Believers VS Non-belivers

[edwardcullensotherwoman]

Why is it that if someone believes in something, they will talk about it as exactly that - something they believe in - and not portray it as absolute fact; yet if someone doesn't believe in something, they will say this as an absolute fact and ridicule those who believe?

It's almost as if those who don't believe (in whatever the subject: angels, God, reincarnation) consider themselves superior to those who do, and view those who do as stupid for doing so.

Surely everyone's beliefs are their own belief and opinion - nothing "woo" can be either proven or disproven, so therefore nobody is right or wrong.

It just seems that every thread that starts "Do you believe" on this board ends up in a bun fight with believes defending themselves against non-believers who tell them they're being ridiculous. The clue is in the title of the board - if you don't believe in anything that's likely to be discussed under that heading, just avoid the board!

^been. Typo.

I never suggested it was Corus.

Corus I stand by what I said. In my situation, this feature of my life, it is not related to psychosis, which is a dysfunction and causes dysfunction in somebody's life. I am well.

My experiences, of finding meaning in serendipitous coincidences, amount to being thankful and happy. No dysfunction there.

Maybe religious experiences which share the same sort of parameters as psychosis in people who are mentally well could be viewed as 'adaptive psychosis' rather than 'dysfunctional psychosis'? Our ability to see patterns is an evolved trait which helped our survival ... that sort of thing? (just exploring this idea, don't know if it makes sense).

Corus I said what I said, no more and no less. To say I "...argued,though, that people's psychosis metaphors were irrelevant because you don't hallucinate", is wrong, it is putting words into my mouth.

I actually said,

Personally I do not experience visions or hear voices either. As I said previously, my personal revelation is through experience and often serendipitous coincidences, which I have found meaningful in relation to my developing Faith. Where people do, have visions, hear God's voice, the arguable point is "the absence of external stimuli.". If it is truly a spiritual experience there is external stimuli.

This was firstly in reference to the definitions Cote quoted regarding psychosis and hallucinations, and secondly making the point that 'visions' or 'hearing God's voice' is not necessarily a symptom of psychosis. 'External stimuli' here would be the deciding factor, whether that be spiritual or physical.

Errol It would make sense if you assumed there were no patterns. However the whole way we learn to make sense of the world involves discerning patterns and drawing connections.

No - our evolved reliance on patterns arises because they do exist and they're often a useful shortcut (bushes move, might be a tiger). But we overdo it - we see meaningful patterns where there is no real meaning (eg the jesus toast type thing). Making connections can be extremely useful - or not.

Corus

But there's no evidence God exists, so the phrase "external stimuli" is not applicable.

And there is the bind. This is a matter of belief. Because I believe God does exist 'external stimuli' is applicable. If you believed God might exist the external stimuli would be potentially applicable.

On a further point though you still cannot positively equate 'visions' or 'hearing God's voice' to psychosis, without any doubt, since they could be due to other auditory or visual dysfunctions or even heightened auditory and visual perception.

Corus

Good.

Capsium, the whole point of chaos theory is that 'chaos' can be mapped and predicted, therefore it is not 'random'. (It's the only book about advanced physics I've managed to finish & understand!)

The fact that randomness is, in fact, just a very big pattern has nothing at all to do with whether intelligent forces are at work. It does illustrate the limitations of human understanding - and that those limitations can be overcome by humans working in teams, inventing machines to help.

If a person wants to think an intelligent force directs events towards individuals, that's their choice. But they would be wrong to argue the existence of 'chaos' or the non-existence of randomness shows that such a force exists. There is no such evidence.

In observing repetitive patterns, we gain deeper understanding of the world including ourselves. One such pattern is that the human nervous system goes awry without sleep. This need is so crucial that the brain will put itself into sleep mode even if the conscious mind/body refuses to lie down and close its eyes. Another observed pattern is that brains do this, momentarily, throughout the day. Since the nervous system's need to constantly recalibrate its wiring is so overpowering, it's ridiculous to assert that dream-like perceptions must be real if the dreamer was awake.

There are lots of other observed patterns to human cognition, like confirmation bias and selective perception, which can be interpreted on an individual basis as supernatural but are known weaknesses in our reasoning capacity.

Garlic I was making the point that drawing connections from what others would argue are random occurrences is not necessarily a sign of psychosis or indeed any dysfunction. Because firstly there is the question concerning whether they are truly random and secondly, as you have alluded to in your post, observing patterns is a functional feature of human behaviour.

If a person wants to think an intelligent force directs events towards individuals, that's their choice. But they would be wrong to argue the existence of 'chaos' or the non-existence of randomness shows that such a force exists. There is no such evidence

This is not what I was arguing in my posts. I stated earlier that I do not believe you can have scientific, in the empirical, sense proof of God. The motivation concerning mentioning predicting and mapping of Chaos was to highlight the point I made above.

AS I said earlier, when considering dysfunction, the important question is whether a behaviour / symptom / feature is causing harm to an individual or causing an individual to harm others.

It seems to me that we disagree only in perspective, capsium? I'm saying perceptual malfunctions are normal; you're saying don't call it dysfunction.

(Which I didn't!)

Possibly, Garlic.

If something is not functioning correctly, ultimately, it is dysfunctional. I suppose a sporadic malfunction could be a 'blip', in which case it is not fully dysfunctional, as it returns to functionality. There is some scale to the subject, which I do appreciate.

However when people are talking in terms of psychosis, and using it to criticize someone's experience/belief, I tend to think they mean psychosis in the 'Clinical' sense, that is, as it is an illness, dysfunctional.

I wish it wasn't seen as derogatory. We don't have any acceptable words for irrational/delusory, etc. If more people understood that mini-psychoses are a normal part of human life - blips, as you say - there could be a lot less fear & confusion. That said, most people do just go "well, that was odd," and think no more about it. But we still haven't got a socially acceptable word for it!

GArlic I agree with you there.

BigDorrit thanks for finding the Einstein quotes. I've saved them off for next time someone tries to say he was a believer.

capsium you seem to be arguing again that there is no mental illness, but just a difference of opinion on what is real. That can be shown to be false and I seriously doubt you really believe it anyway.

We all know that there are people with physical or emotional damage who perceive things as other than they actually are. We can often identify the cause of the damage. An emotional trauma perhaps, a tumour, a chemical imbalance and so on.

Some believers are claiming that some of that group really are seeing/hearing gods,angels, saints, ghosts, leprechauns or whatever.

Fine, let us know when you have any evidence for that. In the meantime it's just an idea you had with nothing supporting it whereas the opposing view has a lot of scientific evidence.