[Mars]

Ngtm-1R, that sounds more like genetic memory than evolution...

Nope, that's evolution. We evolved to assume things were there and react to them, rather than carefully analyze, because it upped our survival (people who reacted didn't get eaten as much.)

I'm reading a book right now that's on this very subject from a purely Christian perspective, and it examines experiences, modern and ancient, as well as events recordee in the Bible. It identifies several ways people claim to hear from God: a phenomenon with a voice, such as the burning bush, an angelic messenger, an unaccompanied voice,  a dream or vision, the voice of another person speaking, usually unknowingly, to direct and specific circumstances, and an inward notion, often called the "still, small voice," which is a lot like one's own thoughts, except with a distinct sense of "otherness" to it.


This list is arranged from least common to most common. Virtually every Christian will attest to experiencing the still, small voice, so the fact that they're all crazy is ludicrous.

Sometimes I wake up because I think my roommate is calling me, I open my door and no one is there! Am I crazy? No. Did I imagine something that does indeed happen, but didn't in this case? Yes. I reacted to a likely scenerio that DIDN'T happen, because, even in sleep, my brain received data from my senses, that suggested it was happening.

I think its perfectly feasible that much of the population of the species believes in something that's not there as well. Take the idea of sea monsters. Until we had explorered much of the ocean, and classified many of the animals therein, it seemed perfectly feasible that the gigantic, dead squid washing up on beaches regularly took down some of the ships that never came back from their voyages. The truth was, however, that the ships sank due to wind, not because of vicious kraken, and yet, it was a widely believed myth.

Now, as far as one saying that "we give circumstances special significance because we're supposedly wired to find meaning even in places where there is none (such as finding shapes in clouds)," I could just as easily counter by arguing that perhaps we are, in fact, wired that way by our creator to make it easy to recognize his hand moving through our lives, and it is only our sheer determination to become ignorant of him that causes us to suggest anything less.

No, you couldn't. You have no evidence for that. We have significant understanding of how the brain works, and why it is the way it is. Not full, but significant, mind you. I think the part of our brain that's so adept at recognizing faces, (which happened because we're quite social creatures) is also pretty good at making us imagine faces when they aren't there.

In my own life, I. Have experienced the still, small voice, as well as what I would say is God addressing me through another person, too many times and about too many things with too many tangible results for it to be mere coincidence. The other thing you'll find is that, when genuine, we rarely talk about such things unless asked.

You know what? I have too! When I believed in the Christian God, I had a little voice that told me what the right thing to do was, or that I was doing a good, or bad job at some task. As I realized that I had no evidence for what I believed, I also realized that that voice, which had brought me through so much, was a part of ME that every good thought I'd had in my life I'd attributed to God, but really, it had been me the whole time.

As to the other experiences, I generally take it with a grain of salt, measure it against what the person says they believe, and see if they act crazy otherwise.

The funny thing is that perfectly sane, well adjusted people will act crazy in some ways. No one is entirely rational. Someone might be completely level headed about economics for instance, but have an irrational fear of spiders.

Thousands of years ago our long removed ancestors saw lightning strike and cowered in fear of the angry gods...

Sometimes I think humanity really hasn't come all that far, spiritually, in all time...

I work in retail and I definitely feel like people are a lot too much like lemurs much too much of the time.

[FlamingCobra]

I like to think that all of the so-called "supernatural" events, and actually even things like schizophrenia and autism (usually described as a sort of sensory overload) can all be explained without resorting to handwaving.

My current theory is that our universe is closely intertwined with all of the other realities in the multiverse, and that sometimes, we can catch glimpses of our place in the multiverse. Ghosts, angels, whatever, what if we're just seeing through to some other universe? I have an extremely extensive theory but it's TL;DR unless anyone's interested. Plus I haven't finished my coffee.

I usually like things that most people view as TL;DR


I've never had any of these experiences, but I know some people that say they have. And some of those people have a family history of mental illness.

Other than hyper-religious people, most people avoid this subject entirely.

Furthermore, I haven't been to church since I was in elementary school. I also now believe in the Big Bang, the Multiverse, and evolution.

However, I cannot let go of the few Christian beliefs I have. For example, I cannot help but believe that God created the Big Bang (let there be light). I suppose that is because I cannot explain where the singularity came from and I cannot fathom the idea that the universe was, always has been, and always will be.

But I really don't know what to believe or how much to believe besides that.


As stated earlier, people long ago attributed hurricanes, storms, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc. to the divine. Now we do not. It may be that these "experiences" have a scientific explanation but we just do not know what it is yet.


So, I don't know what to believe.

[Mars]

The things you can't let go of, you believe in because you feel like you need to believe in something, is the impression I get. You can't just leave it at "I don't know."

Get used to it, there are a lot of things in life like that. "Will I be fired from my job?" I don't know. "Will I ever find a companion?" I don't know. "What was before the big bang?" I don't know.

You can break all of those down to statistics, you can make educated guesses. Eventually we'll even find out about all of them. In the long run though, those questions are unanswered, and believing in something so absurd and unfounded will not help you at all.


EDIT:

Also, tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes are well explained phenomenon. We DO know what causes those.

[FlamingCobra]

I clearly stated that we DO NOT attribute those to the divine.

I also want to believe in those things "just in case."


Maybe those people see those things because that is what they are taught. Therefore, they see what they want to see.

[Mikes]

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. - Galileo Galilei



It's not so much "belief" as religious dogma that is and always has been the problem. How could it be otherwise? We learn new things about the universe we live in every day... that the people who lived 2000 years ago and wrote their "truth" in all those books of faith and sacred scripture simply had no f***ing clue about.

The part that has me dumbstruck is the people who keep believing despite proof to the contrary.

On the other hand with belief that defies reality it is no wonder that people start seeing and hearing things.... our brain is after all very adept at creating its own reality for ourselves - matter of fact that's one of its main functions: constructing a model of reality out of all the raw data hitting our senses - and it's woefully easy to fool it during that task. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo propably being one of the more popular experiments.

[Mefustae]

I'm offended by the lack of offense conveyed in this thread.

[Scotty]

Most of the people who would be offended have either packed up their bags and left, been banned from GD for not backing up their arguments, or made a blanket decision to avoid threads like this specifically because of that.

[MP-Ryan]

Misconceptions of schizophrenia aside (and thanks to The E for trying to fix those), Mars has made the single most important statement in this thread, which I'll paraphrase and simplify for accuracy:

Human brains are wired, through our behavioural and physiological evolution, to look for and identify patterns, even (or most especially) where none actually exist.  Our brains function largely by classifying, grouping, and summarizing.  This makes us especially prone to finding meaning where none may objectively exist (though as we're in the system good luck with objective measurement).

Essentially, our primate brains and behaviours are lazy, and the supernatural is the most convenient explanation for perfectly natural phenomena.  We're biased into seeing "God" in the picture because our behavioural evolution has not actually caught up with our ability to gather and comprehend knowledge.

A simple demonstration of this is possible - there are plenty of optical illusions where people see faces in clouds, water, rocks, photographs, etc.  There aren't actually faces there, it's just that facial recognition is such an important part of our behavioural evolution that our brains tend to over-reach and find facial patterns even when they aren't actually there.  My wife and I have an early sonogram of our presently-gestating baby that you'd swear looks like a female face.

[Bobboau]

Most of the people who would be offended have either packed up their bags and left, been banned from GD for not backing up their arguments, or made a blanket decision to avoid threads like this specifically because of that.

and HLP has been a much less entertaining place because of this.



and to answer the question of this thread, yes, it is completely possible that they were all schizophrenic, though I would be more inclined to use the word delusional, which is a much broader term more likely to capture the cause, though it does not account for those who simply misinterpreted something real because they were predisposed to the interpetation they made, in which case I think the term 'mistaken' would be the best way to describe them.

[Nemesis6]

I think religious upbringing is a more probably candidate. You'll see the virgin Mary on burned toast not because you're crazy, but because you were conditioned to see God in various forms; Thousands of people die on 9/11, but you see God's hand there because among the rubble, some rebars formed what looks like a cross. A better example would probably be the story about that little boy who claimed to have seen Jesus while his body was basically dead in the emergency room a while back... his family got a book published about what he saw and they made lots of money. Imagine all those situations where people claim to have something like this happen -- Before that happened, it's likely that they would have discussed the issue with someone who, in turn, would be able to "shape" their interpretation of events. In the case of the boy, with his family being Christian, it is very likely that his parents asked him if he saw Jesus. Not knowing whether he did or not, he goes along with this.

When you have an encounter with what you believe to be the supernatural, you're ****ed because as has been mentioned, we're pattern-seekers, and the supernatural can't be tested or measured. Cognitive dissonance is gonna make it hard to simply ignore it and make nothing of it, but that's the honest and best thing to do; not trying to explain something you can't even measure.

[General Battuta]

The word you're all looking for (except the good chaps who probably know it already) is pareidolia

Most religious experiences can be replicated by stimulating areas of the brain, suggesting that profound religious states can be induced through purely physical manipulation. This does not, of course, devalue religious experience in and of itself, any more than it devalues other brainstates like happiness or love

Also I think that you should know that apophenia is apropos, it helps explain acheropites

[Mika]

There were several interesting points raised in this thread. Indeed human visual system classifies plenty of stuff beforehand without the thought ever appearing to mind. Here's a good example of "Face in the clouds". Makes one think if this would have been interpreted as a religious sign earlier, doesn't it? I can find several other phenomena that contribute on the belief as well; glorying is one of those. But I have never understood why it has been taken as a sign of holiness. Spotting these is relatively simple nowadays in the airplanes, I usually see those when I'm sitting next to the window, and sun is shining from the other side of the airplane. Some amount of clouds is needed so that the shadow of the airplane is visible on the cloud. Around this shadow one usually sees a circular rainbow, though the order of colors is actually reversed and it is not seen in ~42  degree angle, but much smaller. Look around, it's pretty!

Of clairvoyance then, I do know a friend who is able to tell when people are about to die. She said that in her dreams, people tend to die shortly after they appear static, not moving, responding or doing anything in the dream. My understanding is that this is some kind of deduction from the observations seen while awake, there are probably several clues before somebody dies of illness or of age that are somehow discarded, or it is just not somehow acceptable to recognize them. I'm not sure if she was able to do that for accidents as well. I tend to experience some amount of deja vu myself, though the occurrences have reduced by some amount in the recent years. I have felt a disturbance in the Force as well, though this happened to a person that I then cared much about and nobody else. It is a strange thing, being myself a Physicist I can't explain it. There just wasn't any physically feasible way I could have known that something had happened.

Some people's brain is just wired in a way they can see little green men. Less often nowadays, but I know it can at least be stimulated with relatively heavy physical demands, this happened to several hopefuls in a boot camp in the Reserve Officer School when we were on a march carrying **** loads of equipment. I never saw one myself, though. When you have - or better said had - a person whose mind was like this and he happened to be vocal as well, I think it is not far-fetched to think that people believed him since he sounds so sure of himself. Compare this to nowadays politicians.

[Mars]

Working as a CNA you can usually tell when someone is about to die, within one or two interactions. They have a look.

[Mikes]

I think religious upbringing is a more probably candidate. You'll see the virgin Mary on burned toast not because you're crazy, but because you were conditioned to see God in various forms; Thousands of people die on 9/11, but you see God's hand there because among the rubble, some rebars formed what looks like a cross. A better example would probably be the story about that little boy who claimed to have seen Jesus while his body was basically dead in the emergency room a while back...

And if I had such an experience and saw naked women everywhere no one would give a f***.

But if your own conditioning makes you see something during a near death experience that confirms the conditioning of millions of other people that are actively looking for "signs of god" everyone rejoices and praises the lord.

An alien observer would most likely say "silly silly monkeys" at this point.
I mean seriously... as a believing Christian that is the very thing you expect to see... and since you do expect it, your brain MAKES you see it. Classic self fullfilling prophecy. Documented countless times.


And yeah if i don't see my GF in a long time she actually does appear in my dreams, so I would find it entirely possible that she would appear during a near death experience, most likely in a very indecent manner, since I am a perv.

Same thing. Different conditioning.

[Turambar]

Yep, there is no such thing as the supernatural.  It's all delusion

Glad we cleared that up, someone can close the thread now

[Firstdragon34]

That sounds severe Turambar. You need to look beyond your own nose and go deep into the stories that people say. Yes, they could be crazy, but I think people aren't delusional.

How well do you know planet Earth, Turambar? We 'think' we know our planet, but in reality it could be holding many secrets.

This is the word to a not-crazy person that believes in the unknown.

[Mars]

That sounds severe Turambar. You need to look beyond your own nose and go deep into the stories that people say. Yes, they could be crazy, but I think people aren't delusional.

How well do you know planet Earth, Turambar? We 'think' we know our planet, but in reality it could be holding many secrets.

This is the word to a not-crazy person that believes in the unknown.

There are lots of things we don't know. Believing everything you hear or see or come up with doesn't help that.

[Firstdragon34]

Okay, I loosely believe the stories that I hear, but you can't call someone delusional that would be too easy.

[Bobboau]

some times the easiest solution is the correct one.

[Mars]

Okay, I loosely believe the stories that I hear, but you can't call someone delusional that would be too easy.

The people themselves, delusional, no. Misguided, in that they start with a ridiculous premise that they were fed from birth and end up reaching conclusions that could be called 'delusional,' yes.

EDIT:

I know a lot of really smart, analytical people who believe some really stupid things because they've never questioned their fundamentals. Usually its because they're scared of discovering that they're wrong, and that when they die, they're really dead, and when no one loves them, really no one loves them.