existence of some kind of God, who might not be the Christian God… but it doesn’t sound like that’s where you’re coming from.
And if X and Y are mutually exclusive, then the whole thing becomes rather a muddle.
So it seems it’s important to find, not only evidence that supports the existence of the Christian God (such as failing to find evidence of Godlessness) but also evidence that differentially supports that existence, relative to the existence of other Gods (say, one of the Hindu Gods, or the God of some religion neither of us has ever heard of).
Would you agree?
With every word.
OK. So, I return to my earlier statement: if I want to know whether a belief in the Christian god is justified, I should look for evidence differentially supporting that belief. If I don’t find such evidence, I should conclude that such a belief is not justified; if I do find it, I can go on to ask other more detailed questions about that belief.
The obvious next question, then: what evidence differentially supports that belief?
I suggest concluding that beliefs are probabilistic, and strengths of belief are justified or unjustified.
Sure, agreed. Read “a certain confidence level in a belief in” for “a belief in” throughout.
I suspect that one of two things was going on. They may have not really cared to talk about the supernatural but were intending to use that extreme case as a springboard to talk about evidence and belief in general. Alternatively, if they thought the topic as phrased was apt, likely they were not sufficiently deft at dealing with and unpacking unhelpful terms like “God”.
You should have abandoned sharing your list (hard to do after putting effort into it) and discussed why an evidential approach was better than their approaches at a philosophical level. If you don’t have a separate long mental list of why it is, then even if it is the right approach, you shouldn’t feel too superior over people using the wrong approach who can’t justify their philosophical approach because you can’t justify yours either, you just know how to use it.
Eh, I’m fine with analytic philosophy. It seems like an essential toolset. The only sense in which an evidential approach seemed superior to me was that it felt less like cheating. I’ve encountered dozens of definitions of “God”, and it’s easy to pick a definition such that the entity necessarily exists or necessarily doesn’t exist. Doing that and stopping there is cheating, I think, because it’s not the sensus fidelium regarding what and who God is. Plainly Catholicism does use (by habit, not dogma) a small set of definitions of necessarily existing entities, but it’s far from obvious that they are (or can be) the same entity, and quite dubious that those entities have much in common with Yahweh.