You don’t just have to worry about one specific atheist-god, but also any jealous gods, any singular god that would consider beliefs about a singular god beliefs about themself, and feel insulted by being thought to be like what JHWH is supposed to be like, any god that punishes giving in to imagined blackmail (hell) just to make blackmail less likely, and so on. These aren’t symmetric because e. g. anti-jealous gods that reward worship of very different gods, including one particular very jealous god, seem less likely than jealous gods.
Hmuh, I’d never exactly thought of thinking about YHWH as a blackmailing simulator AI, but in an ensemble universe that description seems to fit. That’s pretty funny. :)
Agreed—this is the usual response, and the one that works for me if I can’t quite muster up the confidence to say “0% probability for infinite-torture JHWH (or variation)”. I guess you can justify something like p=0 with a combination of: “you haven’t defined what you mean by JHWH sufficiently for me to agree or disagree”, “ok, you’ve told me enough that I see JHWH as a logical impossibility”. Once a hypothetical god passes those bars, then you need recourse to all the possible god hypotheses. Priveleging the Hypothesis is a finite-scale version of the same objection.
You don’t just have to worry about one specific atheist-god, but also any jealous gods, any singular god that would consider beliefs about a singular god beliefs about themself, and feel insulted by being thought to be like what JHWH is supposed to be like, any god that punishes giving in to imagined blackmail (hell) just to make blackmail less likely, and so on. These aren’t symmetric because e. g. anti-jealous gods that reward worship of very different gods, including one particular very jealous god, seem less likely than jealous gods.
Hmuh, I’d never exactly thought of thinking about YHWH as a blackmailing simulator AI, but in an ensemble universe that description seems to fit. That’s pretty funny. :)
Agreed—this is the usual response, and the one that works for me if I can’t quite muster up the confidence to say “0% probability for infinite-torture JHWH (or variation)”. I guess you can justify something like p=0 with a combination of: “you haven’t defined what you mean by JHWH sufficiently for me to agree or disagree”, “ok, you’ve told me enough that I see JHWH as a logical impossibility”. Once a hypothetical god passes those bars, then you need recourse to all the possible god hypotheses. Priveleging the Hypothesis is a finite-scale version of the same objection.