Dot, Dot, Dot Quotes

“To lay it more bare, look at how the varying faiths interpret the same evidence. Fundamentalist Christians have interpreted earthquakes as punishment from God for giving homosexuals a chance at equal treatment before the law. Fundamentalist Muslims have interpreted earthquakes as warnings from Allah for women dressing immodestly. Some more liberal believers have interpreted these events as having been caused or allowed to happen so as to teach people personal lessons of strength or compassion. Neither can these claims can be verified directly, nor do any of them have utilizable explanatory power. They also follow, and do not lead, belief. Notice, for instance, that the fundamentalists' claims could easily be tested (while the liberals' are exercises in solipsism). Unsurprisingly, however rigorously the tests were done, the fundamentalists' beliefs are unlikely to be shaken. This is how confirmation bias works.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“Thus, while perhaps we cannot assign a zero, almost surely, prior plausibility with regard to the existence of God, we can still make a clear statement about what direction the evidence is pushing the posterior. The posterior plausibility of the God hypothesis has been uniformly decreased as we've collected evidence that should bear upon that question. In Carrier's metaphor, the God hypotheses, in any form specific enough to consider, has lost millions of races and simply should not be bet upon to win any in the future.[25]”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“When considering the matter, it is important not to get taken in by the exchange of a possibility and a probability, or indeed a certainty. Apologists are quick to point out that there could possibly be an explanation for all of the suffering of the world and then conclude that there probably or definitely is one in God. Indeed, this is often the best line of defense that they have, and its goal is to obscure the reality that the probability of such explanations is abysmally low.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“Axioms have to be judged against how “self-evident” they really are, how useful they are, how little they assume, and in other such ways. This, then, is why the theistic worldview axioms seemed more reasonable in the past than now; we now see that the purported existence of God is not self-evident, has limited utility with little or no explanatory power, and yet assumes an awful lot.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“That is to say that the truth values of every proposition within the reach of the mathematical system are already determined, and mathematicians essentially explore the system to find those truth values. It has a real feeling of discovery to it, but the underlying axioms are where we made it up, to put it loosely. Since many of the simpler axioms are based on our “self-evident” experience of reality, the map closely matches the terrain, and it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking the description is reality.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“It's possible that nature doesn't really present the basis for the kind of logic we've been pretending it does all along. Indeed, brutish ideas like “the thing is here or it is not” have hinged upon understanding our macroscopic experience of reality, which appears not to hold at the sufficiently microscopic level. Quantum mechanics, then, makes for a good chance to impress the lesson again: the universe (reality) is not subject to our logic. Our logic is an abstract construct via which we attempt to understand what actually is.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“Kurt Gödel, who was able to prove in 1940 that given any axiomatic system that can produce arithmetic, we have to choose between completeness and coherence. Completeness means that the truth value of every statement in the system is determinable—that is that all statements can be assigned the appropriate truth value (usually true or false, for us). Coherence means that there are no contradictory statements, which is to say no paradoxes, within the system. We can have one or the other, but except in very special cases that have little applicability, we cannot have both.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“Mathematics is a subject with a rather severe barrier to entry. In fact, it is common for mathematicians to struggle in their personal lives with the fact that it is almost impossible to have a normal conversation about their work with almost anyone—which is surprisingly lonely at times.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“Mathematics provides a model of the world that we employ for our understanding of it, and this model shouldn't be confused with the reality it helps us to understand. This also happens to be a substantial part of how I view the idea of “God” now as well. I think of each idea of “God” as an informal, very poorly defined abstraction, and I see belief in God as a way to try to make sense of the world by means of a reification of the “God” abstraction.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“In fact, the kind of post hoc interpretation of evidence to fit a God hypothesis could be repeated effectively for the Force or any other suitably vague and yet potent fictional construction. That no one has seen anyone with the ability to manipulate the Force not only ignores (also incredible) claims made by those who believe in spiritual magic powers, say associated with esoteric martial arts, but it could be dismissed simply enough by pointing out that they simply haven't met a Jedi willing to demonstrate the ability. Eastern mystics and their adherents make this exact claim all the time when defending their own outrageous claims, and we have no trouble dismissing what they wish to pass as “evidence” for the phenomena.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“Technically, I should note, I made this argument against any conception of God that does things in the world, and I don't particularly need to make a case against abstract ideas called “God.” Indeed, the conclusion could be phrased alternatively as “God is almost surely an abstraction” instead of “God doesn't exist, almost surely.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“In general, then, bag analogy or not, the reason I suspect we feel like it is intuitive to do the impossible and put a uniform PDF on a space with infinite measure comes down to our having to ignore the vast majority of the values that comprise the infinite. We do this when we ultimately cheat and jump the gap to the strong limit cardinal that is infinity. Our ignorance of the majority of the values is so complete that we are too ignorant to realize we're ignoring them, and them is almost all of them.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“The frequentist approach argues that this is meaningful because if we roll the die a very large number of times, we will get close to one sixth of the total number of outcomes showing each individual value. The propensitist approach argues instead that this is meaningful because there are six equally likely faces dividing up a total probability of one, taking a more theoretical tack. The famous Law of Large Numbers connects the two approaches without resolving the debate.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“Substance dualism asserts that there are two kinds of fundamental substances, physical stuff and spiritual stuff, and it is a philosophical construction that isn't doing so well against examination in the marketplace of ideas—however well it seems to sell.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“the Peano Axioms that underlie number theory essentially suggest that infinity needs to exist (as an abstraction) and yet cannot show that it actually must, a finite God never provides security against the problem of simply arguing for a bigger God. Thus, eventually, they go infinite with it, even if doing so amounts only to a rhetorical trick. That they make their deity (necessarily?) abstract in the process apparently falls between the cracks. ”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“Can we say an abstraction called “God” exists, then? Perhaps we can, depending upon how the term “God” is defined. Indeed, I would argue that such an abstraction can be defined saliently. But we cannot conclude that “God” exists as a real agent, upon which the wide majority of religious belief is based, without physical evidence of it, and this conflation of the abstract and the actual is the source of many highly consequential errors. I'd also advise against calling such an abstract thing by the name “God,” since people will certainly be confused by it due to more common uses of the term.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“My claim here is that “God” is an abstract notion, not a real one, and whatever real-world utility that idea has, it certainly is not an active agent that causes or does things in the universe. The “God” that we often hear about is a conflation of the abstract with the numinous, the numinous with the real, and then a personification of the ideal on top of that.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“Anselm's “God” is that than which nothing higher can be conceived (see Chapter 16 for more on this important point). Therein lies his problem: we immediately realize that the moment we conceive of the highness of some conception of “God,” not only can we conceive of something higher, as “highness” implies a metric at least in principle, but the “God” we have conceived of is lower than almost every conceivable conception. This is true if “God” is rendered as finite in “highness,” and it is true if “God” is rendered as infinite in “highness.” There is no escaping the simple reality that Anselm's conception of “God,” upon which his ontological “proof” rests, is fatally flawed at the definition.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“A particular case that gets brought up often is whether or not omniscient “God” knows all of the infinitely many decimal places of irrational constants like  (this being only a countable infinity!).[12] The rather weak defense of this is to claim that there are abstract infinities that apply to things like numbers, and knowledge of these isn't really God's business since “God is actual.” This question-begging statement rather severely limits the concept of omniscience, however, and raises uncomfortable questions of whether or not “God” knows the newly found decimal values of  before the first computer calculates them. There is no point at which apologists like Craig can argue that God doesn't know the next value since a computer can conceivably calculate it eventually. Additionally, if such a computer, which need not be very complex, were eternal and outside of time, like apologists argue of God, then the computer would have calculated every value. Shouldn't God be able to calculate every value, then? What, I wonder, is being said about God with their evasive argument?”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“particular case that gets brought up often is whether or not omniscient “God” knows all of the infinitely many decimal places of irrational constants like  (this being only a countable infinity!).[12] The rather weak defense of this is to claim that there are abstract infinities that apply to things like numbers, and knowledge of these isn't really God's business since “God is actual.” This question-begging statement rather severely limits the concept of omniscience, however, and raises uncomfortable questions of whether or not “God” knows the newly found decimal values of  before the first computer calculates them. There is no point at which apologists like Craig can argue that God doesn't know the next value since a computer can conceivably calculate it eventually. Additionally, if such a computer, which need not be very complex, were eternal and outside of time, like apologists argue of God, then the computer would have calculated every value. Shouldn't God be able to calculate every value, then? What, I wonder, is being said about God with their evasive argument?”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“The preponderance of modern physicists now subscribe to what is known as the B-Theory of time, which says that space and time are bound together as different dimensional aspects of one phenomenon we call spacetime.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“Once we've chosen the axioms and the logic, the whole thing is built, and it's up to us to explore the system and discover the timeless truths contained within it, if we want to know them. Thus it feels like those truths exist and that we are discovering them, but this is because it is easy to lose sight of the fact that we made the whole system by choosing the axioms and logic. Also often lost in the shuffle, the axioms and logic are abstract things that do not “exist” in reality. They are abstract statements (hence their timelessness, incidentally—and yes, do draw the relevant analogy to an “eternal” God here) made in and shared by the minds of thinking beings who created them.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“thing is built, and it's up to us to explore the system and discover the timeless truths contained within it, if we want to know them. Thus it feels like those truths exist and that we are discovering them, but this is because it is easy to lose sight of the fact that we made the whole system by choosing the axioms and logic. Also often lost in the shuffle, the axioms and logic are abstract things that do not “exist” in reality. They are abstract statements (hence their timelessness, incidentally—and yes, do draw the relevant analogy to an “eternal” God here) made in and shared by the minds of thinking beings who created them.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“Surprisingly, absolutely no decision making is involved in playing a game of Candyland. Thus, once the cards are shuffled, the game is over. “Playing” merely reveals what is already determined, however much it feels like playing a game. The game was actually played, in a sense, when the cards were shuffled, it just doesn't look or feel like it.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“Our entire conception of logic has been built around the idea of how we attempt to make sense of the universe. Sure, we've extended that now into the purely abstract and rigidly formal, but all of our basic axioms (from which logical systems get their utility) ultimately have their grounding in our best guesses about reality itself.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“Though this misunderstanding is not limited to those attempting to defend their beliefs in God, it is exceptionally common among them since, lacking credible evidence, philosophical arguments are often central to their efforts. These arguments essentially try to logic “God” into existence by showing that it is a logical necessity. Doing this for God's existence is, on the whole, playing word games.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“A point that is illustrated to some degree here is that, regardless of what Platonists want to believe about ideals, realms of forms, and the underlying nature of reality, a very strong case can be made that human beings are the ones fashioning logic and logical axiomatic systems as mental tools through which we aim to better understand our world. On some level, Platonists believe just the opposite—that abstractions determine a fundamental reality and that we are merely discovering those “real” abstractions as we go along.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“Another important point in this vein, though, is that Christianity and many other theistic religions are based specifically upon variants of Platonism. These religions see “God” as an extant being, one not always limited to exist within a perfected realm of ideals. Indeed, they give it some metaphysical or “spiritual” reality. I see “God” simply as a variety of abstract concepts.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly

“In an article in the December 2012 Scientific American, Cambridge theoretical physicist David Tong wrote: “Physicists routinely teach that the building blocks of nature are discrete particles such as the electron or quark. That is a lie. The building blocks of our theories are not particles but fields: continuous, fluidlike objects spread throughout space.”
― James A. Lindsay, Dot, Dot, Dot: Infinity Plus God Equals Folly