If you’ve heard of Elizier Yudkowsky, you’ve probably heard of the Sequences, his collection of online essays about how to do rationality better. If you’ve heard of neither Yudkowsky nor the sequences, imagine if Carl Sagan was a 21st century autodidact instead of a 20th century scientist, obsessed with inventing alien intelligence instead of finding it in the heavens, but equally interested in dispelling antiscientific ideas. (Okay, maybe I’m overselling this a bit. Please don’t tell him.)
If you are new to this stuff, but happen to be reading Skeptic Ink, there is a good chance that you will enjoy the essays in which Yudkowsky discusses the intersection of scientific thinking and religious faith. Here is a quick teaser, from an essay titled Religion’s Claim to be Non-Disprovable:
The earliest account I know of a scientific experiment is, ironically, the story of Elijah and the priests of Baal.
The people of Israel are wavering between Jehovah and Baal, so Elijah announces that he will conduct an experiment to settle it – quite a novel concept in those days! The priests of Baal will place their bull on an altar, and Elijah will place Jehovah’s bull on an altar, but neither will be allowed to start the fire; whichever God is real will call down fire on His sacrifice. The priests of Baal serve as control group for Elijah – the same wooden fuel, the same bull, and the same priests making invocations, but to a false god. Then Elijah pours water on his altar – ruining the experimental symmetry, but this was back in the early days – to signify deliberate acceptance of the burden of proof, like needing a 0.05 significance level. The fire comes down on Elijah’s altar, which is the experimental observation. The watching people of Israel shout “The Lord is God!” – peer review.
And then the people haul the 450 priests of Baal down to the river Kishon and slit their throats. This is stern, but necessary. You must firmly discard the falsified hypothesis, and do so swiftly, before it can generate excuses to protect itself. If the priests of Baal are allowed to survive, they will start babbling about how religion is a separate magisterium which can be neither proven nor disproven.
Great stuff, right? The entire collection has recently been sorted, edited, partially rewritten, and released as an affordable Kindle book which I’ve found so terribly convenient that I bought one for myself and another for my wife. (There are devices scattered throughout the house, and she is usually logged in to most of them.)
I’m trying to pace myself on this read through, so I’m only reading one chapter a day. Today is the 225th day of the year, so I’m on chapter 225, which is just a bit over halfway through.
(For what it’s worth, I would recommend Zombies, The Movie as a teaser chapter if you’re into metaphysics and horror films.)
Share and enjoy!
