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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2923 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 13, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I don’t have theory of mind for an educated person in the 21st century who believes in the Garden of Eden. My reaction is like Dawkins to Mehdi Hasan when Mehdi says he thinks Mohammed flew to heaven on a winged horse and split the moon. I know there are people who believe it, but I’m incapable of understanding how. I don’t want to rehash New Atheism either. I am mostly skeptical of adult converts, especially former rationalists and new atheists. People born into it I actually understand somewhat. I’ve read apologetics too like mere Christianity, and I just don’t get it.

Model the Christian God as a superintelligence, and the physical universe as a simulation. Then drop the usual model that any reality below the observable one should be assumed to work the way the observable one works. Consider that, if there were a deeper substrate reality under this one, you know nothing about how that reality operates at all, and none of our assumptions about the function of the universe necessarily obtain.

If our assumptions based on the observable reality don't work for higher realities, then that should signal we can't derive how/if God works from what we see in our world. No matter how much evidence there is in favor of Christianity, it provides no truth value.

If our assumptions based on the observable reality don't work for higher realities, then that should signal we can't derive how/if God works from what we see in our world.

Say rather, you can't derive the mechanics of higher realities from observation of lower ones, and this is a point that most people theorizing about stacked realities appear to miss.

But God is not a mechanism. If a willful intelligence in a higher reality wants to talk to you, it can. If it makes claims about your reality, you can compare those to what you observe of your reality. If it tells you things about the higher reality, you can choose to believe it or not, and the perceived accuracy of its statements about the reality you are in can lend some degree of evidence for trust to operate.

In any case, what is "truth value"?

If a willful intelligence from a higher reality actually talked to me, as you're correct to point out it could if it wanted, my questions towards Christians and interrogations of the truthfulness of their faith would be much fewer.

(Allegedly divinely-inspired words of mortal men, "signs", feelings and vibes are no proper replacement for a conversation in my book. If it wanted to talk to me, it could talk to me.)

Are you familiar with the atheist arguments that God's relationship to us could not possibly be loving, because it's based on coercion through threats and bribes? In my view, there's a pretty solid argument that it has to be this way for our choice to be freely made.

Interrogation of truthfulness is a good thing; my main objection is that most people I see attempting it seem to me to be doing it poorly: strict Materialists incapable of recognizing breaks in Materialism, for example.

You could argue that any relationship built on communication with a higher entity would necessarily be one built on coercion, sure. But without communication there is no relationship. When one can't be sure if he's speaking with God or with the echoes of his own mind refracted through religious culture, where does freely made choice even come into it?

When one can't be sure if he's speaking with God or with the echoes of his own mind refracted through religious culture, where does freely made choice even come into it?

Why do you need to be sure? Most (all?) major and highly consequential decisions you make in your life, you have to make without being "sure". Why should this one be different? You can, if you choose, believe in God. You can, if you choose, proceed under the axiom that he has communicated, and even that he continues to communicate. Many people do this, and many of those who do report good results. You can do likewise or not as you prefer.

You can argue that things ought to work a certain way or not at all, but this isn't generally how the world works in the cases where we can test it, and if others don't agree with your logic, why be confident that the way you think it ought to be is basic reality, and not your own biases and models echoing back to you?

Being unsure about some aspects of our reality and being unsure about God are very different kinds of unsure, as you've highlighted with your model of layered realities.

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