Admin writes:
Aren't you really asking how one scientifically approaches the question of whether the observed phenomenon of human belief in the supernatural has any legitimate empirical support?
No.
No I am asking what the scientific support for the naturalistic alternatives are. I am asking how we scientifically investigate the reasons people believe in the things that they do. In
Message 1292 Mod writes:
Mod writes:
The proclivity for humans to embellish, confabulate, imagine, speculate. The proclivity for confirmation bias in superstitious behaviour and beliefs. The hyper active agency detection of human minds, the need for 'false positives' in survival. The tendency to pay more mental attention to entities that are minimally counter-intuitive. The sheer number of conceptions of supernatural beings which have been shown false by science. The fact that no evidence supporting the existence of any supernatural entity has been forthcoming in an age where we figured out time dilation and quantum physics.
The very existence of 'wishful thinking' that you point out and the very 'wishful' nature of many supernatural concepts. The hierarchical mind set of primates. Our strong desire for narrative, even or especially ones that circumvent our common notions in interesting ways.
The connection between epilepsy and religious ideas, the common content of delusions and so on and so forth.
There are plenty of psychological effects that we know of that could explain how humans can inadvertently create and believe in the existence of unseen beings.
This is a fairly succinct summary of the sort of things I had in mind when proposing this topic.
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