Why do some believe easily, others hardly at all?

[Brian2]

Ahh I see. I watched about 10 mins of the video, and I can see why ted talk decided not to air this guy's lecture

That said, I guarantee you that what we see of the world is an incomplete picture, and the scientific community is wrong about some things that they are unaware of right now. This is just the nature of collective knowledge and the flaws that human beings, the scientists themselves, innately have

What we know now is a clearer picture of what we knew 100 years ago, and what we knew then was clearer still than what we knew 100 years before that. This is self evident in the advancements we have made year after year. The proof is in the pudding, and science demonstrates it's value on a consistent basis

Scientifically we advance forward in most areas and in some areas we seem to be going backwards imo.
That is something seen from the pov or faith however and not something that science is able to see itself. It cannot see it because it works with the naturalistic methodology and cannot find God/s and spirit and so imo can easily push the naturalistic presumption across into areas that faith says are not naturalistic.

Speaking for myself, yes, but I would never force my personal standards onto others

And there is always the question of what is or is not better evidence.

I've dabbled in deism in the past, but at the end of the day it wasn't for me

Science by it's very nature requires open minds for it to work properly, but don't mistake open mindedness with entertaining baseless assertions

Religions can teach whatever they like to their congregations. If the ideas they teach presuppose certain assumptions on the material nature of reality that, through science, we can show to be false (such as the earth being only 6,000 years old), those claims aren't going to be taken seriously by and large

Many scientists believe in God/s and science cannot show God/s existence to be false, so it seems that saying there are no Gods goes beyond science, as does saying that there is/are gods.
It would be nice is this understanding of science could be taught to the general public. As it is, the general public seem to think that science has shown there to be no god/s.

What my point is is that claims on things such as spirituality, which supposedly describe a nature of reality, don't impress me when they can't deliver varifiable and repeatable results. That doesn't mean that I've made my mind up on anything. I'm just waiting for substantial evidence before I jump to any conclusions on the viability of it's existence. Until then, I have to default to what we can actually observe - the natural world

Interestingly many people do observe varifiable reports about what they have seen when they were heavily sedated. I'm talking about OBEs in NDEs.
I am told that the evidence they give is not good enough for science however even though I find it very compelling that people have experienced consciousness while outside their own bodies.

Why should anyone presuppose any supernatural story to be true - especially for people who's life work is to, in the least biased way possible, get to the core of the truth? What makes the bible any more true or special than any other supernatural claims that other holy books make?

Supernatural presuppositions don't seem to get very far in the scientific world because they don't follow the evidence where it leads. Instead they only play defense and serve to try and find evidence to prove the presupposotions true despite evidence to the contrary

The possibility of the supernatural being true has to be entertained or the bias is anti supernatural. So when history says prophecy has to have been written after the event, that is anti supernatural bias. From that historians declare, contrary to gospel internal and external evidence that the gospels were written after 70 AD by people who did not know or see Jesus. So this circular reasoning is then believed by those who are unaware of it or who want to show the gospels are lies.

This is the second time you've mentioned this. That's not my argument

What I will say, though, is that there are some prophecies that christians fulfilled after they had the political power to make them happen, such as the reformation of israel as a nation. That never would have happened except that christians ruled the world at that point in time and put it into action. It never would have happened if christians didn't intervene and make it happen

I don't think that all parties involved agreed to the UN resolution. The British with colonies in Palestine, did not agree.
It seems it was something that Britain agreed to in 1917 to gain Jewish support for their WW1 war effort. So I don't think it was one of those self fulfilled prophecies.
But the main thing about it that relates to prophecy is that it happened.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Maybe it is just that what you call "believable" is not what I call believable.

Quite. We all have differences as to what we accept in order to believe. But why would I accept one of the many various religious beliefs over another - apart from preference as to believing such, and not accepting the others?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

...

What my point is is that claims on things such as spirituality, which supposedly describe a nature of reality, don't impress me when they can't deliver varifiable and repeatable results. That doesn't mean that I've made my mind up on anything. I'm just waiting for substantial evidence before I jump to any conclusions on the viability of it's existence. Until then, I have to default to what we can actually observe - the natural world

...

Well, since I am a skeptic I get what you say. I just called it first person subjective psychology or mental in short.
The trick is simple, if you understand as real these limits for science, then you have another category of in effect not with objective evidence. That is the mental.

Science has limits: A few things that science does not do - Understanding Science

undsci.berkeley.edu

 

[Brian2]

Quite. We all have differences as to what we accept in order to believe. But why would I accept one of the many various religious beliefs over another - apart from preference as to believing such, and not accepting the others?

You might just decide that one is the truth and the others are not.

 

[Mock Turtle]

You might just decide that one is the truth and the others are not.

And you have sufficient knowledge about all these to determine such? Not in my world one can't, given that history is rather a cloudy affair, even as to what survives over time. Hence why I have tried to rise above such issues and look towards them all as a collective, so as to see any truths that might emerge. They all seem to come from human minds given such.

 

[Brian2]

And you have sufficient knowledge about all these to determine such? Not in my world one can't, given that history is rather a cloudy affair, even as to what survives over time. Hence why I have tried to rise above such issues and look towards them all as a collective, so as to see any truths that might emerge. They all seem to come from human minds given such.

Some people just see the light, like in the Blues Brothers movie, they are drawn to Jesus and don't need to work out all the cloudy history.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Some people just see the light, like in the Blues Brothers movie, they are drawn to Jesus and don't need to work out all the cloudy history.

You are conflating see as see with see as understand.

 

[Alien826]

A religious claim is usually about events in the past and so history comes into it.

All history, even quite recent events, has a degree of doubt built into it. That's true even though a history teacher might say "XYZ happened" as if there were no doubt about it. So when there are claims of things that can't be reproduced now, it's good to be skeptical. I mean simple things like people returning from the dead. We can observe that people stay dead when killed, so the reasonable assumption has to be that returning from the dead is highly unlikely.

A religious claim is usually about the existence [or] not of scientifically undetectable things.

So how should we treat these things? Surely not just believe everything that is claimed? I know you don't do that.

Science cannot say yay or nay to the existence of God/s or spiritual realm etc

It doesn't say that (in a categorical sense) about anything.

Science should not automatically presume that historical claims of supernatural activity are not accurate.

I would challenge "automatically". Strictly, any claim can be submitted to scientific research. But a certain filtering has to go on. We can't expect scientists to go off chasing every claim, no matter how unlikely, and there's also the question of funding! It's true that some important discoveries have been delayed due to this process, and maybe some supernatural claims will one day be shown to true. There will have to be something there to investigate though.

If science or historians want to say that they know the supernatural is unreal then they are going beyond what science or history can tell us.
That said, I admit that I have a belief, and when examining claims that claim to show it to be false, I am looking to see whether those claims actually do that. But I am not really shoring up my belief (as you put it), I'm looking to see if the evidence/claim has actually don't any damage to the belief, iow if the claims are true.

But you are not using the same standards that you use when deciding if the moon landings were real or filmed in Hollywood. After all, that happened in history now, so we can't be sure about it, right?

 

[Heyo]

You might just decide that one is the truth and the others are not.

Exactly. It is arbitrary and all you have now is the illusion of knowledge. Many people don't like uncertainty and sometimes the illusion of certainty is better than doubt. In an urgent situation fast reaction is important. You may have only a 50% chance to make the right judgement but in such situations not acting is often 100% fatal.
But deciding on a religion or non-religious worldview is not an immediate problem. Having the ability to live with uncertainty prevents you from making a wrong judgement - which in slow thinking situations is more valuable.

 

[Soandso]

Some people just see the light, like in the Blues Brothers movie, they are drawn to Jesus and don't need to work out all the cloudy history.

Yikes... that sounds like reasoning based on patchy, incomplete or bad evidence

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Yikes... that sounds like reasoning based on patchy, incomplete or bad evidence

Well, see has 2 definitions, but some people confuse those and treat them as one. I have come to understand that to be the case both for some religious and some non-religious people. As far as I can tell it is in effect a certain understanding that seems to be a variation of the fallacy of concreteness.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Phycology doesn't weigh love. Besides, God is Love.

Nah. God is god. Love is love.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Nah. God is god. Love is love.

No. Satan is Love and I am His Prime Soldier. That is the Truth. These debates are so much fun.
What if none of us are correct, but we apparently just all are in the world, whatever that is in the strong objective sense as independent of the mind.
I mean I am a general skeptic and I don't know any of that. What about you as a skeptic?

 

[Brian2]

All history, even quite recent events, has a degree of doubt built into it. That's true even though a history teacher might say "XYZ happened" as if there were no doubt about it. So when there are claims of things that can't be reproduced now, it's good to be skeptical. I mean simple things like people returning from the dead. We can observe that people stay dead when killed, so the reasonable assumption has to be that returning from the dead is highly unlikely.

True

So how should we treat these things? Surely not just believe everything that is claimed? I know you don't do that.

That's up to you and what material it is.

It doesn't say that (in a categorical sense) about anything.

Science cannot study things that it does not say exist.

I would challenge "automatically". Strictly, any claim can be submitted to scientific research. But a certain filtering has to go on. We can't expect scientists to go off chasing every claim, no matter how unlikely, and there's also the question of funding! It's true that some important discoveries have been delayed due to this process, and maybe some supernatural claims will one day be shown to true. There will have to be something there to investigate though.

I should probably have said "History should not automatically presume that historical claims of supernatural activity are not accurate", especially when those claims are in scriptures. That is saying from the start that they are not true. Hardly unbiased.
Believing they could be true would be the unbiased approach imo.

But you are not using the same standards that you use when deciding if the moon landings were real or filmed in Hollywood. After all, that happened in history now, so we can't be sure about it, right?

The moon landings could have been real. Any evidence I've seen suggests it was real except for the moon wind that was strong enough to hold the flag out stiff but did not blow the astronauts or shuttle or moon dust around.

 

[Brian2]

Exactly. It is arbitrary and all you have now is the illusion of knowledge. Many people don't like uncertainty and sometimes the illusion of certainty is better than doubt. In an urgent situation fast reaction is important. You may have only a 50% chance to make the right judgement but in such situations not acting is often 100% fatal.
But deciding on a religion or non-religious worldview is not an immediate problem. Having the ability to live with uncertainty prevents you from making a wrong judgement - which in slow thinking situations is more valuable.

Then you become blazee even when close to death and don't want to be see as insincere by changing you mind, even in a potentially fatal situation.

 

[Brian2]

Yikes... that sounds like reasoning based on patchy, incomplete or bad evidence

It's more like seeing and believing without too much reasoning I guess.
But the evidence is always going to be patchy, incomplete or bad.

 

[Heyo]

except for the moon wind that was strong enough to hold the flag out stiff but did not blow the astronauts or shuttle or moon dust around.

You know that there is a bar in the flag that's keeping it stretched out? And the movement was it swinging out from just having been erected?

 

[Brian2]

You know that there is a bar in the flag that's keeping it stretched out? And the movement was it swinging out from just having been erected?

Likely story.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Some people just see the light, like in the Blues Brothers movie, they are drawn to Jesus and don't need to work out all the cloudy history.

Perhaps, but this seems more akin to grabbing at the first available solution - and often the grabbing is not done voluntarily, given that if you were born in some other country no doubt you might have different beliefs, and generally imposed upon one by a religious 'education'. Even so, the drawing to Jesus still might be more an emotional experience than a thoughtful one - and where 'blinded by the light' might truly be descriptive.

 

[Brian2]

Perhaps, but this seems more akin to grabbing at the first available solution - and often the grabbing is not done voluntarily, given that if you were born in some other country no doubt you might have different beliefs, and generally imposed upon one by a religious 'education'. Even so, the drawing to Jesus still might be more an emotional experience than a thoughtful one - and where 'blinded by the light' might truly be descriptive.

When that happens it can be a case of love for Jesus blinding people to what others might say about Jesus.