How do you prove that a godlike entity exists if it doesn’t want to be proven?
Proof is not typically necessary. People make claims about their experience all the time that they have no way of proving, as well as claims that they probably could prove but don’t in fact do so, and I believe many of those claims.
For example, I believe my officemate is married, although they have offered me no proof of this beyond their unsupported claim.
I would say a more useful question is, “how do I provide another person with sufficient evidence that such an entity exists that the person should consider it likely?” And of course the answer depends on the person, and what they previously considered likely. (The jargon around here would be “it depends on their priors.”)
Mostly I don’t think I can, unless their priors are such that they pretty much already believe that such an entity exists.
Another question worth asking is “how do I provide myself sufficient evidence that such an entity exists that I should consider it likely?”
I don’t think I can do that either.
Unrelatedly: Is “god exists, has the properties I believe it to have, and wants to stay hidden” really the only reason you can think of for the observable universe being as we observe it to be? I understand it’s the reason you believe, I’m asking whether it’s the only reason you can think of, or whether that was just hyperbole.
Is “god exists, has the properties I believe it to have, and wants to stay hidden” really the only reason you can think of for the observable universe being as we observe it to be?
My own belief is closer to: “Something very powerful and supernatural exists, doesn’t seem to be hostile, and doesn’t mind that I call it the Christian God.” And while I would answer ‘no’ to that question, the amount of evidence that there is something supernatural if far greater than the amount of evidence that there are millions of people lying about their experiences.
For instance, every culture has a belief in the supernatural. Now I would expect that social evolution would trend away from such beliefs. If you say, I can dance and make it rain, and then you fail, you would get laughed at. If you don’t believe me gather a bunch of your closest friends and try it. The reason for people to believe someone else is if they had proof to back it up, or they already had reason to believe. Humans aren’t stupid, and I don’t think we’ve become radically more intelligent in the last couple thousand years. Why then is belief in the supernatural* everywhere? Is it something in our makeup, how we think? I have heard such a thing discounted by both sides. So there must be some cause, some reason for people to have started believing.
And that’s without even getting into my experiences, or those close to me. As was suggested, misremembering, and group hallucination are possible, but if that is the case than I should probably check myself and some people I know into a medical clinic because I would be forced to consider myself insane. Seeing things that aren’t there wold be a sign of something being very wrong with me, but I do not any any other symptoms of insanity so I strongly doubt this is the case.
I suppose when I get right down to it, either I and some others are insane with an unknown form of insanity, or there is something out there.
*(outside of the realm of what human science commonly accepts)
“Something very powerful and supernatural* exists, doesn’t seem to be hostile, and doesn’t mind that I call it the Christian God.”
For what it’s worth, I’m .9+ confident of the following claims: 1) there exist phenomena in the universe that “human science” (1) doesn’t commonly accept. 2) for any such phenomenon X, X doesn’t mind that you call it the Christian God 3) for any such phenomenon X, X doesn’t mind that you call it a figment of your imagination 4) for any such phenomenon X, X is not “hostile” (2) to humans
So it seems we agree on that much. Indeed, I find it likely that most people on this site would agree on that much.
the amount of evidence that there is something supernatural* if far greater than the amount of evidence that there are millions of people lying about their experiences.
As above, I think the evidence supporting the idea that there exist phenomena in the universe that “human science” (1) doesn’t commonly accept is pretty strong. The evidence supporting the idea that people lie about their experiences, confabulate their experiences, and have experiences that don’t map to events outside their own brains despite seeming to, is also pretty strong. These aren’t at all conflicting ideas; I am confident of them both.
Do you mean to suggest that, because there exist such phenomena, human reports are therefore credible? I don’t see how you get from one to the other.
Seeing things that aren’t there wold be a sign of something being very wrong with me
Not really, no. It happens to people all the time. I had the experience once of being visited by Prophetic Beings from Outside Time who had a Very Significant Message for me to impart to the masses. That doesn’t mean I’m crazy. It also doesn’t mean that Prophetic Beings from Outside Time have a Very Significant Message for me to impart to the masses.
either I and some others are insane with an unknown form of insanity, or there is something out there.
Again: there are almost certainly many things out there. That doesn’t mean that every experience you have is an accurate report of the state of the universe. And if the particular experience you had turns out not to be an accurate report of the state of the universe, that doesn’t mean you’re insane.
==========
(1) Given what I think you mean by that phrase. For example, nuclear physics was outside the realm of what human science commonly accepted in the year 1750, so was supernatural then by this definition, although it is not now.
(2) Given what I think you mean by that phrase. For example, I assume the empty void of interstellar space is not considered hostile, even though it will immediately kill an unprotected human exposed to it.
As already pointed out, would it change either my beliefs or your beliefs? I’ve already recounted a medical mystery with my foot and blood loss. It comes down in the end to my word, and that of people I know. We could all be lying. There is no long term proof, so I don’t see any need to explain it. That was my point. What is strong proof to me, is weak proof to others because I know that I am not lying. I have no way to prove I am not lying however so what would be the point?
I have no way to prove I am not lying however so what would be the point?
If you have evidence that could overcome the low prior for God’s existence were you not lying, then that would be worth hearing even if we would believe you’re lying. I’m not aware of such evidence for particular deities.
Honestly mine really isn’t any different than what you hear on the internet all the time. If you want to hear it go ahead. When my grandfather died all the people in the room said that they saw a light enter the room. It didn’t say anything but they all agreed that they felt peace come over them. My grandfather was a Christian, as were the people in the room. I wasn’t in the room, however I did check their stories individually and they matched. Also these were people who haven’t lied to me before or since (well, other than stuff like april fools… though one of them never even does that). That, along with my foot, and my Mothers ability to know when her friends are in trouble and make phone calls that I have related in other posts give me reasonably strong belief in the supernatural* world
*(Supernatural yada yada, not understood by science yada yada. Do I need to keep making these disclaimers?)
And while I would answer ‘no’ to that question, the amount of evidence that there is something supernatural* if far greater than the amount of evidence that there are millions of people lying about their experiences.
Surprisingly, no. That said, religious people aren’t lying. They’re not even a lot crazier than baseline. I’ve had experiences which I recognize from my reading to be neurological that I might otherwise attribute to some kind of religious intervention. And those are coming from an atheist’s brain not primed to see angels or gods or anything of that kind.
As for why belief in the supernatural is everywhere, a lot of it has to do with how bad our brains are at finding satisfactory explanations, and at doing rudimentary probability theory. We existed as a species for a hundred thousand years before we got around to figuring out why there was thunder. Before then, the explanation that sounded the simplest was ‘there’s a big ape in the sky who does it.’ And, even when we knew the real reason, we were so invested in those explanations that they didn’t go away. Add in a whole bunch of glitches native to the human brain, and boom, you’ve a thousand generations of spooky campfire stories.
As was suggested, misremembering, and group hallucination are possible, but if that is the case than I should probably check myself and some people I know into a medical clinic because I would be forced to consider myself insane.
If I were you, I would be terrified of that possibility. I would at least go to a psychiatrist and try to rule it out. It is a real possibility, and potentially the most likely one. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
The reason for people to believe someone else is if they had proof to back it up, or they already had reason to believe. Humans aren’t stupid, and I don’t think we’ve become radically more intelligent in the last couple thousand years. Why then is belief in the supernatural* everywhere? Is it something in our makeup, how we think? I have heard such a thing discounted by both sides.
I don’t think you’ll find such a thing readily discounted here. There are plenty of well established cognitive biases that come to play in assessment of supernatural claims. The sequences discuss this to some degree, but you might also be interested in reading this book which discusses some of the mechanisms which contribute to supernatural belief which are not commonly discussed here.
We don’t even need to raise the issue of the supernatural to examine whether people are likely to pass down beliefs and rituals when they don’t really work. We can look at folk medicine, and see if there are examples of cures which have been passed down through cultures which perform no better than placebo in double blind tests. In fact, there is an abundance of such.
We can look at folk medicine, and see if there are examples of cures which have been passed down through cultures which perform no better than placebo in double blind tests.
Point.
though I would point out that not all of them are wrong either. Just the good majority. That’s neither here nor there though.
Out of curiosity how does science explain people feeling knowing that people they care about are in trouble? My mother has made 4 phone calls, and I have witnessed 2 where she felt that someone was in trouble and called them. One of those calls was to me and it helped me greatly. While she has missed calling people that were in trouble, she has never once called someone with that intent and been wrong.She told me that it feels like someone is telling her to call them because they are in trouble. I can’t know if that is true or not, but I can’t think of her ever lying to me. This is even more interesting because one time she told me that she felt she needed to make the call just before she did, thereby predicting it.
I know that she isn’t the only person that does this, because I have read many accounts of people who believed a loved one had died when they were across the ocean during WWII.
Personally I would go with psyonics if not god, but that might be because I played to many role-playing games.
Sorry if this seems odd, it was just something that came to mind as I was thinking about supernatural* things.
*(outside of the realm of what human science commonly accepts)
Out of curiosity how does science explain people feeling knowing that people they care about are in trouble?
I don’t know if this is something that has been explained, or even if it’s something that needs to be explained. It could be that you’re operating under an unrepresentative dataset. Keep in mind that if you hadn’t experienced a number of phone calls where the caller’s intuition that something was wrong was correct, you wouldn’t treat it as a phenomenon in need of explanation, but if you had experienced some other set of improbable occurrences, simply by chance, then that would look like a phenomenon in need of explanation. I personally have no experiences with acquaintances making phone calls on an intuition that something is wrong and being right, although I have experience with acquaintances getting worried and making phone calls and finding out there was really nothing to worry about. There’s a significant danger of selection bias in dealing with claims like this, because people who experience, say, a sudden premonition that something has happened to their loved on across the sea at war, and then find out a couple weeks later that they’re still alive and well, are probably not going to record the experience for posterity.
I’ve encountered plenty of claims of improbable events before which were attributed to supernatural causes. If I consistently encountered ones that took the form of people correctly intuiting that a distant loved one was in trouble and calling them, I would definitely start to suspect that this was a real phenomenon in need of explanation, although I would also be interested in seeing how often people intuited that a distant loved one was in trouble, called them, found out they were wrong, and didn’t think it was worth remembering. Maybe some of the improbable events I’ve heard about really are the result of more than chance, and have some underlying explanation that I’m not aware of, but I don’t have the evidence to strongly suspect this.
If you multiply a day times the population experiencing it, that’s about 82,000 years of human experience in America alone. That’s a lot of time for improbable stuff to happen in, and people tend to remember the improbable stuff and forget the ordinary, and draw patterns erroneously. So I don’t treat seeming patterns of unusual events as needing explanation unless I have reliable reason to conclude that they’re actually going on.
My mother has made 4 phone calls, and I have witnessed 2 where she felt that someone was in trouble and called them.
Has your mother ever called anyone when she felt they were in trouble, only to find out that they weren’t, in fact, in trouble ? Confirmation bias is pretty strong in most humans.
This is even more interesting because one time she told me that she felt she needed to make the call just before she did, thereby predicting it.
Wait… she predicted that she would call someone, and then went ahead and called someone ? This doesn’t sound like much of a prediction; I don’t think I’m parsing your sentence correctly.
because I have read many accounts of people who believed a loved one had died when they were across the ocean during WWII.
If your loved one is fighting in WWII, it’s very likely that he or she would die, sadly...
Personally I would go with psyonics if not god...
Why did you end up picking “god” over “psionics”, then ?
Has your mother ever called anyone when she felt they were in trouble, only to find out that they weren’t, in fact, in trouble ? Confirmation bias is pretty strong in most humans.
Not that I remember. My memory could be faulty, but thinking long and hard about it I don’t remember it happening.
Wait… she predicted that she would call someone, and then went ahead and called someone ? This doesn’t sound like much of a prediction; I don’t think I’m parsing your sentence correctly.
She predicted they were in trouble. I think the phrase she used was “I think XXXX is in trouble and needs help.” I could be misremembering though.
Why did you end up picking “god” over “psionics”, then ?
It’s a close call honestly, but if god exists, which I believe he does from other evidence listed in this over-sized thread, then adding psionics on top would be added complexity for no gain. If you already know that the earth goes around the sun because of gravity, why bother coming up with an alternate explanation for why Saturn goes around the sun? It might have another reason, but the simplest explanation is more likely to be right.
Oh yeah, that makes more sense than what I was thinking.
Anyway, as the others on this thread have pointed out, there could be many explanations for why you remember events the way you do. Among them, are things like “my mother has supernatural powers”, “a god exists and he is using his powers on my mother”, “aliens exist and are using their power on my mother”, etc. The most probable explanation, though, is “my memory is faulty due to a cognitive bias that is well understood by modern psychologists”.
That said, I must acknowledge that if you have already determined, for some other unrelated reason, that the probability of psionic powers / gods / aliens existing is quite high; then it would be perfectly rational of you to assign a much higher probability to one of these other explanations.
My mother has made 4 phone calls, and I have witnessed 2 where she felt that someone was in trouble and called them.
Even if that were true, and not a misremembrance or a post-hoc rationalization, you must take note of the many other people who have those feelings and no one was in trouble. You should expect in advance to hear more anecdotes about the times that someone really was in trouble, than anecdotes about the times they were not, so having heard them is very little evidence.
Even if that were true, and not a misremembrance or a post-hoc rationalization
I did state that she predicted one in advance to me. Also when my mother called me the first thing she asked was “are you alright?”
You should expect in advance to hear more anecdotes about the times that someone really was in trouble, than anecdotes about the times they were not, so having heard them is very little evidence.
As far as my mother goes I have never once seen her mistake a prediction. Now 2 predictions (and 2 more that she told me about) sounds small, but consider the amount of times that she didn’t mistakenly call the probability that something is going on is quite high. For example if you have a deck with 996 blue cards in it, and 4 red cards in it, and you call a red card before it flips once, but never call it before a blue card flips, the chances of you succeeding on are… Um… Do you guys want me to do the math? It’s pretty small.
And just because some people think that they can do it and can’t, doesn’t mean that a person can’t do it. Look at all the people who think they are wonderful singers.
Of course I could be misremembering. I could go ask my mother, and my father and see what they say if you like. (Yes I am close to my parents. We have a tight nit family even though I am 24). Of course we could all be misremembering, or lying. Again, you have no way to know, and you really shouldn’t even consider taking my word for this.
For instance, every culture has a belief in the supernatural.
Every culture has some different things they believe in, and call supernatural. That doesn’t prove there really is a category of things that actually are supernatural. By analogy, belief by Himalayan people that the Yeti is real is not evidence that Bigfoot (in the northwestern United States) is real. Likewise, a Hindu’s fervent belief is not evidence of the resurrection of Jesus.
In short, the shortfalls in human understanding completely explain why primitive cultures believed “supernatural” was a real and useful label, even though that belief is false.
I’m not sure whether it is the case that primitive cultures have a category of things they think of as “supernatural”—pagan religions were certainly quite literal: they lived on Olympus, they mated with humans, they were birthed. I wonder whether the distinction between “natural” and “supernatural” only comes about when it becomes clear that gods don’t belong in the former category.
I had a paragraph about that, citing Explain/Worship/Ignore, but I decided that it detracted from the point I was trying to make.
If you already think that primitives did not use the label “supernatural,” then you already think there isn’t much evidence of supernatural phenomena—at least compared to the post I was responding to.
If you say, I can dance and make it rain, and then you fail, you would get laughed at.
I don’t believe you’ve read much of the content on this site. There are a host of human cognitive biases that would lead to belief in the supernatural. Perhaps most notably, we attribute agency to non-agents. It’s easy to see how that would be adaptive in the ancestral environment; just look at the truth table for “That sound was an animal and I believe that sound was an animal” and the outcomes of each possibility.
Proof is not typically necessary. People make claims about their experience all the time that they have no way of proving, as well as claims that they probably could prove but don’t in fact do so, and I believe many of those claims.
For example, I believe my officemate is married, although they have offered me no proof of this beyond their unsupported claim.
I would say a more useful question is, “how do I provide another person with sufficient evidence that such an entity exists that the person should consider it likely?” And of course the answer depends on the person, and what they previously considered likely. (The jargon around here would be “it depends on their priors.”)
Mostly I don’t think I can, unless their priors are such that they pretty much already believe that such an entity exists.
Another question worth asking is “how do I provide myself sufficient evidence that such an entity exists that I should consider it likely?”
I don’t think I can do that either.
Unrelatedly: Is “god exists, has the properties I believe it to have, and wants to stay hidden” really the only reason you can think of for the observable universe being as we observe it to be? I understand it’s the reason you believe, I’m asking whether it’s the only reason you can think of, or whether that was just hyperbole.
My own belief is closer to: “Something very powerful and supernatural exists, doesn’t seem to be hostile, and doesn’t mind that I call it the Christian God.” And while I would answer ‘no’ to that question, the amount of evidence that there is something supernatural if far greater than the amount of evidence that there are millions of people lying about their experiences.
For instance, every culture has a belief in the supernatural. Now I would expect that social evolution would trend away from such beliefs. If you say, I can dance and make it rain, and then you fail, you would get laughed at. If you don’t believe me gather a bunch of your closest friends and try it. The reason for people to believe someone else is if they had proof to back it up, or they already had reason to believe. Humans aren’t stupid, and I don’t think we’ve become radically more intelligent in the last couple thousand years. Why then is belief in the supernatural* everywhere? Is it something in our makeup, how we think? I have heard such a thing discounted by both sides. So there must be some cause, some reason for people to have started believing.
And that’s without even getting into my experiences, or those close to me. As was suggested, misremembering, and group hallucination are possible, but if that is the case than I should probably check myself and some people I know into a medical clinic because I would be forced to consider myself insane. Seeing things that aren’t there wold be a sign of something being very wrong with me, but I do not any any other symptoms of insanity so I strongly doubt this is the case.
I suppose when I get right down to it, either I and some others are insane with an unknown form of insanity, or there is something out there.
*(outside of the realm of what human science commonly accepts)
For what it’s worth, I’m .9+ confident of the following claims:
1) there exist phenomena in the universe that “human science” (1) doesn’t commonly accept.
2) for any such phenomenon X, X doesn’t mind that you call it the Christian God
3) for any such phenomenon X, X doesn’t mind that you call it a figment of your imagination
4) for any such phenomenon X, X is not “hostile” (2) to humans
So it seems we agree on that much.
Indeed, I find it likely that most people on this site would agree on that much.
As above, I think the evidence supporting the idea that there exist phenomena in the universe that “human science” (1) doesn’t commonly accept is pretty strong. The evidence supporting the idea that people lie about their experiences, confabulate their experiences, and have experiences that don’t map to events outside their own brains despite seeming to, is also pretty strong. These aren’t at all conflicting ideas; I am confident of them both.
Do you mean to suggest that, because there exist such phenomena, human reports are therefore credible? I don’t see how you get from one to the other.
Not really, no. It happens to people all the time. I had the experience once of being visited by Prophetic Beings from Outside Time who had a Very Significant Message for me to impart to the masses. That doesn’t mean I’m crazy. It also doesn’t mean that Prophetic Beings from Outside Time have a Very Significant Message for me to impart to the masses.
Again: there are almost certainly many things out there.
That doesn’t mean that every experience you have is an accurate report of the state of the universe.
And if the particular experience you had turns out not to be an accurate report of the state of the universe, that doesn’t mean you’re insane.
==========
(1) Given what I think you mean by that phrase. For example, nuclear physics was outside the realm of what human science commonly accepted in the year 1750, so was supernatural then by this definition, although it is not now.
(2) Given what I think you mean by that phrase. For example, I assume the empty void of interstellar space is not considered hostile, even though it will immediately kill an unprotected human exposed to it.
Well, don’t be coy. There’s no point in withholding your strongest piece of evidence. Please, get into it.
As already pointed out, would it change either my beliefs or your beliefs? I’ve already recounted a medical mystery with my foot and blood loss. It comes down in the end to my word, and that of people I know. We could all be lying. There is no long term proof, so I don’t see any need to explain it. That was my point. What is strong proof to me, is weak proof to others because I know that I am not lying. I have no way to prove I am not lying however so what would be the point?
If you have evidence that could overcome the low prior for God’s existence were you not lying, then that would be worth hearing even if we would believe you’re lying. I’m not aware of such evidence for particular deities.
Honestly mine really isn’t any different than what you hear on the internet all the time. If you want to hear it go ahead. When my grandfather died all the people in the room said that they saw a light enter the room. It didn’t say anything but they all agreed that they felt peace come over them. My grandfather was a Christian, as were the people in the room. I wasn’t in the room, however I did check their stories individually and they matched. Also these were people who haven’t lied to me before or since (well, other than stuff like april fools… though one of them never even does that). That, along with my foot, and my Mothers ability to know when her friends are in trouble and make phone calls that I have related in other posts give me reasonably strong belief in the supernatural* world
*(Supernatural yada yada, not understood by science yada yada. Do I need to keep making these disclaimers?)
Surprisingly, no. That said, religious people aren’t lying. They’re not even a lot crazier than baseline. I’ve had experiences which I recognize from my reading to be neurological that I might otherwise attribute to some kind of religious intervention. And those are coming from an atheist’s brain not primed to see angels or gods or anything of that kind.
As for why belief in the supernatural is everywhere, a lot of it has to do with how bad our brains are at finding satisfactory explanations, and at doing rudimentary probability theory. We existed as a species for a hundred thousand years before we got around to figuring out why there was thunder. Before then, the explanation that sounded the simplest was ‘there’s a big ape in the sky who does it.’ And, even when we knew the real reason, we were so invested in those explanations that they didn’t go away. Add in a whole bunch of glitches native to the human brain, and boom, you’ve a thousand generations of spooky campfire stories.
If I were you, I would be terrified of that possibility. I would at least go to a psychiatrist and try to rule it out. It is a real possibility, and potentially the most likely one. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
I don’t think you’ll find such a thing readily discounted here. There are plenty of well established cognitive biases that come to play in assessment of supernatural claims. The sequences discuss this to some degree, but you might also be interested in reading this book which discusses some of the mechanisms which contribute to supernatural belief which are not commonly discussed here.
We don’t even need to raise the issue of the supernatural to examine whether people are likely to pass down beliefs and rituals when they don’t really work. We can look at folk medicine, and see if there are examples of cures which have been passed down through cultures which perform no better than placebo in double blind tests. In fact, there is an abundance of such.
Point.
though I would point out that not all of them are wrong either. Just the good majority. That’s neither here nor there though.
Out of curiosity how does science explain people feeling knowing that people they care about are in trouble? My mother has made 4 phone calls, and I have witnessed 2 where she felt that someone was in trouble and called them. One of those calls was to me and it helped me greatly. While she has missed calling people that were in trouble, she has never once called someone with that intent and been wrong.She told me that it feels like someone is telling her to call them because they are in trouble. I can’t know if that is true or not, but I can’t think of her ever lying to me. This is even more interesting because one time she told me that she felt she needed to make the call just before she did, thereby predicting it.
I know that she isn’t the only person that does this, because I have read many accounts of people who believed a loved one had died when they were across the ocean during WWII.
Personally I would go with psyonics if not god, but that might be because I played to many role-playing games.
Sorry if this seems odd, it was just something that came to mind as I was thinking about supernatural* things.
*(outside of the realm of what human science commonly accepts)
I don’t know if this is something that has been explained, or even if it’s something that needs to be explained. It could be that you’re operating under an unrepresentative dataset. Keep in mind that if you hadn’t experienced a number of phone calls where the caller’s intuition that something was wrong was correct, you wouldn’t treat it as a phenomenon in need of explanation, but if you had experienced some other set of improbable occurrences, simply by chance, then that would look like a phenomenon in need of explanation. I personally have no experiences with acquaintances making phone calls on an intuition that something is wrong and being right, although I have experience with acquaintances getting worried and making phone calls and finding out there was really nothing to worry about. There’s a significant danger of selection bias in dealing with claims like this, because people who experience, say, a sudden premonition that something has happened to their loved on across the sea at war, and then find out a couple weeks later that they’re still alive and well, are probably not going to record the experience for posterity.
I’ve encountered plenty of claims of improbable events before which were attributed to supernatural causes. If I consistently encountered ones that took the form of people correctly intuiting that a distant loved one was in trouble and calling them, I would definitely start to suspect that this was a real phenomenon in need of explanation, although I would also be interested in seeing how often people intuited that a distant loved one was in trouble, called them, found out they were wrong, and didn’t think it was worth remembering. Maybe some of the improbable events I’ve heard about really are the result of more than chance, and have some underlying explanation that I’m not aware of, but I don’t have the evidence to strongly suspect this.
If you multiply a day times the population experiencing it, that’s about 82,000 years of human experience in America alone. That’s a lot of time for improbable stuff to happen in, and people tend to remember the improbable stuff and forget the ordinary, and draw patterns erroneously. So I don’t treat seeming patterns of unusual events as needing explanation unless I have reliable reason to conclude that they’re actually going on.
Has your mother ever called anyone when she felt they were in trouble, only to find out that they weren’t, in fact, in trouble ? Confirmation bias is pretty strong in most humans.
Wait… she predicted that she would call someone, and then went ahead and called someone ? This doesn’t sound like much of a prediction; I don’t think I’m parsing your sentence correctly.
If your loved one is fighting in WWII, it’s very likely that he or she would die, sadly...
Why did you end up picking “god” over “psionics”, then ?
Not that I remember. My memory could be faulty, but thinking long and hard about it I don’t remember it happening.
She predicted they were in trouble. I think the phrase she used was “I think XXXX is in trouble and needs help.” I could be misremembering though.
It’s a close call honestly, but if god exists, which I believe he does from other evidence listed in this over-sized thread, then adding psionics on top would be added complexity for no gain. If you already know that the earth goes around the sun because of gravity, why bother coming up with an alternate explanation for why Saturn goes around the sun? It might have another reason, but the simplest explanation is more likely to be right.
Oh yeah, that makes more sense than what I was thinking.
Anyway, as the others on this thread have pointed out, there could be many explanations for why you remember events the way you do. Among them, are things like “my mother has supernatural powers”, “a god exists and he is using his powers on my mother”, “aliens exist and are using their power on my mother”, etc. The most probable explanation, though, is “my memory is faulty due to a cognitive bias that is well understood by modern psychologists”.
That said, I must acknowledge that if you have already determined, for some other unrelated reason, that the probability of psionic powers / gods / aliens existing is quite high; then it would be perfectly rational of you to assign a much higher probability to one of these other explanations.
Even if that were true, and not a misremembrance or a post-hoc rationalization, you must take note of the many other people who have those feelings and no one was in trouble. You should expect in advance to hear more anecdotes about the times that someone really was in trouble, than anecdotes about the times they were not, so having heard them is very little evidence.
I did state that she predicted one in advance to me. Also when my mother called me the first thing she asked was “are you alright?”
As far as my mother goes I have never once seen her mistake a prediction. Now 2 predictions (and 2 more that she told me about) sounds small, but consider the amount of times that she didn’t mistakenly call the probability that something is going on is quite high. For example if you have a deck with 996 blue cards in it, and 4 red cards in it, and you call a red card before it flips once, but never call it before a blue card flips, the chances of you succeeding on are… Um… Do you guys want me to do the math? It’s pretty small.
And just because some people think that they can do it and can’t, doesn’t mean that a person can’t do it. Look at all the people who think they are wonderful singers.
Of course I could be misremembering. I could go ask my mother, and my father and see what they say if you like. (Yes I am close to my parents. We have a tight nit family even though I am 24). Of course we could all be misremembering, or lying. Again, you have no way to know, and you really shouldn’t even consider taking my word for this.
Every culture has some different things they believe in, and call supernatural. That doesn’t prove there really is a category of things that actually are supernatural. By analogy, belief by Himalayan people that the Yeti is real is not evidence that Bigfoot (in the northwestern United States) is real. Likewise, a Hindu’s fervent belief is not evidence of the resurrection of Jesus.
In short, the shortfalls in human understanding completely explain why primitive cultures believed “supernatural” was a real and useful label, even though that belief is false.
I’m not sure whether it is the case that primitive cultures have a category of things they think of as “supernatural”—pagan religions were certainly quite literal: they lived on Olympus, they mated with humans, they were birthed. I wonder whether the distinction between “natural” and “supernatural” only comes about when it becomes clear that gods don’t belong in the former category.
I had a paragraph about that, citing Explain/Worship/Ignore, but I decided that it detracted from the point I was trying to make.
If you already think that primitives did not use the label “supernatural,” then you already think there isn’t much evidence of supernatural phenomena—at least compared to the post I was responding to.
I don’t believe you’ve read much of the content on this site. There are a host of human cognitive biases that would lead to belief in the supernatural. Perhaps most notably, we attribute agency to non-agents. It’s easy to see how that would be adaptive in the ancestral environment; just look at the truth table for “That sound was an animal and I believe that sound was an animal” and the outcomes of each possibility.