Most personally convincing reasons you don't believe.

[emjay]

I think I need to explain what I mean by bias. Bias is not so much a feature of the brain but a core principle of its operation... it's in everything we do and in a general sense it can't be avoided but by understanding it we can at least see how much influence it does have and guard against it. I'll try and keep this short. In neural terms bias comes from the fact that our ideas and representations are interconnected - associated - with each other... when you 'activate' one idea it sends out activation to everything it's associated with. That in turn primes/biases those related ideas making them easier to activate than they would be on their own... it is what allows such illusions as seeing Jesus on a piece of toast because you think about Jesus all the time   Not you... people. Any time you think about something... anything...  this process happens... it's an ongoing and never ending dynamic of how the brain works.

So, putting it into context, if you've spent twenty years of your life in some sort of quest to find God, even if you've come to dead ends along the way, it's still clear that the idea of God is a huge influence in your life which primes everything related to it. And if you're using the Bible to constantly 'vet' your experience then to be blunt I'm not surprised you're getting the answers you want. I don't mean that in a mean way, I just mean I'm not surprised given how the brain works.

That's a very poor attempt at a sweeping dismissal, or you were so anxious to explain what 'bias' means to you that you did not fully understand the example provided.

My "bias" was to the catholic Church as that was the total understanding of what 'church' was supposed to be. The mythos they have created around hell specifically was my only knoweledge of Hell.

Till I one night I stood before Christ (which again looked nothing like what I have always imagined) was judged and cast into the 'pit.' No levels, no flames, but I was consumed and reacted like I was on fire. I also found out that the flames of Hell will 'burn' through one's sanity, and what makes you 'you' is consumed by Hell fire. Meaning one's experience in Hell is finite. This was my experience. Something I could have never known as my understanding of Hell (like most of yours) is based on the divine comedy/Dante's inferno, which stands is stark contrast to what I experienced.

This experience began my journey to seek out the truth. I did not start with the bible I started with a friend's invitation to church, where they believed as the catholic did about hell. It took years of personal study to vet and over come the 'religious' understanding of Hell and properly support and compile a contextual biblical description of it. Which BTW 20+ years later I can tell you is spot on to what the bible has to say in the Greek and English.

Now do you understand? I had a specific bias going in, but a stronger need for truth. I followed the truth (even though it took me away from what I thought was 'God') and it eventually supported everything I had experienced.

It's like reading the last page of a book that references characters and situations you have no idea that was even in the book, first. Then read the book and watch how all of what you were privy to in the beginning fits in with the last page.

That my confused friend is the opposite of bias.

It wasn't a very good explanation, no, because to do it justice I would have to give a detailed description of neural network dynamics which a) is very dry subject matter and bores the shit out of everyone and b) I don't think would convince you anyway because you don't seem to have any interest or awareness of psychology and its effects whatsoever. It is not the opposite of bias, it is exactly bias. Did you ever consider the possibility that the answer was that there was no God? So in other words your bias is that God exists... you started out Catholic and ended up whatever the hell you are now, but still a Christian. A lifetime of searching for the right definition of God, while assuming that he must exist, is definitely bias.

But as I said I was not expecting to convince you. I know I can't. You're living this and you've got powerful emotional experiences underlying it. I'm just saying that this is how you appear to me personally, based on what I know of psychology and neuroscience, and why I personally can't take it seriously, either in you or as a means for me to 'find god'.

Again, this is part of the problem with bias. If you have no 'failure standards' for prayer or prophecy then you are almost guaranteed to perceive an answer to prayer or a fulfilment of prophecy sometime down the line. That's the problem with having open-ended prayers and prophecies, but if you want anything more specific - which in essence does have failure standards - you're chastised for testing god or whatever... so basically, and conveniently, only open-ended prayer is allowed.

How can you not have a failure standard for prayer or prophesy? In another instance I met a 'messenger' who 'prophesied' about specifics of my life. All of what he has said has come true so far. there are a few things yet to happen but I can see them unfolding. (including a 'short' life.) If the specific prophesies about love, family, Father, wisdom, wealth, business come true, then the prophet is genuine. if one thing is off then it's all garbage.

Prayer. God says He will honor ALL prayer. How can one not properly identify a failure standard here?
(once you know the difference between petition and prayer)

Of course it's come true! Ugh. That's what I've been trying to say... your life is like one big horoscope. That's what bias does... it makes things come true - but only in your perception. The effect in the brain of bias is pattern completion. If a horoscope says you'll meet a tall, dark, stranger then chances are you will, and it's almost guaranteed if there are no failure standards such as time constraints, but only in your perception. You will start noticing things you wouldn't have noticed before, anything that vaguely confirms the hypothesis/prediction, and you will require less evidence from the outside world to confirm it; you might for instance accept only two of the features eg tall and dark, tall and stranger, or dark and stranger... or even just one - tall, dark, or stranger... or you might relax your standards on what counts as one of the features or your interpretation of what the feature means... how many different ways are there of applying the word 'dark' to a person... hair colour, skin colour, sense of humour even?

You've got this whole list of prophecies about your life but they couldn't be any more vague. Where bias is concerned, vague is your friend and specificity is your enemy. Vague allows you to answer the question in a million different ways and feel right no matter what. I hate to break it to you, but if you've been a success in business it's entirely down to you... no god involved. You and you alone have made yourself a success. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy... it has come from the power of your belief, but not in the way you think... not through god, just the power of bias.

The process of bias is extremely powerful emotionally... it feels like absolute certainty... because as far as the brain's concerned, it is. All the brain is concerned with is completing the pattern, whatever it takes, whenever heavy bias is involved. You just cannot trust that feeling of certainty as a measure of the truth... it's not... it's a measure of how complete the pattern is. If you take anything from this I'd hope it would be that. I know this perfectly well from playing mafia, which is a great place to observe psychology in action in a highly emotional and contained environment, almost like an experiment. When I first started playing I succumbed to a lot of these delusions, because I'm an emotional player, but you can't be a good player playing like that. The key is to become mindfully aware of your own behaviour, and what's driving it, and detach because bias comes when you're emotionally rather than intellectually invested in something. It's easier said than done if you're an emotional player, and I still succumb from time to time, but my play and my accuracy improves when I'm detached. And not just in mafia. I'm an emotional person so I can get caught up in the moment, and in bias, but I try to understand it and be mindful of it whenever I can... to snap out of it. The fact that you don't seem to have any similar inclination to understand your own behaviour and psychology is what scares me.

I'll tell you what... allow the diversity of a gay church and then we'll talk   JK.

Then speak.
So long as the 'church' does not endorse sin where the bible identifies it, then their is no issue, as having homosexuality as you sin of choice as homosexuality is no different than any other sexual sin. (Which are rampant in all churches, but again not endorsed.)

The same standard that applies to one church concerning sexual sin should apply to all sexual sin. do you not agree?

That was a joke. I know Christianity and homosexuality are incompatible. I have a few gay friends who consider themselves Christians, but personally when I was a Christian, all I got was cognitive dissonance when I tried to marry the two. To me they can't be reconciled.

No because again Paul points to the church as being like the physical Body of Christ. Each one of us has a different role, function, as a member of the body. and we are shaped and tailored for our intended use. Which makes us all a little different. So for a congregation of "hands" they will seek out 'work' that hands do, and for them this is what the whole word of God is about. For a congregation of 'eyes' they will seek out work that eyes do, and so on.

Now if the whole body of believers were hands or eyes then yes all that is needed is one church one doctrine. However as it has been explained to us in several places in scripture, we are all different and our roles in the body of believers are different, and therefore it is not a hand's or an eye's place to judge how a 'foot' or ear serves the body.

Okay thanks for sharing your perspective on that. I don't know what to make of it yet but thanks for sharing anyway.

specifically what do you not understand?

I understand that it's how you rationalise a million different interpretations of the bible, that can all be correct.

Perhaps confirmation bias wasn't the clearest term to use in this case. I see all bias as confirmation bias because in neural network terms that's exactly what it is...

So prooving a hypothesis scientifically is a confirmation bias?

There can be confirmation bias in science at the level of individuals or groups with agendas but scientific enquiry aims (or should aim) to be objective. But findings are only considered credible and objective if they can withstand outside scrutiny by the whole scientific community, including being called out for any possible bias.

it biases towards confirmation of ideas related to the one that was first activated... it makes them statistically more likely to be activated than other non-biased ideas and in fact there's even an effect that can actively inhibit competing ideas, thus making the bias even stronger.

But again, if an experience contradicts a preconception or a bias one has, and one changes his thoughts on a subject because he knows his bias was not consistent with the truth, then how can you call that a bias?

You are trying to force this definition onto a situation because your bias is the belief that this explanation and definition always shuts down any experiential account of God. Why? because most stories confirm what the teller already believes. I have clearly stated several times none of what I knew to be true was. The only commonality between what I thought was God and the God of the bible that I can not vet scripturaly is the word "God."

See above. Your bias is that god exists... whatever flavour you've ended up believing in is neither here nor there because it's just one of the millions of ways you could confirm the (vague) hypothesis 'god exists'.

So that's what I mean by it. The more traditional use of the term is very obvious in the mafia case... you hypothesise that x,y,and z are a scum team and are more likely to notice things related to that that confirm that hypothesis than not, and each one you notice increases the bias in leaps and bounds until you (can) experience a full blown paranoid delusion. But in your case I'd still see it as confirmation bias because ultimately the hypothesis is 'god exists' and that's where the bias comes from.

The problem your understanding of the bias is that I hypothesized that xy and z was a 'scum team' and I found the opposite to be true therefore I change my view point.

Again, as I said, it's within a bigger context. The 'opposite' would be 'god does not exist'... you did not find the opposite to be true, you just found another way to confirm your hypothesis.

The problem is that the investment that you're requiring there... the meeting half way... is exactly the part I don't trust because of all these mechanisms of bias. That's the part that's asking you to get emotionally invested so that the bias will be more effective.

This is another example of your own personal bias. A/S/K or meeting God 1/2 way in no way include any type of indoctrination, nor non critical thought. You simply wait and ask/seek till God shows up. I questioned everything along the way, that is why I can provide answers that some may have.

The meeting half way requires an emotional investment in God before I have any reason to make such an investment... before I have any reason to believe he exists. If I did that, I'd be just like you... creating my own self-fulfilling prophecy that fulfils itself not through god but through the workings of the brain.