[extropy-chat] Atheists launch inquisition...

[Damien Broderick]

At 09:12 PM 11/26/2004 -0800, Mike Lorrey wrote:

>[I:]
>proving a negative is impossible, ergo the belief that god does not
>exist is based on an impossible assumption and therefore is an article
>of faith.
>[II:]
>the atheist belief that we live in an unsimulated
>universe is arguing against the odds and therefore reaches a similar,
>but not quite so absolute, degree of impossibility.


Mike, the first of your claims above is irrelevant and the second is a 
classic case of bait and switch. Both fail if the definition of `god' is 
used in any of the ways current among contemporary theologians. By 
apparently making a claim in defence of current religious beliefs while 
actually arguing in favor of a sort of Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, you 
entirely beg the interesting issues at the heart of Christianity, Islam, 
Judaism and indeed any form of modern faith more sophisticated than 
scientology.

The argument against traditional accounts of deity does not require proving 
a negative; it simply points out the abundant incoherence of those 
attributes classically ascribed to a divinity. It is exactly like denying 
the reality (outside of words lacking a referent) of phenomena such as 
`square circle' or `pitch-black light'. Any god worth its worship is held 
to be timeless and incomposable, yet capable of planning, thinking, 
changing its mind, communicating in temporal sequence (all features of time 
and division of parts), and multiplying entities beyond itself. So claim I 
collapses instantly, except for fans of Tertulian. Nobody rational needs to 
disprove what cannot be reasonably conceived and asserted.

The key switch after the bait in claim II is to draw upon the idea that one 
turtle of the kind we know (and are) has been built or `fathered' by 
another turtle of the same general kind, one layer down--and then calling 
the second turtle a `god'. This is apologetics at the level  of a village 
parson. No religious person today construes deity as a sort of heavenly 
hacker running an exaflop computer; that would be regarded as vulgar to the 
point of blasphemy.

Suppose this simulation postulate is correct, however, as it might be. What 
sorts of religious or ethical consequences follow for human conduct and 
expectations? Yes, we might be erased if the hacker gets tired of running 
the sim; we might find (or be) glitches in the code. But what sanction 
could there possibly be for *worship* of such a programmer? What moral 
authority would such a `god' have over us, other than brute force? What 
duties would be entailed upon us (except, perhaps, self-respecting revolt 
against its arbitrary dictats if they were disclosed in a convincing 
fashion)? As Robin Hanson has pointed out, the specific ethical precepts 
that seem to follow from the simulation hypothesis seem distinctly 
unpleasant; one is advised to act in ways at odds with any of the normative 
principles in existing faiths and humanist doctrines. So once again, this 
bait and switch leaves us with a mockery of what theists *think* they're 
claiming to be true (but which we already know, by rebuttal of claim I, to 
be simply incoherent in any case).

Damien Broderick