Took the survey, even though I’ve mostly only lurked.
I don’t know what an “ontologically basic mental entity” is. Also, I only left the Singularity question blank because I think it’s overall probability of happening is less that 50%.
Ontologically basic = at the lowest level of reality. For example, a table is not ontologically basic because there are no tables built into the laws of physics; but arguably, an electron is ontologically basic, since we can’t explain electrons in terms of anything smaller or more basic.
A standard claim of “robust” supernaturalism is that there are minds (mental entities) which cannot be understood in terms of any more basic constituents of reality. E.g., your soul is not made of almitons, and god is not made of pixie dust. God is supposed to be ontologically basic—he is built right into the lowest level of reality, no moving parts.
The importance of making that caveat is that it might be defensible to say that perhaps some alien created us, but that is not really what most people mean by a god, since presumably the alien has a nice (evolutionary?) causal history.
For my part, I have the same problem with “A vastly powerful God intentionally created human life” that I do with “A vastly powerful alien race intentionally created human life”; that “God” is ontologically basic and an alien race isn’t doesn’t particularly matter to how seriously I take those claims. For me to object to “God created human life” on the grounds that God is an ontologically basic mental entity would be to ignore what seems to me the much more important problem of purporting to explain phenomena by positing conveniently powerful entities for whom no other evidence exists.
Indeed both views have the problem you just spoke of, but the supernatural view has still another deficit, which we might call a failure to explain. When we posit aliens, we posit something which we presume has a causal history in terms of more fundamental parts, but when we posit a supernatural god or the like, we posit something vastly complex yet with no parts. It is as if the entire text of “Finnegans Wake” were the 3rd letter of the alphabet, or as if particle physics tried to explain the universe in terms of quarks, leptons, and dinner tables.
There is yet another point, which is that the alien “gods” are not what one might call “religiously adequate.” Nobody wants to worship mere fellow creatures, no matter that they might have created us.
I agree that positing a ontologically basic creator has one more deficit than positing an ontologically non-basic creator. I just don’t think that’s a particularly important place to draw the line. Far more important to me is the difference between positing an goal-directed creator vs. a non-goal-directed one, for example. To my mind, positing alien astronauts who came to Earth in order to create human beings is nearly as problematic as positing a god who did so, and focusing my attention on the extra deficit introduced by the latter is not a helpful use of my attention.
Re: “nobody wants to worship mere fellow creatures”… I’m not sure if I agree with this, as I’m not exactly sure what it means. Let me put it this way: if glowing entities descended from the sky tomorrow and demonstrated vast powers and claimed to have created humanity, I’m confident that >15% of humanity would worship those entities. If those entities were demonstrated to have internal structure and be constructed from more fundamental parts, that prediction doesn’t change. Do you disagree with either of those predictions?
If those entities were demonstrated to have internal structure and be constructed from more fundamental parts, that prediction doesn’t change.
You cheated! Have them begin by worshiping something, however you change its nature worshipers will still follow it.
If one of the glowing entities had an anti-gravity pack fail and fell a few hundred feet onto asphalt, rupturing its flesh, dismembering its limbs, and bursting its carcass open in a gory rain of blood and giblets on national television during first contact, you might not get 15%.
I infer that you agree with my predictions, despite considering the second one irrelevant to the question at hand. Confirm/deny?
I agree with you that in the case you describe, you probably wouldn’t get 15%. I don’t think that has much, if anything, to do with the entity’s basic ontological nature. I think it has a great deal to do with its demonstrated fallibility and mortality, as well as the emotional consequences of bloody deaths.
If glowing entities descended from the sky tomorrow and demonstrated vast powers and claimed to have created humanity and claimed to have internal structure and be constructed from more fundamental parts, I’m confident that >15% of humanity presented with all of those facts up front would come to worship those entities . I infer that you disagree. Confirm/deny?
There are emotional consequences to apparent perfection that we intellectually know isn’t real, so there is no neutral framework.
claimed to have internal structure and be constructed from more fundamental parts
That’s not a complete enough back story because they could be the agents of something else. If they don’t say more than this,15% might not worship them as more than angels. Let’s say they claim to have evolved from goop, just like all animals on Earth except humans, which they claim to have created. Then, I think “Nobody wants to worship mere fellow creatures” applies, though by “nobody” I mean “only certainly tens of millions”, and I’m not too confident in the 15% figure.
Agreed that there’s no neutral framework in the sense I think you mean it: however that meeting goes, it has emotional consequences.
We’re bouncing several scenarios around, so to avoid confusion I will label them… A is where they show up and don’t announce their ontological nature, B is where they show up and take a bloody pratfall, C is where they announce their non-basic ontological nature, D is where they show up and announce they evolved via natural selection of random modification.
If I understand what you mean by “worship them as angels,” I agree that, in C, most of the worshippers would likely do that. If that’s not what you meant by “worship” then I might agree with your original claim; I’m not sure.
I agree that most of the people who would worship them in C would not worship them in D. If D is what you meant by “fellow creatures” then I probably agree with your original claim.
It occurs to me that my reply is a little too qualitative, so I’ll try to put it into the language of probability. I have a prior on the idea that aliens created us; it is very low (maybe 100,000:1) but I feel quite certain that the proposition is physically meaningful, and if you handed me evidence I would gladly update in that direction. On the other hand, it is not immediately obvious to me that the idea of a supernatural god is physically or indeed logically meaningful. I’ll still grudgingly quote you a prior, but with a sinking feeling in my stomach.
Took the survey, even though I’ve mostly only lurked.
I don’t know what an “ontologically basic mental entity” is. Also, I only left the Singularity question blank because I think it’s overall probability of happening is less that 50%.
Ontologically basic = at the lowest level of reality. For example, a table is not ontologically basic because there are no tables built into the laws of physics; but arguably, an electron is ontologically basic, since we can’t explain electrons in terms of anything smaller or more basic.
A standard claim of “robust” supernaturalism is that there are minds (mental entities) which cannot be understood in terms of any more basic constituents of reality. E.g., your soul is not made of almitons, and god is not made of pixie dust. God is supposed to be ontologically basic—he is built right into the lowest level of reality, no moving parts.
The importance of making that caveat is that it might be defensible to say that perhaps some alien created us, but that is not really what most people mean by a god, since presumably the alien has a nice (evolutionary?) causal history.
This attitude often puzzles me.
For my part, I have the same problem with “A vastly powerful God intentionally created human life” that I do with “A vastly powerful alien race intentionally created human life”; that “God” is ontologically basic and an alien race isn’t doesn’t particularly matter to how seriously I take those claims. For me to object to “God created human life” on the grounds that God is an ontologically basic mental entity would be to ignore what seems to me the much more important problem of purporting to explain phenomena by positing conveniently powerful entities for whom no other evidence exists.
Indeed both views have the problem you just spoke of, but the supernatural view has still another deficit, which we might call a failure to explain. When we posit aliens, we posit something which we presume has a causal history in terms of more fundamental parts, but when we posit a supernatural god or the like, we posit something vastly complex yet with no parts. It is as if the entire text of “Finnegans Wake” were the 3rd letter of the alphabet, or as if particle physics tried to explain the universe in terms of quarks, leptons, and dinner tables.
There is yet another point, which is that the alien “gods” are not what one might call “religiously adequate.” Nobody wants to worship mere fellow creatures, no matter that they might have created us.
I agree that positing a ontologically basic creator has one more deficit than positing an ontologically non-basic creator. I just don’t think that’s a particularly important place to draw the line. Far more important to me is the difference between positing an goal-directed creator vs. a non-goal-directed one, for example. To my mind, positing alien astronauts who came to Earth in order to create human beings is nearly as problematic as positing a god who did so, and focusing my attention on the extra deficit introduced by the latter is not a helpful use of my attention.
Re: “nobody wants to worship mere fellow creatures”… I’m not sure if I agree with this, as I’m not exactly sure what it means. Let me put it this way: if glowing entities descended from the sky tomorrow and demonstrated vast powers and claimed to have created humanity, I’m confident that >15% of humanity would worship those entities. If those entities were demonstrated to have internal structure and be constructed from more fundamental parts, that prediction doesn’t change. Do you disagree with either of those predictions?
You cheated! Have them begin by worshiping something, however you change its nature worshipers will still follow it.
If one of the glowing entities had an anti-gravity pack fail and fell a few hundred feet onto asphalt, rupturing its flesh, dismembering its limbs, and bursting its carcass open in a gory rain of blood and giblets on national television during first contact, you might not get 15%.
I infer that you agree with my predictions, despite considering the second one irrelevant to the question at hand. Confirm/deny?
I agree with you that in the case you describe, you probably wouldn’t get 15%. I don’t think that has much, if anything, to do with the entity’s basic ontological nature. I think it has a great deal to do with its demonstrated fallibility and mortality, as well as the emotional consequences of bloody deaths.
If glowing entities descended from the sky tomorrow and demonstrated vast powers and claimed to have created humanity and claimed to have internal structure and be constructed from more fundamental parts, I’m confident that >15% of humanity presented with all of those facts up front would come to worship those entities . I infer that you disagree. Confirm/deny?
Confirm
There are emotional consequences to apparent perfection that we intellectually know isn’t real, so there is no neutral framework.
That’s not a complete enough back story because they could be the agents of something else. If they don’t say more than this,15% might not worship them as more than angels. Let’s say they claim to have evolved from goop, just like all animals on Earth except humans, which they claim to have created. Then, I think “Nobody wants to worship mere fellow creatures” applies, though by “nobody” I mean “only certainly tens of millions”, and I’m not too confident in the 15% figure.
Agreed that there’s no neutral framework in the sense I think you mean it: however that meeting goes, it has emotional consequences.
We’re bouncing several scenarios around, so to avoid confusion I will label them… A is where they show up and don’t announce their ontological nature, B is where they show up and take a bloody pratfall, C is where they announce their non-basic ontological nature, D is where they show up and announce they evolved via natural selection of random modification.
If I understand what you mean by “worship them as angels,” I agree that, in C, most of the worshippers would likely do that. If that’s not what you meant by “worship” then I might agree with your original claim; I’m not sure.
I agree that most of the people who would worship them in C would not worship them in D. If D is what you meant by “fellow creatures” then I probably agree with your original claim.
It occurs to me that my reply is a little too qualitative, so I’ll try to put it into the language of probability. I have a prior on the idea that aliens created us; it is very low (maybe 100,000:1) but I feel quite certain that the proposition is physically meaningful, and if you handed me evidence I would gladly update in that direction. On the other hand, it is not immediately obvious to me that the idea of a supernatural god is physically or indeed logically meaningful. I’ll still grudgingly quote you a prior, but with a sinking feeling in my stomach.