This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The issue with mutually exclusive religions is that if you pull P(A) and it doesn't pay out, actually it was another faith all along, then you face infinite suffering for being an infidel who foolishly worshipped Jesus as God. You are incentivized to believe in whatever religion has the greatest punishment for nonbelievers to minimize your downside. But then that incentivizes others to make up religions with increasingly worse punishments in the afterlife in order to force you to adhere to the demands of their faith.
It is just not sustainable as there is no way to distinguish between a religion that is made up by humans and one that is actually correct. Playing that game is hopeless from the start.
Interestingly, the base Pascal wager makes sense without any infinite suffering at all. Regardless, there are a variety of ways of handling it, especially if your concern is that Roko (a person) is just making up a basilisk.
This seems to be your real objection, not the multiple religion concern. You think it's just impossible to actually assess anything involved, including probabilities. Presumably, that means it's also impossible for you to assess the probability that atheism is true.
Well yes. But we can prove that many things are true which flies in the face of established religions. For example evolution goes against the Christian creation myth. The sun doesn't actually go to the underworld every night like the ancient Egyptians thought, the earth simply rotates away from it. As far as I can tell, you can repeat this for most religions.
So while I can't prove that atheism is true, I can find arguments that make established religions less likely to be true. Even if that was not the case, Pascal's wager still doesn't work. It is not safer for me to subscribe to a religion than it is to be a nonbeliever, as not only are many religions mutually exclusive, several are much harsher to those religions they are directly opposed to than they are to people who simply don't believe.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
My understanding is that Islam does not guarantee salvation, even to Muslims, and that similarly non-Muslims do not necessarily go to eternal torment – which makes the game theory slightly more complex than this. I'd need to do more research into Islam to say this for sure, though, so take that with a grain of salt.
From what I understand most religions say that even people who do not believe in them will be treated differently in the afterlife based on whether or not they are virtuous, and most religions have a fairly similar idea of virtuous behavior. Based on that, I think the game theory suggests that living virtuously as a hedge is a good idea, but I am not sure I've ever seen anyone go down this rabbit hole (either in their personal life or from an abstract game theory perspective).
Surely it's actually fairly easy to determine that some religions are made up by humans...
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link