Imagine entire humanity gets wiped out except a small untouched tribal civilization in Amazonian rainforest. Over time their numbers grow. Assuming for some reason they do not have access to any previous human invention is this tribe capable of discovering laws of motion, laws of thermodynamics etc. ?
I will be on **Yes**. Because after all it is the same reality everyone else experiences. Their names and notations might differ but they will figure it out.
What are the chances they will also figure out about Jesus, Adam and Even, Krishna Mohammad, Ganesha or Buddha ? ZERO. Without external input none of these people or their religious books will be reinvented. That is enough for me to believe that these religions and their Gods are false in the details. But, again, I do think this new civilization will have its own Gods, its own religious customs and some notion of heaven and hell. So I do think there is some common core to world religions which has some utility to human existence. These things need not be "true" as in having a basis in physical reality but just like Markets and Trade, we can think of these as simply part of human behaviour.
The only religious philosophy that I know of, which could get independently get discovered is Advaita Vedanta. The notion that the only thing that exists is a singular consciousness. Something that Shrodinger almost independently alludes too (though he was aware of existence of Advaita Vedanta).
This is an interesting thought experiment, but you are smuggling an assumption: that such a thing is possible to happen. From the materialist point of view, of course it is. In the case of quite a few of these major religions, it’s promised that it won’t happen. The moment it does, these religions are of course invalid. It’s a kind of asserting the conclusion.
A much more interesting question to ask is, if we find aliens, will they have heard of Jesus? I don’t think this explicitly invalidates Christianity, but it does raise a bunch of questions about the nature of the incarnation.
> The moment it does, these religions are of course invalid.
A personal anecdote here is that when I visited Gates of Artic national park in Alaska, the local Eskimo guide would brag on about how his culture is thousands of years old. Later he took me to "Church" where he showed Jesus sitting on a Caribou as their God. I asked him politely how Jesus is their God or how they are Christian when they did not even know about existence of Christianity 60 years ago. He responded tell me that the Priest who discovered them in 40s or so told them the ultimate truth "Eskimos were all Christians throughout their existence but did not know that fact until recently".
In a sense the thought experiment I talked about has already happened. Countless societies time and now have been found to have not heard about Christianity and had developed their religions and spiritual traditions. But the moment Christians discover them they insist that God has now revealed them so the Gospel can be spread to them.
If Aliens from Planet Zhytteuer were to arrive on earth I am sure a religious person would say, God has sent them to learn about Jesus (or whatever is the favourite God).
Reminds me about the debate around whether Adam should have a navel. Religious scholars settled the problem by saying while he need not have a navel God made it appear for him to have a navel just to maintain aesthetic consistency with rest of humanity.
If aliens came and said, “yeah we had that same story on our planet, some of us think it’s real, others don’t”, - and they had different biology - this would be a crisis for lots of Christians. Having them say, “we never heard of him” would be far easier for them to handle.
Have you ever tried conducting the experiment of building an “agree/disagree” graph between the different major faiths of the world?
There is so much overlap between numerous different traditions across cultures, it seems to be totally in line with evidence-based thinking to presume that these are so similar because there’s a reality they’re trying to map out. It makes sense that they differ because that reality appears to be quite subtle.
Without constructing the graph, it’s very easy to dismiss them all as seemingly contradictory. But if you go deep in a number of them, I think you’ll find way too much overlap to dismiss the possibility that they’re all pointing at something real.
I'm probably stealing this, most likely from Hayek:
What extant religions have in common is that they have survived. Thus, they must be promoting something which enhances human survival.
Now, I know nothing about comparative religions, am a cultural Christian, but when I look at the 10 commandments, I read that three of them say "I'm boss". OK, if I'm not boss, why should you behave the way I say?
Keep the sabbath says don't work yourself to death when we are calorie constrained.
Honor your father and mother -- intergenerational exchange.
No adultery -- keep the family intact.
As for the rest, there is private property, including life.
Most viruses do not kill their hosts, as doing so usually cuts off their own ability to replicate and spread. Evolutionarily, the most successful viruses are those that cause mild symptoms, allowing the host to walk around and transmit the virus to others.
Evolution takes time to weed out errors. We do not know how much time evolution would take to weed out errors in religion. Hence, it is pure speculation to say that religions must be promoting human survival.
I think the space of viable strategies for perpetuating a culture through long periods of time is extremely narrow, and is basically convergent with what we would typically call religion. I think the word God is just a personification of “life” or “truth”. Existence was never a valid question.
I see a fourth, rather Lovecraftian scenario. Some sort of powerful supernatural entities exist, they may have even created the world but their motivations and goals are completely out of reach of humans. God(s) exist but all religions are completely off the mark and there is no way to even begin to understand the theological reality by observing the physical one, maybe it is even out of human reach to comprehend it at all much like an ant will never learn anything about human motivations.
Not my favourite scenario but it is logically possible.
If not, then I think you'll enjoy it. It's obviously at least somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but I think it represents some very serious conversations people have been having about decision theory as it applies to less-than-ideal agents in a mathematical multiverse, and it might tickle your 'moral realism' and 'economics' buttons a little.
It's also pretty obviously the driving philosophy behind various enjoyable Golarian-based glowfics that you may have read!
I have a very good friend who claims to be Atheist, but their Atheism is just about The Most Roman Catholic Atheism I've ever encountered., it being Specifically the Roman Catholic god of her upbringing in which they disbelieve.
Remind me of Garrison Keilor's quip, "Most everyone in Lake Wobegone is Lutheran, especially the Atheists. They're certain it's the Lutheran god they don't believe in."
This may be a variant of 3, but it seems like the truth on such things is subjective as well as contextual. In other words, truth can be practical.
For a person on a sports team, their truth can be that other players generally follow the rules and that there's no need to even think about rule-breakers very much. This is more true for high-tier professional play than for the local basketball hoop at a playground. A pro should not waste their time on things like someone just "forgetting" the correct score. A person playing mostly in their neighborhood faces this problem all the time, though, and either needs to live with it or to keep score on some kind of device.
For a person going into surgery, there is little harm and a lot of good in releasing yourself to God's will. You can't do anything but suffer by trying to second-guess the hospital. You can easily make things worse.
For the surgeon, it's a different story.
Our eyes are assuredly the same way. We see the colors that our sun produces and that show useful things to a human in our current ecosystem. It took a wild leap of imagination to deduce that infrared radiation exists at all, and the initial discussions used awkward phrases like "calorific rays". Check out this impressively awkward abstract by William Herschel:
"Having thus determined the subject of his investigation, the Doctor distinguishes heat into six different kinds; whereof three are solar, and three terrestrial. These, however, are reducible into three general divisions, each of the solar and terrestrial kinds resembling each other respectively. The first is the heat produced by luminous bodies, whether by the sun or by terrestrial flames. The second comprehends the heat of coloured radiants, such as that of the sun separated by a prism, and that of culinary fires openly exposed. And the third relates to heat from radiants, where neither light nor colour can be perceived; such as the heat of invisible solar rays, refracted by a prism, which have been the subject of a former paper; and the terrestrial heat from fires inclosed in stoves, and from metals heated short of the lowest degree of incandescence."
Nowadays, the second and third would usually be considered the same, because they are only distinguished by whether the human eye can detect them. I want to say the first would also be considered the same, but I'm not sure if I understand the distinction being made.
I generally have no use for religion. I tell people I am areligious. If they press it, I ask them how you can shrug your shoulders over how God can ordain wars and political murders, but get wrought up over abortion? If God ordained a rape, why could He not also ordain the followup abortion?
It usually at least shuts them up. But it really gets my dander up when they profess to know God's mysterious ways, but can't explain them.
I recall having a conversation with a religious (Christian) friend. After a lot of explanation and what seemed to me like a misuse of mathematical language he said 'what if God is just the infinite'.
My response was essentially, sure, if you want to define God in that way that's fine. But the more specific claims you make about it/him (came to earth and was crucified, born of a virgin, listens to prayers) the more it becomes nonsensical to use the same word for both.
I think religions make too many specific claims to even be considered an imperfect reflection of something deeper which is misunderstood.
If there is something supernatural we don't understand, any specific claims about it are going to be mostly, if not entirely wrong. I think the jump from existing religions is going to be less like Neuton -> Einstein and more like thinking the sky was solid lapis lazuli -> understanding how light scatters.
I’ve noticed a recurring pattern: the people who share my minority political views often share my minority religious views as well. I doubt this is accidental. Both seem to come from the same cognitive architecture — a preference for individual judgment over authority, skepticism toward tribal narratives, and a habit of treating beliefs as provisional models rather than identities. When those traits are present, they tend to produce similar conclusions in both politics and religion, even though the domains are very different.
Summarizes and highlights a human strength and frailty in accepting science of any kind. Science came from religion, after all.
I won't belabor the point that most people despise and actively resist economics because they don't like the constraints. But it is, at least in an everyday sense, costless to ignore. In the large, it is very costly to ignore. See the Great Depression, e.g., but that doesn't happen every day.
The only reason classical physics is not contested by non-physicists is that not acting in accordance with its principles is costly. Stealing from Alan Sokal, you can jump from my 25th story balcony only once! The proverbial Everyman's beliefs about quantum physics are completely irrelevant for they are completely costless.
Contemporary anti-science beliefs have a similar structure. Those supporting the idea that sex is choosable by minors, e.g., are externalizing the cost, and pursuing a benefit of their own, whatever it may be. Climate activists are no different.
Imagine entire humanity gets wiped out except a small untouched tribal civilization in Amazonian rainforest. Over time their numbers grow. Assuming for some reason they do not have access to any previous human invention is this tribe capable of discovering laws of motion, laws of thermodynamics etc. ?
I will be on **Yes**. Because after all it is the same reality everyone else experiences. Their names and notations might differ but they will figure it out.
What are the chances they will also figure out about Jesus, Adam and Even, Krishna Mohammad, Ganesha or Buddha ? ZERO. Without external input none of these people or their religious books will be reinvented. That is enough for me to believe that these religions and their Gods are false in the details. But, again, I do think this new civilization will have its own Gods, its own religious customs and some notion of heaven and hell. So I do think there is some common core to world religions which has some utility to human existence. These things need not be "true" as in having a basis in physical reality but just like Markets and Trade, we can think of these as simply part of human behaviour.
The only religious philosophy that I know of, which could get independently get discovered is Advaita Vedanta. The notion that the only thing that exists is a singular consciousness. Something that Shrodinger almost independently alludes too (though he was aware of existence of Advaita Vedanta).
This is an interesting thought experiment, but you are smuggling an assumption: that such a thing is possible to happen. From the materialist point of view, of course it is. In the case of quite a few of these major religions, it’s promised that it won’t happen. The moment it does, these religions are of course invalid. It’s a kind of asserting the conclusion.
A much more interesting question to ask is, if we find aliens, will they have heard of Jesus? I don’t think this explicitly invalidates Christianity, but it does raise a bunch of questions about the nature of the incarnation.
> The moment it does, these religions are of course invalid.
A personal anecdote here is that when I visited Gates of Artic national park in Alaska, the local Eskimo guide would brag on about how his culture is thousands of years old. Later he took me to "Church" where he showed Jesus sitting on a Caribou as their God. I asked him politely how Jesus is their God or how they are Christian when they did not even know about existence of Christianity 60 years ago. He responded tell me that the Priest who discovered them in 40s or so told them the ultimate truth "Eskimos were all Christians throughout their existence but did not know that fact until recently".
In a sense the thought experiment I talked about has already happened. Countless societies time and now have been found to have not heard about Christianity and had developed their religions and spiritual traditions. But the moment Christians discover them they insist that God has now revealed them so the Gospel can be spread to them.
If Aliens from Planet Zhytteuer were to arrive on earth I am sure a religious person would say, God has sent them to learn about Jesus (or whatever is the favourite God).
Reminds me about the debate around whether Adam should have a navel. Religious scholars settled the problem by saying while he need not have a navel God made it appear for him to have a navel just to maintain aesthetic consistency with rest of humanity.
If aliens came and said, “yeah we had that same story on our planet, some of us think it’s real, others don’t”, - and they had different biology - this would be a crisis for lots of Christians. Having them say, “we never heard of him” would be far easier for them to handle.
Have you ever tried conducting the experiment of building an “agree/disagree” graph between the different major faiths of the world?
There is so much overlap between numerous different traditions across cultures, it seems to be totally in line with evidence-based thinking to presume that these are so similar because there’s a reality they’re trying to map out. It makes sense that they differ because that reality appears to be quite subtle.
Without constructing the graph, it’s very easy to dismiss them all as seemingly contradictory. But if you go deep in a number of them, I think you’ll find way too much overlap to dismiss the possibility that they’re all pointing at something real.
I'm probably stealing this, most likely from Hayek:
What extant religions have in common is that they have survived. Thus, they must be promoting something which enhances human survival.
Now, I know nothing about comparative religions, am a cultural Christian, but when I look at the 10 commandments, I read that three of them say "I'm boss". OK, if I'm not boss, why should you behave the way I say?
Keep the sabbath says don't work yourself to death when we are calorie constrained.
Honor your father and mother -- intergenerational exchange.
No adultery -- keep the family intact.
As for the rest, there is private property, including life.
Pretty modern, I would say!
What all extant viruses have in common is that they have survived. Thus, they must be promoting something which enhances host survival.
Most viruses do not kill their hosts, as doing so usually cuts off their own ability to replicate and spread. Evolutionarily, the most successful viruses are those that cause mild symptoms, allowing the host to walk around and transmit the virus to others.
Yes, but viruses are generally deleterious to the carrier.
Evolution takes time to weed out errors. We do not know how much time evolution would take to weed out errors in religion. Hence, it is pure speculation to say that religions must be promoting human survival.
Cultural evolution proceeds like greased lightning compared to biological evolution.
I think the space of viable strategies for perpetuating a culture through long periods of time is extremely narrow, and is basically convergent with what we would typically call religion. I think the word God is just a personification of “life” or “truth”. Existence was never a valid question.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
I would go so far as to say I'm certain God exists. https://philosophicalmuser.blogspot.com/2021/05/on-being-certain-god-exists.html
I see a fourth, rather Lovecraftian scenario. Some sort of powerful supernatural entities exist, they may have even created the world but their motivations and goals are completely out of reach of humans. God(s) exist but all religions are completely off the mark and there is no way to even begin to understand the theological reality by observing the physical one, maybe it is even out of human reach to comprehend it at all much like an ant will never learn anything about human motivations.
Not my favourite scenario but it is logically possible.
I presume you've read:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/04/01/the-hour-i-first-believed/
If not, then I think you'll enjoy it. It's obviously at least somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but I think it represents some very serious conversations people have been having about decision theory as it applies to less-than-ideal agents in a mathematical multiverse, and it might tickle your 'moral realism' and 'economics' buttons a little.
It's also pretty obviously the driving philosophy behind various enjoyable Golarian-based glowfics that you may have read!
I have a very good friend who claims to be Atheist, but their Atheism is just about The Most Roman Catholic Atheism I've ever encountered., it being Specifically the Roman Catholic god of her upbringing in which they disbelieve.
Remind me of Garrison Keilor's quip, "Most everyone in Lake Wobegone is Lutheran, especially the Atheists. They're certain it's the Lutheran god they don't believe in."
This may be a variant of 3, but it seems like the truth on such things is subjective as well as contextual. In other words, truth can be practical.
For a person on a sports team, their truth can be that other players generally follow the rules and that there's no need to even think about rule-breakers very much. This is more true for high-tier professional play than for the local basketball hoop at a playground. A pro should not waste their time on things like someone just "forgetting" the correct score. A person playing mostly in their neighborhood faces this problem all the time, though, and either needs to live with it or to keep score on some kind of device.
For a person going into surgery, there is little harm and a lot of good in releasing yourself to God's will. You can't do anything but suffer by trying to second-guess the hospital. You can easily make things worse.
For the surgeon, it's a different story.
Our eyes are assuredly the same way. We see the colors that our sun produces and that show useful things to a human in our current ecosystem. It took a wild leap of imagination to deduce that infrared radiation exists at all, and the initial discussions used awkward phrases like "calorific rays". Check out this impressively awkward abstract by William Herschel:
"Having thus determined the subject of his investigation, the Doctor distinguishes heat into six different kinds; whereof three are solar, and three terrestrial. These, however, are reducible into three general divisions, each of the solar and terrestrial kinds resembling each other respectively. The first is the heat produced by luminous bodies, whether by the sun or by terrestrial flames. The second comprehends the heat of coloured radiants, such as that of the sun separated by a prism, and that of culinary fires openly exposed. And the third relates to heat from radiants, where neither light nor colour can be perceived; such as the heat of invisible solar rays, refracted by a prism, which have been the subject of a former paper; and the terrestrial heat from fires inclosed in stoves, and from metals heated short of the lowest degree of incandescence."
Nowadays, the second and third would usually be considered the same, because they are only distinguished by whether the human eye can detect them. I want to say the first would also be considered the same, but I'm not sure if I understand the distinction being made.
I generally have no use for religion. I tell people I am areligious. If they press it, I ask them how you can shrug your shoulders over how God can ordain wars and political murders, but get wrought up over abortion? If God ordained a rape, why could He not also ordain the followup abortion?
It usually at least shuts them up. But it really gets my dander up when they profess to know God's mysterious ways, but can't explain them.
I recall having a conversation with a religious (Christian) friend. After a lot of explanation and what seemed to me like a misuse of mathematical language he said 'what if God is just the infinite'.
My response was essentially, sure, if you want to define God in that way that's fine. But the more specific claims you make about it/him (came to earth and was crucified, born of a virgin, listens to prayers) the more it becomes nonsensical to use the same word for both.
I think religions make too many specific claims to even be considered an imperfect reflection of something deeper which is misunderstood.
If there is something supernatural we don't understand, any specific claims about it are going to be mostly, if not entirely wrong. I think the jump from existing religions is going to be less like Neuton -> Einstein and more like thinking the sky was solid lapis lazuli -> understanding how light scatters.
I’ve noticed a recurring pattern: the people who share my minority political views often share my minority religious views as well. I doubt this is accidental. Both seem to come from the same cognitive architecture — a preference for individual judgment over authority, skepticism toward tribal narratives, and a habit of treating beliefs as provisional models rather than identities. When those traits are present, they tend to produce similar conclusions in both politics and religion, even though the domains are very different.
My only objection to this post is that option 1 is a possibility but not at all interesting. The absence of teleology can make anything uninteresting.
Summarizes and highlights a human strength and frailty in accepting science of any kind. Science came from religion, after all.
I won't belabor the point that most people despise and actively resist economics because they don't like the constraints. But it is, at least in an everyday sense, costless to ignore. In the large, it is very costly to ignore. See the Great Depression, e.g., but that doesn't happen every day.
The only reason classical physics is not contested by non-physicists is that not acting in accordance with its principles is costly. Stealing from Alan Sokal, you can jump from my 25th story balcony only once! The proverbial Everyman's beliefs about quantum physics are completely irrelevant for they are completely costless.
Contemporary anti-science beliefs have a similar structure. Those supporting the idea that sex is choosable by minors, e.g., are externalizing the cost, and pursuing a benefit of their own, whatever it may be. Climate activists are no different.
Love the post!