[FoRK] Terms - Practicing Science: Secular vs. Religious Ideology

[Jef Allbright]

On 1/12/08, Sat N <sateesh.narahari at gmail.com> wrote:

> The problem with atheists like Richard Dawkins is that they exhibit a
> level of contempt for any believers that is unjustified and flat out
> wrong. ( For record, Dawkins asserts that he is not yet fully
> convinced that God does not exist ).

For the record, I agree that such contempt for the person is morally
wrong, while contempt for such belief systems is commendable.

<snip>

> Regarding Jeff A's question on how devout Christians would deal with
> Bayes rule, I guess they would deal with it the same way Reverand
> Thomas Bayes dealt with :).

Hehe.  That thought was nudging me as I hit send.  I don't know why I
let it get past.

I think it's worth pointing out that belief is indeed inherently
subjective, and Bayes' theorem makes that clear.  But apparently not
so clear (at least from what I read in several items about Unwin) is
that Bayes theorem is not so much about static probability, but how we
update our probabilities -- about how we **update** our beliefs.

And this gets back to my point about coherence:  It seems to me that a
Christian using Bayes would find (no matter what their starting point)
that increasing evidence leads to decreasing belief in god(s) and the
privileged words of religious texts.  This is also the point of
Aumann's Agreement Theorem -- not that rational individuals can't
disagree, but that they can't rationally agree to disagree.

- Jef