[extropy-chat] Atheism in Decline

[Damien Broderick]

At 11:09 AM 3/8/2005 -0800, Hal Finney wrote:

>Damien Broderick writes:
> > ... I don't think Bayes can help; one
> > would be required to leap outside the system of empirical evidence and
> > recurrence.
>
>I am amazed at the suggestion that there is a potential phenomenon,
>one which would cause actual effects in the world where we live, for which
>we cannot even in principle ascribe a probability to its existence and
>reality.  If true, this is a dagger at the heart of rationality itself

And so it is claimed. This is the difficult domain where people start using 
the word "being" with a capital B. Short of a dissertation on Heidegger, 
Barth and a batch of other dubious, difficult thinkers, the best shorthand, 
approachable summary I can think of is John Updike's novel ROGER'S VERSION. 
One callow character attempts to prove the existence of God using a 
computerised search, while the jaded but learned minister adheres to the 
mysterious and elevated doctrine of Karl Barth. The reason I cite Updike, 
in preference to some formal theologian, is because he conveys rather well 
some sense of the lived impact of such metaphysics.

>of whether you see the reason for the difficulty in applying Bayesian
>reasoning as simple ignorance of historical facts.

That might be a problem in respect of an old-fashioned and primitive 
theology like Mike Lorrey's simulation-creating God or cosmic hacker, one 
that might be resolved by a time viewer or clairvoyant. For a sophisticated 
theology of the post-Barthian kind, it's more that any inductive process, 
or even an abductive inference from facts, misses the metaphysical gravity 
and strangeness of the situation. Does this make any sense? Not to me, but 
these are the sorts of claims that are made by theological sophisticates, 
and I'm not sure that the extropy list is the place to find them.

Damien Broderick