I just listened to UC Berkeley’s “Physics for Future Presidents” course on iTunes U (highly recommended) and I thought, “Surely no one can take theism seriously after experiencing what it’s like to have real knowledge about the universe.”
Disagreed. My current opinion is that you can be a theist and combine that with pretty much any other knowledge. Eliezer points to Robert Aumann as an example.
For someone that has theism hardcoded into their brain and treats it as a different kind of knowledge than physics there can be virtually no visible difference in everyday life from a normal a-theist.
I think the problem is not so much the theism, but that people use it to base decisions on it.
There seems to be a common thought-pattern among intelligent theists. When they learn a lot about the physics of the Universe, they don’t think “I should only be satisfied with beliefs in things that I understand in this deep way.” Instead, they think, “As smart as I am, I have only this dim understanding of the universe. Imagine how smart I would have to be to create it! Truly, God is wonderful beyond comprehension.”
[...] Instead, they think, “As smart as I am, I have only this dim understanding of the universe. Imagine how smart I would have to be to create it! Truly, God is wonderful beyond comprehension.”
“Wonderful” I could believe, but I don’t think John Horton Conway is actually wonderful beyond comprehension. To make an analogy.
I just listened to UC Berkeley’s “Physics for Future Presidents” course on iTunes U (highly recommended) and I thought, “Surely no one can take theism seriously after experiencing what it’s like to have real knowledge about the universe.”
Disagreed. My current opinion is that you can be a theist and combine that with pretty much any other knowledge. Eliezer points to Robert Aumann as an example. For someone that has theism hardcoded into their brain and treats it as a different kind of knowledge than physics there can be virtually no visible difference in everyday life from a normal a-theist. I think the problem is not so much the theism, but that people use it to base decisions on it.
oh it’s true. I know deeply religious scientists. Some of them are great scientists. Let’s not get unduly snide about this.
There seems to be a common thought-pattern among intelligent theists. When they learn a lot about the physics of the Universe, they don’t think “I should only be satisfied with beliefs in things that I understand in this deep way.” Instead, they think, “As smart as I am, I have only this dim understanding of the universe. Imagine how smart I would have to be to create it! Truly, God is wonderful beyond comprehension.”
“Wonderful” I could believe, but I don’t think John Horton Conway is actually wonderful beyond comprehension. To make an analogy.
If Conway used the Turing-completeness of Life to create within it a universe like our own, he would be wonderful beyond my comprehension :).
If Flatland would do, he could do it ‘naturally’ given enough scale and time. (: