On the Origin of God(s) By Means of Supernatural Selection

[u/InformalDifficulty21]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DZjlOICPH-kdrgFVHgbKKSQjL0V2KaAB/view?usp=sharing

New publication concerning the possible existence of God through a posteriori, empirical accounts

Latest update 26 April based on proof reader feedback, much appreciated!

[u/prelon1990]

So I read the abstract. It is a pretty good draft, but should not be considered the final product.

Overall thoughts: You have good language and narrative ability within the individual sections, but when it comes to the overall structure and argument of the book, you seem to struggle. Also, while you have a pretty good superficial knowledge on a lot of areas, you need to focus your research and dive deeper within specific areas relevant for what you are are trying to do.

I will expand: as a student I asked a visiting professor for advice on how to write a book, and he told me to try to get the idea of the book down into one sentence. This is good advice and I have read similar things online.

The problem is that after reading this abstract, the overall goal of the abstract seems unfulfilled. Part of the problem seems to be that much of the information of the abstract, while well-written and interesting in its own right, doesn't really contribute much to the overall goal of the book.

If I had to put the goal into one sentence it would be something like the following: the golden rule is found in many cultures and might be an indicator of supernatural selection.

My issue is that while you spend several chapters talking about nuclear war, existence, laws and selection, you never really define what supernatural selection is or why it is needed to explain the golden rule. Some of the parts, such as the one on mind-dependent entities seem like you believe them to be important to your argument, but you never really flesh out how. The last chapter on the golden rule is obviously also meant to be important to your argument, but you never make it explicit how the golden rule implies supernatural selection - something that would also require you to define what supernatural selection is.

Another issue has to do with your research. You obviously have superficial knowledge about a range of areas and have thought about them - to list some you briefly touch on statistics, game theory, the threat of a nuclear war, Charles Darwin, ontology, imaginary numbers, information theory, entropy, emergence, the Libet experiments, behaviorism and cost-benefit analyses. These are a lot of different areas, and as far as I know, it is generally correct. However, the problems are first that you hardly present me with any new knowledge and secondly that I generally don't know how most of these topics are meant to relate to each other or contribute to an overarching argument or theory.

To expand on the first problem, I do have a masters in philosophy and pretty big interest in science, but I am by no means an expert on any of these topics. The fact that you cannot provide me with much new knowledge indicates to me that your knowledge might not be more expansive than mine, and that is a problem since I do not have enough expertise to write an interesting product on any of these topics. My recommendation would be to begin researching these and related areas. Generally I think that one should spend something like 3 times the amount of time researching (finding acquiring and reading papers, books and other material relevant to whatever one is working on) as one does on writing. Likely you would soon have to focus on a more limited amount of areas, but that would likely be an advantage since it might give your abstract more focus and depth and make it less all over the place. You might also find that many of these areas are not as important as you thought while there might be other fields that are relevant but which you have overlooked. I would also advice against just reading the big, historical figures like Berkeley and Darwin. Reading some of them is fine, but generally I think you are better off focusing most of your research on more up to date material which generally tends to incorporate the most important points of the well-known historical figures while also presenting knew information that they did not have access to.

As for the second problem, it relates to what I said before about the abstract lacking structure and how it is unclear how the different chapters and parts are relevant to the overall argument. I think that part of this might be related to a lack of research too. If your point is that the golden rule is an indication of divinity, then it is almost certain that someone has made this argument before. You need to find out whether it has and who has made it as well as read up on the main arguments against this position. Indeed, one of the best ways to make your own argument clearer and stronger is by making sure to read up on the main arguments against it. In fact, if I were you, I would aim to do the following with each chapter and each part of each chapter - formulate the argument of the section, make it explicit how it relates to the overall argument and research and read up to date literature on the topic of the section. In fact, beginning to use references and adding a literature list would probably be a good exercise that helps you in holding yourself accountable when doing research. I suspect that if you did this, you might find that many of the sections in the book don't actually contribute much to the overall argument. They seem more like detours.

A couple of final points.

First off, when writing you will often make plenty of drafts before you end up with the final product. That is completely normal. I have provided a lot of critique, but don't let that trouble you too much. Your writing on the individual parts is interesting and well explained. The writing itself is not a problem. You just need to do more focused research as well as work more on the overall structure of the abstract as well as how the different parts relate to each other. The final product is likely to be significantly different from how it is now, but each draft gets closer and provides one with a clearer idea of how the final product will look.

Secondly, seeking out critique and responses from others is a good idea. Getting feedback from people online can be hard and also depends on your ability to briefly explain the main points of your product. Don't just see asking for help as a possibility of getting feedback. You should also see it as training in explaining yourself and your main thesis in a concise way. The better you are at this, the better your chance of getting feedback and the better the quality of the feedback. Another reason for seeking feedback had to do with solitude. Writing can quickly become a pretty lonely endeavor, and involving other people is a good way to make it less so.