What turned you?

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I assume that was a joke My sense of humor is a bit rusty



I try not to do that, but sometimes it's hard to differentiate because there are too many types of religious / spiritual people that use the same words for very different concepts. For example, a Deist god and a scripture-based theist god are two entirely different things. When I say "god", I usually refer to the latter, simply because theists tend to call their god "god" (and not Yahweh, for example).

It's a bit like someone calling their dog "dog" Only that dogs really are alike, whereas Einstein's god and the god of Abraham couldn't be more different. So it's actually more akin to calling a dog "furry thing" or "not-a-rock". Which is actually a pretty cool name. If I ever get a dog, I'll call it Not-a-rock.

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I for one don't want that. Or rather, I realize that it's pointless, and I don't see any reason to talk people out of something that doesn't harm anybody (which, alas, cannot be said of conservative religions).

the Atom never was in a state of non-existence but WE WERE in a state of ignorance.....lack of evidence doesn't necassarily equate to non-existence.

It's not likely you'll ever find something you aren't looking for and are UNWILLING to accept. science is INCREDIBLY biased toward a materialistic view and many of the people who fund the research like it that way imo.

No one here has tried to say that atoms didn't exist before we proved them to exist. I'm not sure what your point in pursuing that line of reasoning is.


Science is biased towards facts and truth.

If science can find no evidence of a god with that bias, that should be telling you something.

Science should have NO bias at all....it should look at both the supernatural and the natural and accept whatever findings come from that.....most scientist are fundie Athiests who would NEVER admit to any supernatural truth if it was found....that having been said i fully admit that i am biased against Atheism, or rather....i see Atheism as the last resort not the first stop.

What...?

Open to the supernatural? How? If a scientist sees something that points towards the supernatural, I guarantee you they would look in to it. That's what science IS. It's not about finding what you want to find, it's about finding the truth whatever that truth may be.

The reason scientists don't seem to see anything supernatural (aside from the occasional crackpot pseudo-scientist with no evidence) would logically be that the supernatural doesn't exist.

Science is reasonably open to the supernatural or paranormal. There has been a lot of research on alleged supernatural phenomena such as telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance, ghosts and whathaveyou. None of this could be proven to exist or work. But scientists did follow up on supernatural claims and eliminated their own bias by establishing controlled test settings.

Prayer has also been scientifically studied in several trials, with very different results. It is very hard to create a randomized, controlled, double-blind trial in case of prayer, because it's impossible to tell if people pray sincerely or to the right deity. Or if there are people outside the trial who pray for the welfare of all living things But the scientists who conducted these studies were not too biased to have an open mind, unlike you apparently.

In addition to the above, you might also want to look into research on near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences, which can be induced with a drug called ketamine and in a centrifuge for pilot training. So there doesn't seem to be anything supernatural about these phenomena, but we only know that because of unbiased scientific research.

The research of the James Randi Foundation is also very interesting. James Randi and his team of scientists have specialized on paranormal claims. For many years, they have offered a million dollar to anyone who would demonstrate paranormal abilities or phenomena in a controlled experiment. Many mediums, mind readers and mentalists have taken them up on this challenge, but none of the candidates managed to demonstrate anything out of the ordinary.

well hopefully as i post more you'll come to see that i am open minded....i just call it as i see it......unfortunately Science isn't one of my areas of interest and although i'm not stupid by any stretch reading scientific papers alot of times is just beyond my ability to comprehend whats being said(or maybe it's just that it's boring and tedious) so i just go based on the evidence i've come across that i CAN understand as well as what i feel makes sense logically as outdated as it may be and base my opinion on that.

Last edited by Cleekster on 08 Feb 2012, 9:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Life, thinking for myself, and the ability to spot BS when I see/hear it.

If you aren't interested in science it would be wise to refrain from trying to tell people how it works.

The trouble with the supernatural and science is roughly what Pierre-Simon Laplace said to Napoleon when the latter inquired as to why the orrery the former had created did not have god in it, "je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là." translated as roughly "I did not need to make that assumption". The rational path to take as a scientist is to eliminate the natural and even then there may not be a reason to propose something supernatural. After all a favorite past time of Christian apologists is what I call the "5 year old" fallacy, which is to ask "How come" until the person they are debating with cannot give an answer than gleefully shout "Well then it must be god!".

Religion and the Supernatural are in a sense the antithesis of science, since science relies on what can be observed, replicated, falsified and proven, whereas religion and the supernatural are based on what cannot be observed and what just has to be believed.

I stick with popular science for the most part I only read scientific papers on a few pet topics (anthropology, evolutionary psychology and neurobiology). In other fields of science, I prefer the dumbed-down version because I lack any scientific or academic background.

The problem is that religious or otherwise spiritual people believe that they do observe the supernatural, because they operate under an entirely different paradigm that doesn't account for coincidence or correlation. I don't know if you are familiar with the research of B. F. Skinner? Judging by his behavioral animal experiments, thinking in the lines of "I prayed before the interview and got the job" or "I performed a rain dance and it rained" is naturally ingrained in animals.

In one famous experiment, Skinner placed food delivery mechanisms in the cages of pigeons. The pigeons first learned to press a button in order to receive food. Then the button was removed, and the mechanism would deliver food at utterly random times. What happened was that the pigeons became superstitious They assumed that whatever they had been doing prior to receiving food must have triggered the mechanism, and began to repeat their behavior over and over. One pigeon would frantically turn its head, another bird constantly rocked back and forth, and so on.

What is most interesting about this experiment is that the great number of failed attempts didn't discourage the birds. At no point did they realize "wait a minute, I've turned my head a hundred times now and still didn't get any more food, so that one time might have been a coincidence after all". Instead, they kept trying until the next random food delivery occured, which would reaffirm their belief. The same happens when humans say a prayer or perform a rain dance. The high failure rate rate goes unnoticed thanks to the occasional "miracle" (read: lucky coincidence) that confirms their faith.

It is easy to see how this would be evolutionary advantageous. If you hear a previously unknown noise right before a predator attacks you, you will link these two events in your mind and start running or look for a hiding spot the next time you hear the same noise again. Animals (of the non-human variety) can't afford to be skeptical and believe in coincidences. It is better to respond to a hundred imaginary threats than failing to react to one real threat out of skepticism and curiosity.

Alas, this "better safe than sorry" approach doesn't get you very far when you are trying to figure out how the world around you really works. That's why we are in this mess. The scientific paradigm of rational skepticism and unbiased empiricalism (is that a word? If not, it should be) is an acquired mindset that doesn't come naturally to most humans. Unless we've been taught to think rationally, or were born with an unnaturally reasonable / non-spiritual brain, we spot connections and signs everywhere. People who operate under the natural, superstitious paradigm can believe anything they want, and their experience will always appear to confirm it.

Empiricism is a word, but I'm not sure if that was what you meant and its not our default setting. Christopher Hitchens was fond of saying "Our pre-frontal lobes are too small, our adrenaline glands are too big, because we’re adapted to the savannah, from which we fled."

I know of Skinner, his research is probably A, and I suspect that confirmation bias and the forer effect are B and C in the triangle of credulity. Humans see patterns al the time, I see them constantly and have to reason with myself in order to establish their existence purely due to that. Horoscopes are a great example, everyone who reads them remembers that one time it sort of came true, but they don't remember the 600 times it didn't.

It would be interesting to do an experiment consisting of picking a random selection of male subjects, hiring a gang of prostitutes and having one of them jump one of the male subjects every time he wore a red sweater to see if he would start wearing red every day (or never at all) over time.

I also found that your 3 last paragraphs are very descriptive of why such a process would come to exist and it would perhaps explain why religions thinking diminishes with level of education. I have to admit that writing a reply when you pretty much agree with someone is a lot harder.

guess i hit a nerve,huh?

yeah, perhaps that is what i should do...maybe i would enjoy it better.