Faith, facts and Father Christmas

[uppityliberal]

Reading this sad and scary story about "facilitated" communication got me to thinking about how easily people can dupe themselves into believing something for which facts are simply not in evidence

Comments

[textualdeviance]

Oh, where to start...?

OK...

First of all, there's no such thing as "the mind." Everything we are--every perception, thought, dream, idea, personality quirk, whatever--is a product of our physical existence, specifically our brains. Astral projection, spirits, souls and such aren't physically possible, because the "essence" of a human being lies entirely between our ears, and is the product of billions of electrochemical messages shot from one neuron to another.

When the brain is deprived of fuel--oxygen and glucose--or is missing large chunks of itself, it's simply not going to function. When a body is dead, it's an empty shell. There's no person there anymore, nor is there an echo of that person floating around somewhere outside the carcass. Just as a computer doesn't function without a motherboard and a power supply, the brain doesn't function without the heart pumping fuel to it.

Second, science and faith are two completely separate things. Science doesn't require faith because it's open source. If a scientific answer isn't satisfying, people are perfectly welcome to conduct their own studies (following the scientific method) to find a better answer. (And they do, hence why science is always being refined.) No faith needed, because you can go learn it and prove it for yourself. There's no need to trust in clergy or unseen forces or anything because every person has democratic equal access to those methods and knowledge.

Of course, not every person has availed themselves of this, and thus to people who (apparently like yourself) have only a very surface understanding of science, it does seem indistinguishable from magic. But it's not. It's fundamentally different.

Again, if you want to get existential or talk about the origin of matter, be my guest. But when it comes to things that religion claims to have an answer for that science has already debunked? You don't get to rewrite facts in evidence. You can believe what you want to believe, but when you start trying to tear down reality (presumably as a means of reinforcing your own weak faith--the truly faithful don't feel threatened by science), you just look silly.

[anivair]

To be fair, we presume that to be the case. that is to say, we know that all our thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc are triggered by and in return trigger electrical and chemical reactions in the brain and body. That is perfectly accurate.

However, we also know that there is a lot more to the universe than what we can see or even detect with modern science. We really do not know that those chemical and electrical impulses are the whole story, we just believe that they are because they are all that we can perceive.

[uppityliberal]

Which, like I say, starts treading into existentialism, which is a whole 'nother thing entirely.

As far as 99.9% of us know, we exist in observable reality and conduct our lives according to the rules therein. Gravity keeps our feet on the ground, water vapor scuds across the sky and occasionally dumps on us and the sun makes us create Vitamin D and causes photosynthesis. These are the everyday realities that we have to acknowledge. How our brains work is part of that observable reality.

As a thought exercise, the "what ifs" outside of observable reality are somewhat interesting, but they really don't have any practical application within the sphere of observable reality, so there's kinda no point to substitute those what ifs when the question has already been answered. There are no fairies making the flowers grow. It might be amusing to think about, but it's not observable reality, and thus to dwell on such things as if it were is usually (and rightly so) considered a brain dysfunction.

Flights of fancy are fun, so long as one understands that that's what they are, and has the ability to return to planet Earth when the dreaming is done.

[anivair]

I agree. But I don't see the implication above that anyone should do anything unreasonable as a result of that what if. Just the admission that we don't know everything.

Trust me, i'm the first one to say that if your beliefs don't stand up to reality, then they go, not it. If you belong to some religion that says you should avoid doctors and just pray for god to fix your cancer, screw that religion, go to the hospital.

But as long as you're seeing doctors and going to the hospital, i don't ind some prayer or energy work. can't hurt.

Religion is a great tool, when used properly, but when people try to apply it as a tool to work with things that it was never meant for (like science, history, law, etc) we have problems.