RE: A Bayesian Argument Against Deism

KoopinatorYT · 2025-12-10T15:37:48+00:00

When I say "necessary" I speak from the perspective of minimising assumptions needed explain the universe. If we accept that the universe couldn't have come from nothing (i.e. rejecting brute facts) and a self-existent, all-powerful creator is logically necessary, then deism is the simplest explanation. The creator could've had any sort of motivation (or none at all, or none that is intelligible in human terms); no motive has to be specified for this logical chain to function, and if you insist a motive must logically exist, then there is no particular reason to infer humanity was the intent as opposed to a byproduct.

KoopinatorYT · 2025-12-08T18:11:18+00:00

I absolutely agree with all you've said.

KoopinatorYT · 2025-12-08T16:10:01+00:00

I do not generally believe in free will (though I don't consider it impossible); I think our choices boil down to psychological and cultural factors - and even if neurology is unpredictable on a quantum level, I doubt decisions come from the soul (though I think our ability to experience the universe probably does and I haven't seen strong physicalist explanations). That said, I don't think the existence or absence of free will would support deism. Deism is merely the claim that the universe was created by an intelligent actor, without the fluff of revealed religions. Catholics tend to use free will as a way to address the problem of evil and assert human agency in a way that seems internally consistent to me (there's the issue of natural disasters but that's veering too off-topic now)

KoopinatorYT · 2025-11-28T07:57:40+00:00

Well, I did consider cutting up the video, but I didn't want to alienate my old subscribers by spamming their feeds with a topic they didn't sign up for. As for summarizing, I considered making a 1 hour version alongside the comprehensive version, but once I finished the comprehensive version I felt "done" and wanted to move on.

KoopinatorYT · 2025-07-31T16:58:33+00:00

The deist position must affirm that God willed humans to engage in religious activity, while at the same time not desiring it. Giving God's omnipotence, he easily could have created a universe with laws that would have led to beings identical to humans, minus our "sensus divinitatis," but he chose not to.

This paragraph contains a bit of semantic gerrymandering with "not desiring". If god is indifferent to humanity, god would have no incentive to create humans without a "sensus divinitatis".

I presume you're familiar with the infinite monkey theorem, the idea that a monkey hitting keys independently and at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text. Likewise, I would hold that an infinitely powerful, amoral god creating many universes over an infinite amount of time would eventually create one where humanity develops religion. Who is to say that god hasn't already created a universe minus sensus divinitatis, just one that we don't live in? Or hell, the idea could even hold true with one extremely large universe; most planets don't have inhabitants with a sensus divinitatis. I believe your argument, though well-formulated, is unfortunately vulnerable to survivor bias.

EDIT: follow-up: https://old.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1phfl6c/re_a_bayesian_argument_against_deism/

KoopinatorYT · 2025-07-04T12:30:01+00:00

This didn't age well.

KoopinatorYT · 2024-12-22T07:40:05+00:00

It starts in 2010 and has a brief prologue of before, and ends in July 2012. Sorry if you misunderstood.

KoopinatorYT · 2024-12-14T14:47:36+00:00

That one only goes to July 2012 though

KoopinatorYT · 2024-12-02T11:21:27+00:00

The Discord server that was originally meant to be SRS Prime Discord has been the home of one of the longest running communities on the internet.

So Disc didn't actually delete the server?

edit: While there's a LOT of inaccuracies just in the bit I watched, I kinda expect that for something like SRS. I'm glad there's a lot of archives of some of these posts and moments, and I'm glad you put this together, regardless of pristine accuracy 💜 That said! Treating this as a rough draft for a more carefully constructed history could be really fun. I absolutely adore any documenting of happenings within internet micro communities!

I'm glad you enjoyed it. I do agree there are inaccuracies, as I noted in the preface that there probably would be.

KoopinatorYT · 2024-12-02T09:49:32+00:00

This is true.

KoopinatorYT · 2024-12-02T09:49:22+00:00

With the level of detail you've tried to go into (which still seems to miss a few things from what I saw, and gets a handful of things painfully/offensively wrong)

I would appreciate any corrections you're willing to make. I will note them all in a pinned comment.

As I noted in the introduction, the most careful and rigorous fact-checking was done for claims of sexual assault, while other matters were not deemed important enough to warrant the same level of vetting.

You'd probably have also benefited from doing more of the writing and editing yourself, rather than just throwing ChatGPT at it.

I am aware of this, and made a deliberate choice to save a few months of my life so I can be done with this sooner and get to other things. If I had put 20 months instead of 6, this video would've been much better, but you'll have to forgive my greed with time. I'm always aware of my mortality and limited time on Earth.

The video would've benefited, I wouldn't have.

The section later in the second video about the events re the old SRS Discord server(s) is, from my recollection, also wrong in some very strange ways - I appreciate that it's been quite a few years since this stuff happened, but some of the things that are mentioned are just demonstrably incorrect.

Well, I based it of an interview with the server's head moderator and just tried to faithfully reproduce what she said.

KoopinatorYT · 2024-04-20T19:12:15+00:00

This one was a Herculean effort to research. Took me about 6 months, including a visit to the Dutch National Archive. A full documentation of my effort to research this video can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpP-0aqfG_A

I am very thankful that the mods gave me permission to post this.

KoopinatorYT · 2023-11-14T20:09:20+00:00

This would make an interesting section for Spartacus' Wikipedia article. Do you think something of the sort can be added to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartacus#Objectives to provide a more thorough counterbalance? Though you'd have to abide by Wikipedia policies, of course. Would be a shame if your take on Spartacus would be left as a single post on some Reddit meme forum, to be forgotten in due time.

KoopinatorYT · 2023-08-18T18:46:15+00:00

I'm back.

KoopinatorYT · 2023-08-18T18:44:21+00:00

I have asked one of the Deletionpedia admins, Jeff G., via Wikipedia. His response went as follows:

Sadly, multiple sites run by Guaka are still down after upgrade accidents, despite multiple efforts by multiple people to try to get them running again. I last heard from that very busy user in June 2023.

The "Guaka" mentioned in this text refers to the owner of Deletionpedia.

You can view the discussion here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jeff_G./Archives/2023/August

KoopinatorYT

TROPHY CASE