As we already know, because of the tendency of the human mind to be deceived, this term is pretty close to unity...
This is the crux of the matter. If this is true, I can safely let go of my faith. But how certain are we of this? What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?
This is the crux of the matter. If this is true, I can safely let go of my faith. But how certain are we of this?
That’s an important matter, but I don’t think it’s difficult to estabilish. The key ingredient is deception, the appearance of a miraculous event without a miracle effectively happening, and the key question is: “Can somebody be tricked into believing that a contrieved situation is supernatural?” If we answer positively, then the conclusion is that there’s no correlation between the belief in a miracle and its actual happening, so that the term P(miracle reported|no Christian god) remains very high. Otherwise, we are asserting that in a world devoid of god(s), it’s impossible for a person to believe in miracles.
So, can someone be deceived into believing in a miracle? In my experience, that’s pretty easy. On one side, there are studies that show not only that humans have a propensity into believing in the supernatural already encoded in their brains, but even chimps may exhibit religious behaviour! Add to that pareidolia, not only on faces but on significance in general: for example, the natural remission of an illness mistaken as a sign of divine significance. But the tendency to strongly believe in the supernatural is even more easy to elicit if you design an experience just for that: as I already told, this attitude is endemic in the field of mentalism, where even when the performers explicitely declares he is using tricks, there will still be someone to claim that he is using power he doesn’t know he has. Not to mention when the performer deceives purposefully someone as a mean to gain his trust and his money. Let’s however say that we have eliminated any possibility of a deception, however improbable: how can we be sure that what is left isn’t just an unknown natural law, instead of a phoenomenon flowing directly from a supernatural entity?
This is a summary of what I know and how I know it. Now I ask to you: do you believe that people can be easily deceived into believing in a miracle? Or that people believing in miracles is an exclusive feature of a universe with a god?
It is not sufficient to say “can people be easily deceived into believing in a miracle?” or “do people believe in miracles in a universe without God?” It is necessary to consider ALL of your evidence, which includes particular miracle claims that you know about in their particularity.
As we already know, because of the tendency of the human mind to be deceived, this term is pretty close to unity...
This is the crux of the matter. If this is true, I can safely let go of my faith. But how certain are we of this? What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?
That’s an important matter, but I don’t think it’s difficult to estabilish. The key ingredient is deception, the appearance of a miraculous event without a miracle effectively happening, and the key question is: “Can somebody be tricked into believing that a contrieved situation is supernatural?”
If we answer positively, then the conclusion is that there’s no correlation between the belief in a miracle and its actual happening, so that the term P(miracle reported|no Christian god) remains very high. Otherwise, we are asserting that in a world devoid of god(s), it’s impossible for a person to believe in miracles.
So, can someone be deceived into believing in a miracle? In my experience, that’s pretty easy.
On one side, there are studies that show not only that humans have a propensity into believing in the supernatural already encoded in their brains, but even chimps may exhibit religious behaviour! Add to that pareidolia, not only on faces but on significance in general: for example, the natural remission of an illness mistaken as a sign of divine significance.
But the tendency to strongly believe in the supernatural is even more easy to elicit if you design an experience just for that: as I already told, this attitude is endemic in the field of mentalism, where even when the performers explicitely declares he is using tricks, there will still be someone to claim that he is using power he doesn’t know he has. Not to mention when the performer deceives purposefully someone as a mean to gain his trust and his money.
Let’s however say that we have eliminated any possibility of a deception, however improbable: how can we be sure that what is left isn’t just an unknown natural law, instead of a phoenomenon flowing directly from a supernatural entity?
This is a summary of what I know and how I know it.
Now I ask to you: do you believe that people can be easily deceived into believing in a miracle? Or that people believing in miracles is an exclusive feature of a universe with a god?
It is not sufficient to say “can people be easily deceived into believing in a miracle?” or “do people believe in miracles in a universe without God?” It is necessary to consider ALL of your evidence, which includes particular miracle claims that you know about in their particularity.
Exactly. But you still need a prior on those, from models of the world and first principles.