Lets take a little break from politics and have us a real atheist conversation.
Personally, I’m open to the idea of the existence of supernatural phenomena, and I believe mainstream religions are actually complicated incomplete stories full of misinterpretations, misunderstandings, and half-truths.
Basically, I think that these stories are not as simple and straightforward as they seem to be to religious people. I feel like there is a lot more to them. Concluding that all these stories are just made up or came out of nowhere is kind of hard for me.
60% the person experiencing it misunderstood or misinterpreted what they were looking at because they were stupid and gullible, but not maliciously making things up.
35% completely fabricated and never happened and created to legitimately defraud or troll others.
5% something scientific that we simply don’t understand yet.
0% actual supernatural occurrences.
That 5% is the most exciting thing in the world.
Completely agree.
What constitues “something scientific”? That sounds fascinating.
There’s a whole crap tonne about the universe we really don’t understand yet; especially when you get down to the quantum level, spooky action at a distance, wave functions, etc…
In a very real way, we’re still just cavemen banging on rocks as far as the sum total knowledge of how things work out there in what we call “reality”. So within that vast gap of what we know, and what we don’t know, there’s could be a lot of things going on.
Is that a ghost? or is that a momentary glitch in the fabric of space-time? Or is it just someone mistaking a cars headlight bouncing of a chandelier and into a door that is ajar at just the right angle. One of those theories is provable using the scientific method and the knowledge that we currently have. One of those theories might eventually be able to be proven with knowledge that we don’t yet possess. And one of those theories is so-called “supernatural”.
As a reasonable human with critical thinking skills, I’ll put my money on either of the last ones before I’ll put my money on the first.
“Provable”? Nah. I prefer “useful”.
This desire for “Truth” is strange to me. I see no necessary connection between ideas and phenomena.
Lies can be useful. They cal also be dangerous.
Preferring possible usefulness to truth is alarming.
That’s fair enough. You’re welcome to live however you want to. I’m just explaining the difference between science and mysticism. It’s not going to affect the average person’s life in any fashion whether they believe in ghosts or not; they’ll still go to work, buy groceries, get old and die.
But the rejection of science leads inexorably down to a path where a cult of ignorance starts to form; where those who aren’t intellectually curious but still want to have an opinion on stuff start to think that their opinion is just as valid as actual facts. And we see what happens when that kind of willful ignorance works its way into the public discourse.
In short, you’re welcome to not differentiate between ideas and actual scientific phenomena. But someone has to, because society only functions when decisions are made by people who share the same basic knowledge of reality.
I’m not rejecting science. I think it’s fine.
What is a “scientific phenomenon”?
Something that is able to potentially be explained by following the scientific method.
That covers all phenomena, surely