[extropy-chat] Atheists launch inquisition...

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

Hal Finney wrote:
> 
> How would you classify someone who thought it was extremely improbable
> that any of these Gods existed?  Atheist or agnostic?  Does it make a
> difference how improbable they judge it to be?  Is there some specific
> probability level below which a reasonable person could not (in your
> judgement) classify God's existence?

I'd say that someone who assigns a probability of less than 1/googolplex to 
a given classical theological deity is being overconfident.  Saying that 
said deity is internally inconsistent is not a valid defense; there will be 
a probability that you are mistaken about what is logically impossible.

Googolplex = 10^(10^100).  That's enough room to fit a pretty huge amount 
of Kolmogorov complexity, which is what we use to quantify the prior of 
Occam's Razor.  The probability would be greater than 1/googolplex, but 
less than 1/googol (which is *not* enough room to fit a decent amount of 
Kolmogorov complexity - e.g. you could not encode the Bible in log2(googol) 
bits.)

Of course, as Ben pointed out, the moral indefensibility of God has nothing 
to do with God existing or not.  Torturing anyone who refuses to worship 
you or slaughtering children as a lesson to their parents is WRONG, period, 
end of story.  I am tempted to say, "Let us make no distinction between the 
terrorists and those who worship them", but theists don't deserve that. 
Otherwise nice rabbis are somehow capable of reading the Bible and not 
taking moral notice of the part where God deliberately slaughters children 
who happened to be in the wrong place in the wrong time (Egypt during the 
Ten Plagues).  That part of the brain gets suspended somehow.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence