an atheist argument in support of an almighty god.
this is not meant to be a straw argument but rather a (hopefully) rational aspect on the futility of disproving religion and god. To set out what i currently think i understand about Eliezer’s argument, He conceives as god as the programmer. our reality is akin to the matrix and God is they guy who has total control. He can rewind his scenario, review it as a whole, and can basically do anything he wills. With this definition in mind, Eliezer takes roughly two or three methods of disapproval.
1) disapproval by confirmed falsification of observed events.
ie: our world is not in fact, riding on four elephants standing on a turtle swimming through the great unknown. (disapproval by photo of earth quite clearly hanging in the darkness of the universe suspiciously absent of turtle)
2) this one i am shakier on his use of, but I would call it disapproval by logical impossibility.
ie: questions such as can god create a rock that he cannot lift? or the simple proof by non appearance, if he proves himself through non interference then miracles are proof of his non existence ( I will note that i have heard my first example to be flawed)
3) proof by Ethical observation. Using rationally derived ethics as a prior, we compare those to God’s observed actions (ie killing first born sons to make a point) and compare to see where they do not match.
Unfortunately, all of these disproofs (with the exception of the third to a certain degree) are all based on a simple prior that is on shaky ground itself, which is my (hopefully correct) assumption of Eliezer’s model of God. I’m not entirely sure at which point all powerful lost its meaning, but I’m relatively sure that from a strict assumption of “all powerful” i would anticipate seeing an entity that is more than capable of bypassing logical impossibility IE: god can preform acts that under Bayesian reasoning come out to more that 100% and on top of that can preform them in our reality without breaking it (yet another case of over 100%). In the end it leads back to the original Descartes questions of doubt, how can we be sure of anything and the answer turns out, we can’t. All powerful means all powerful. For a lesser illustration of what i mean, see the flying spaghetti monster, who changes experimental results as they happen so that everything we have ever tried has been systematically falsified to make it look like we live in an ordered and structured universe when we don’t.
as i post this i realize it stinks of a mysterious answer along the lines of lord kelvin. To clarify, i do not glory in this, i don’t even like it. But if I am to stay dedicated to rationalism, I must look for ways to disprove my postition and it so far has informed me that to do battle with an almighty creator or the delusions of him, we must first find solid ground to work from, and we have yet to find it. I also recognize that the flying spaghetti monster argument is used to make the exact opposite statement of what i used it for, but thats what makes it good. Its not just a satire, its an observation of what things would look like in the presences of an all powerful god.
You don’t need to “do battle with an almighty creator”, because you don’t have enough evidence to even privilege the hypothesis of an almighty creator.
The rational thing isn’t to try to disprove every damn thing that might cross your mind, but to rather say “I don’t have enough evidence to justify wasting my time on such an idea”.
Since Eliezer doesn’t believe God exists, what are you talking about when you’re talking about “Eliezer’s model of God”? Do you perhaps means how Eliezer models other people modeling their own concept of God?
On the whole you seem to me to be confused about what you’re attempting to do. Or perhaps I’m the one confused: Is your claim that one can’t disprove any religion, or that one can’t disprove all religions?
Either way, I’m reasonably certain that you have Eliezer’s “model” wrong. Eliezer doesn’t have a model of God, because he doesn’t believe in God, and Eliezer also knows other people have more than one models of what they label “god”.
good point, let me go back and refine, the model that I perceive Eliezer talking about. I think you are the one confused but only because i was confusing. my original point was that spending time working on proving or disproving a religion is a waste of time because of what I pointed out above, either we have a regular and consistent universe to discover or we are having the wool pulled over our eyes at every turn and which ever way it is, it’s meaningless to worry about it until we find any sort of solid evidence in either direction. I wasn’t even referring to a particular religion, just the general religious concept of an all powerful deity or deities of any sort. I was just trying to point out the irrationality of going about disproving something that (if we take a religious source at its word) can exists beyond the bonds of logic. Thanks for the reply and the criticism though, if you haven’t caught on, I’m new to here and looking for the help to improve.
an atheist argument in support of an almighty god. this is not meant to be a straw argument but rather a (hopefully) rational aspect on the futility of disproving religion and god.
To set out what i currently think i understand about Eliezer’s argument, He conceives as god as the programmer. our reality is akin to the matrix and God is they guy who has total control. He can rewind his scenario, review it as a whole, and can basically do anything he wills. With this definition in mind, Eliezer takes roughly two or three methods of disapproval. 1) disapproval by confirmed falsification of observed events. ie: our world is not in fact, riding on four elephants standing on a turtle swimming through the great unknown. (disapproval by photo of earth quite clearly hanging in the darkness of the universe suspiciously absent of turtle) 2) this one i am shakier on his use of, but I would call it disapproval by logical impossibility. ie: questions such as can god create a rock that he cannot lift? or the simple proof by non appearance, if he proves himself through non interference then miracles are proof of his non existence ( I will note that i have heard my first example to be flawed) 3) proof by Ethical observation. Using rationally derived ethics as a prior, we compare those to God’s observed actions (ie killing first born sons to make a point) and compare to see where they do not match.
Unfortunately, all of these disproofs (with the exception of the third to a certain degree) are all based on a simple prior that is on shaky ground itself, which is my (hopefully correct) assumption of Eliezer’s model of God. I’m not entirely sure at which point all powerful lost its meaning, but I’m relatively sure that from a strict assumption of “all powerful” i would anticipate seeing an entity that is more than capable of bypassing logical impossibility IE: god can preform acts that under Bayesian reasoning come out to more that 100% and on top of that can preform them in our reality without breaking it (yet another case of over 100%). In the end it leads back to the original Descartes questions of doubt, how can we be sure of anything and the answer turns out, we can’t. All powerful means all powerful. For a lesser illustration of what i mean, see the flying spaghetti monster, who changes experimental results as they happen so that everything we have ever tried has been systematically falsified to make it look like we live in an ordered and structured universe when we don’t.
as i post this i realize it stinks of a mysterious answer along the lines of lord kelvin. To clarify, i do not glory in this, i don’t even like it. But if I am to stay dedicated to rationalism, I must look for ways to disprove my postition and it so far has informed me that to do battle with an almighty creator or the delusions of him, we must first find solid ground to work from, and we have yet to find it. I also recognize that the flying spaghetti monster argument is used to make the exact opposite statement of what i used it for, but thats what makes it good. Its not just a satire, its an observation of what things would look like in the presences of an all powerful god.
You don’t need to “do battle with an almighty creator”, because you don’t have enough evidence to even privilege the hypothesis of an almighty creator.
The rational thing isn’t to try to disprove every damn thing that might cross your mind, but to rather say “I don’t have enough evidence to justify wasting my time on such an idea”.
Since Eliezer doesn’t believe God exists, what are you talking about when you’re talking about “Eliezer’s model of God”? Do you perhaps means how Eliezer models other people modeling their own concept of God?
On the whole you seem to me to be confused about what you’re attempting to do. Or perhaps I’m the one confused: Is your claim that one can’t disprove any religion, or that one can’t disprove all religions?
Either way, I’m reasonably certain that you have Eliezer’s “model” wrong. Eliezer doesn’t have a model of God, because he doesn’t believe in God, and Eliezer also knows other people have more than one models of what they label “god”.
good point, let me go back and refine, the model that I perceive Eliezer talking about. I think you are the one confused but only because i was confusing. my original point was that spending time working on proving or disproving a religion is a waste of time because of what I pointed out above, either we have a regular and consistent universe to discover or we are having the wool pulled over our eyes at every turn and which ever way it is, it’s meaningless to worry about it until we find any sort of solid evidence in either direction. I wasn’t even referring to a particular religion, just the general religious concept of an all powerful deity or deities of any sort. I was just trying to point out the irrationality of going about disproving something that (if we take a religious source at its word) can exists beyond the bonds of logic. Thanks for the reply and the criticism though, if you haven’t caught on, I’m new to here and looking for the help to improve.