Nemesis,
If I saw an ornament in my house flying across the room with no obvious cause, I can neither claim a cause one way or the other. To assume it must be physical and perfectly normal with no evidence is just as baseless as to claim it was done by a spirit. Both assumptions require evidence. The negative has no more weigh in that case than the positive.
So by your logic it is just as possible that the object flew across the room by physical means, spirits, trolls, space aliens, unicorns, Thor, globs, earwigs, Satan, etc. You believe that without evidence all possibilities are just as likely. Interesting concept.
You are the one positing a spirit realm without evidence. We do have evidence of a physical realm; thus it is perfectly reasonable to assume a physical cause. You are adding entities unnecessarily to explain a phenomenon. This is the reverse of Occam’s razor and leads to irrational thinking.
Well I say the same about life self-creating, there is no evidence, or observation that it ever has, and yet if you are an atheist you believe with no foundation.
Not without foundation. Life started somehow, and we know of physical processes, so it is more logical to assume physical causes than made up ones without evidence such as spirits, unies, or aliens.
All the advanced technology of man cannot even make a few proteins, how are they supposed to come into existence and hang about uncorrupted for a few billon years for the rest of the thousands needed for even the simplest known life forms? And yet you somehow believe in the unbelievable and in the unproven.
No one claims to have the answer to how life got here (except for people who believe in the spirit realm without evidence, interestingly). First of all, our technology is still in its infancy when it comes to this subject. Secondly, we have been able to synthesize proteins. All that we know is that we are here and that there is a physical world. To say any more is to speculate without evidence. Some people are actively trying to find answers to questions such as “how we got here” instead of just saying “god did it”. Again, this comes down to Occam’s razor and not adding unnecessary entities (god or fairies) to the explanation.
My experiences do not relate to pink elephants, but psychic experiences of vision, direct knowledge, time, and space. I have done all the tests, medical etc. and there is no tangible rational explanation, surely to be undecided is more rational than to take a dogmatic unfounded approach and say: “It can’t be so because I don’t want it to be.”
No, the rational response would be to say, “I don’t know the physical explanation for this phenomenon yet.” To then entertain the possibility of spiritual causes is irrational. This is called a god of the gaps argument, or also referred to as an argument from ignorance. “If we can’t yet explain it, then [insert favorite deity or other non-existent being] must have done it”. That, my friend, is irrational behavior.
Think about what you believe in for a moment—you believe that life somehow self-created even though with all the advanced technology we cannot even make a few proteins. How is this rational? You have no proof, observations, or evidence and yet you base your entire life on the fact that you feel it must have “somehow” happened.
It is perfectly rational. It had to happen somehow. The only candidate that we have evidence for is the universe itself. We have no evidence of any spiritual being, so to posit such a being does not help solve the problem, but instead makes it more complex, because then you have to somehow explain a spiritual cause without evidence. You might do some research on Abiogenesis, since you seem to be stuck on this subject. We are not as in the dark about our origins as you seem to imply. Just because we don’t know how things happened now does not mean that we will never know. Of course the problem may just be intractable and we might never know, but saying a spiritual being did it doesn’t get us any closer to an answer.
If you find it so easy to believe in the unbelievable when why is life on another level so totally abhorrent to you?
It’s not abhorrent to me, as fiction. If someone is seriously trying to provide rational explanations, though, then I require evidence. Like I said before, there is evidence of a material universe, but there is no evidence of one or many gods yet. If we do find evidence of life “on another level” then it will transition from the realm of fiction to fact, but until then a rational person will not try to explain things by making things up. We just say, “we do not yet know.” This does not mean, though, that a spiritual or some other made up scenario is just as plausible as a physical one for reasons I’ve stated earlier.
Even just considering it seems to make you squirm. Surely being open in mind is not that much of a leap? Or have we learned nothing since getting away from the grasp of the “Borg”?
It’s good to have an open mind, but it should not be so wide open that your brain falls out. I don’t see any advantage to being extremely credulous to claims with absolutely no evidence. At least with physical explanations we know that a physical universe exists, which is a point in its favor over fairies and gods. It is critical thinking skill such as these that helped get me away from the grasp of the Borg. Irrational thinking is what held me in, and learning critical thinking skills is what liberated me.
All I ask is realize many of your own beliefs are based on mere hope and imagination like life self-creating. Why is another realm so hard to consider?
I can consider other things, but until evidence of other things or realms existing comes to light, the probability of them being a cause of anything is pretty much nil. If you have not standard of evidence, then how can you differentiate between fairies, god, unies, and aliens? Hence there is not much advantage to spending time on such made up explanations.
Do you see? You would have to explain how it is more probable that your deity or a spirit realm caused an event over some other fictional character, such as the tooth fairy. It’s not possible; thus it’s a useless theory. It is trivial to show how a physical cause is more probable than any other unproved entity – because we have evidence that the material universe exists!
Do you believe in sub-atomic particles? Do you know right now minute neutrinos are zooming straight through your body?
Of course I do. How do you think we gained such knowledge? Through the scientific method. These particles are matter, not spirit. There is evidence of such things. There is no evidence of a spirit world or god. Period.
There is far more to life than meets the eye Rem. All I am saying is keep an open mind on life, the universe, and everything.
Sure, but I’m sure you don’t have an open mind about the fairy living in my armpit. Just because there is more than meets they eye doesn’t mean that we accept any explanation as just as plausible even if it lacks any sort of evidence. Evidence is the key, my man. Otherwise we are back in the dark ages of superstition.
rem
"We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking." - Mark Twain
