Why do some believe easily, others hardly at all?

[Colt]

Right now it's sitting at 100% in the absence of anything else that can stand up to the rigors of falsifiable testing. That can change if something else concrete were presented, such as a good case for an intelligent designer and life giver

Until then though, if everything is natural, and everything natural forms naturally, where does the supernatural part fit in?

It fits in where God is natural. God does everything the natural way. As far as God is concerned there are no miracles, God just knows how to create life and do the other things that we would call miracles. What some call abiogenesis was the creation event.

"A mechanistic philosophy of life and the universe cannot be scientific because science recognizes and deals only with materials and facts. Philosophy is inevitably superscientific. Man is a material fact of nature, but his life is a phenomenon which transcends the material levels of nature in that it exhibits the control attributes of mind and the creative qualities of spirit.​

​

The sincere effort of man to become a mechanist represents the tragic phenomenon of that man’s futile effort to commit intellectual and moral suicide. But he cannot do it."​

​

If the universe were only material and man only a machine, there would be no science to embolden the scientist to postulate this mechanization of the universe. Machines cannot measure, classify, nor evaluate themselves. Such a scientific piece of work could be executed only by some entity of supermachine status. UB 1955​

 

[Soandso]

It fits in where God is natural. God does everything the natural way. As far as God is concerned there are no miracles, God just knows how to create life. What some call abiogenesis was the creation event.

Eh... if it were that simple why has no one just collected their nobel peace prize for making the greatest discover mankind has ever made? There doesn't seem to be a god or flasifiable supernatural activity anywhere that we can observe and test

 

[Colt]

Eh... if it were that simple why has no one just collected their nobel peace prize for making the greatest discover mankind has ever made? There doesn't seem to be a god or flasifiable supernatural activity anywhere that we can observe and test

Well, if you had a camera set up hundreds of millions of years ago then you could have something to observe.

"If universe reality is only one vast machine, then man must be outside of the universe and apart from it in order to recognize such a fact and become conscious of the insight of such an evaluation.​

If man is only a machine, by what technique does this man come to believe or claim to know that he is only a machine? The experience of self-conscious evaluation of one’s self is never an attribute of a mere machine. A self-conscious and avowed mechanist is the best possible answer to mechanism. If materialism were a fact, there could be no self-conscious mechanist. It is also true that one must first be a moral person before one can perform immoral acts.​

The very claim of materialism implies a supermaterial consciousness of the mind which presumes to assert such dogmas. A mechanism might deteriorate, but it could never progress. Machines do not think, create, dream, aspire, idealize, hunger for truth, or thirst for righteousness. They do not motivate their lives with the passion to serve other machines and to choose as their goal of eternal progression the sublime task of finding God and striving to be like him. Machines are never intellectual, emotional, aesthetic, ethical, moral, or spiritual." UB 1955​

 

[Soandso]

"A mechanistic philosophy of life and the universe cannot be scientific because science recognizes and deals only with materials and facts. Philosophy is inevitably superscientific. Man is a material fact of nature, but his life is a phenomenon which transcends the material levels of nature in that it exhibits the control attributes of mind and the creative qualities of spirit.The sincere effort of man to become a mechanist represents the tragic phenomenon of that man’s futile effort to commit intellectual and moral suicide. But he cannot do it."If the universe were only material and man only a machine, there would be no science to embolden the scientist to postulate this mechanization of the universe. Machines cannot measure, classify, nor evaluate themselves. Such a scientific piece of work could be executed only by some entity of supermachine status. UB 1955

None of this is falsifiable. What makes this any more real than all of the other unfalsifiable things people present?

 

[Colt]

None of this is falsifiable. What makes this any more real than all of the unfalsifiable things people present?

Not everything is falsifiable. "You cannot put spiritual joy under a microscope; you cannot weigh love in a balance; you cannot measure moral values; neither can you estimate the quality of spiritual worship." UB 1955

 

[Soandso]

Not everything is falsifiable. "You cannot put spiritual joy under a microscope; you cannot weigh love in a balance; you cannot measure moral values; neither can you estimate the quality of spiritual worship." UB 1955

Emotions, morals, and spiritual worship definitely are all things we can, and do, study. Those are all falsifiable things

 

[Colt]

Emotions, morals, and spiritual worship definitely are all things we can, and do, study. Those are all falsifiable things

Nope! Those things can't be weighed or measured. It's because most humans experience those things then there is the assumption of their existence, like people of faith who have subjectively experienced God yet can't prove it in a laboratory test.

"The confusion about the experience of the certainty of God arises out of the dissimilar interpretations and relations of that experience by separate individuals and by different races of men. The experiencing of God may be wholly valid, but the discourse about God, being intellectual and philosophical, is divergent and oftentimes confusingly fallacious.​

​

A good and noble man may be consummately in love with his wife but utterly unable to pass a satisfactory written examination on the psychology of marital love. Another man, having little or no love for his spouse, might pass such an examination most acceptably. The imperfection of the lover’s insight into the true nature of the beloved does not in the least invalidate either the reality or sincerity of his love.​

​

If you truly believe in God—by faith know him and love him—do not permit the reality of such an experience to be in any way lessened or detracted from by the doubting insinuations of science, the caviling of logic, the postulates of philosophy, or the clever suggestions of well-meaning souls who would create a religion without God." UB 1955​

 

[Soandso]

Nope! Those things can't be weighed or measured.

Says who? We absolutely can and do measure those things - psychology is definitely a field of science

It's because most humans experience those things then there is the assumption of their existence, like people of faith who have subjectively experienced God yet can't prove it in a laboratory test.

So you say

 

[MikeF]

Yet another post by a member asking whether they believe so-and-so (and of course admitting that they do) led me to ask myself why is it I find it so difficult to believe claims without evidence, while others appear to accept almost any claim absolutely uncritically.

I'm old enough to have been exposed to all the strange stuff: spontaneous human combustion, ghosts, religion (of every kind), conspiracy theories, Elvis-lives, auras, astral travel, psychokenesis, ESP, parapsychology, alien abductions (usually with penetrating body probes!), yeti and sasquatch and chupacabra, Edgar Cayce, resurrections (of Christ and many others), YEC, -- oh, my this list could go on forever. Humans have believed (and do believe) so many strange things.

But what I've noticed is this: there seemn to be people (like me, and other skeptics and critical thinkers in the Forum) who find it difficult to near-impossible to believe strange claims for which we see no real evidence ---- but there are others who seem predisposed, almost programmed, to believe almost anything at all, no matter how unlikely.

Michael Shermer wrote a book called "Why Do People Believe Weird Things" and it got a pretty good reception -- but only from the usual skeptical thinkers. The "Woo" crowd hated it.

Why is it, do you think, that some people are willing to believe pretty much anything, while others hold out for evidence?

Perhaps the human race has exerted a self-selecting pressure for certain personality traits. As group size grew, the larger population groups would be more stable and easier to manage if most of the group members easily conform to the groups canon of dogma, be it religious or otherwise. Anyone who had a skeptics behavioral trait would be shunned or killed as a heretic, infidel, or traitor. Now that it is not so easy to cull the skeptic behavioral trait from the population, we might see skepticism and critical thinking continue to grow as a percentage of the population over time.

 

[Colt]

Says who? We absolutely can and do measure those things - psychology is definitely a field of science



So you say

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

 

[Soandso]

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

Psychology absloutely studies emotions including love

When you say "weigh," do you mean physically? Like on a scale?

If that's the case, how much does mathematics weigh?

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

What's wrong with saying that God has always been there?

Too many things are wrong with it. For starters, here are just 2:

Where was this "there" that God was always at? You see, if God created the heavens and the earth (that is, the universe) what can it possibly mean to say he was lurking somewhere else?

To say that "God has always been there" includes the explicit notion of time. Now, if God created the universe some finite time ago, and yet God exists infinitely in time, then because an infinity minus a finite quantity leaves an infinity, then that means that God existed for an infinite amount of time doing precisely nothing.

But the most important thing is this: theists who believe that the universe had to be created, because "nothing can come from nothing," need to then invent something that can indeed come from nothing -- i.e. be uncaused -- to do the job. That is to say, they invent what they claim to be impossible to explain the impossible. This is simply bizarre.

 

[Colt]

Psychology absloutely studies emotions including love

When you say "weigh," do you mean physically? Like on a scale?

If that's the case, how much does mathematics weigh?

Mathematics don't weigh anything, but in a universe of math who is the master mathematician?

 

[Soandso]

Mathematics don't weigh anything, but in a universe of math who is the master mathematician?

Err... Isaac Newton and Archimedes are master mathematicians, but you're kind of going left field and away from the main point, I feel

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I'd say the probability right now is sitting at 100%. Unfortunately we don't have another universe that was created by an intelligent design and life giver to compare our universe to, and everything we can see and study appears to form naturally, so why should anything else form differently when it comes to the natural world's deepest history?

That could change if we actually find and discover a life giver and intelligent designer, but until we find one, the intelligent designer and life giver theory is not looking too concrete, imo

How do you arrive at that?

 

[Soandso]

How do you arrive at that?

Because there is no other explanation that can be shown to compete with it on a tangible level, so far

Not only that, but even if we did come to understand a supernatural claim, it would cease being what is commonly understood as supernatural and would become understood as natural phenomena. For instance, will-o-the-wisps

Will-o'-the-wisp - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

So... Where is there even room for supernatural claims in the tangible world when they don't even hold a tangible presence?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Because there is no other explanation that can be shown to compete with it on a tangible level, so far

Not only that, but even if we did come to understand a supernatural claim, it would cease being what is commonly understood as supernatural and would become understood as natural phenomena. For instance, will-o-the-wisps

Will-o'-the-wisp - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

So... Where is there even room for supernatural claims in the tangible world when they don't even hold a tangible presence?

Okay, we do it differently. But I am general skeptic and thus can doubt if the universe is real and thus get the result that it is unknown if there is a creator god.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Says who? We absolutely can and do measure those things - psychology is definitely a field of science

Psychology is a social science. There are no laws of science or nature which can predict human behaviour with even a fraction of the accuracy with which Newton’s Laws of Motion, for example, can predict the behaviour of objects. So it’s important to acknowledge the distinction between the natural and social sciences, and to make the observation that Karl Popper had psychology specifically in mind, when formulating the doctrine of falsifiability as a means of demarcation.

 

[Colt]

Err... Isaac Newton and Archimedes are master mathematicians, but you're kind of going left field and away from the main point, I feel

Errrrm, Neither Newton or Archimedes invented math.

 

[Brian2]

Pics or it didn't happen.

Turns around and walks away, shoulders slumped down and despondent. He can be heard to mumble "Why don't people want to believe me?"