Most personally convincing reasons you don't believe.

[emjay]

I have one more thing to say on the subject, Drich. My sister is a lot like you in her outlook on life, and that's something I never thought I'd hear myself say. She's not a Christian but she does have a have-faith-and-the-universe-will-provide attitude, cosmic ordering I think is what she calls it. She believes in birth charts, sees signs in everything, and puts a lot of meaning in coincidences. She's also heavily into positive thinking and the power of belief and focuses heavily on that in her work as a psychologist. Me and her couldn't be any more different in these regards. Every time she goes into one of her particularly (self-confessed) kooky modes she gets a friendly roll of the eyes from me. That's just our thing. But nonetheless, she is my rock, as a person. I am the opposite... generally depressed, lacking in confidence, and with severe self-esteem issues. My life is defined by a general feeling of hopelessness and hers is the opposite. She invited me down to live with her to help me out of my rut. She is a constant force of positive energy to counteract my negativity.

Because of her outlook and beliefs, she is remarkably resilient, bouncing back from any setbacks because she finds meaning in them. She's just had two major setbacks in her life and after a good cry she's bounced back from both of them much to the surprise of everyone around her. I don't mean this in a bad way against her because I'm genuinely happy for her that she has this effect, however it comes, and to some extent, like Rocket said, I'm envious of it, but what she's done, from my perspective, is take what's happened, find meaning/signs in it, and then shift the goalposts to the next goal. We both talk about psychology, that's our mutual passion, and in regards to my own therapy I try to meet her half way. I can get behind the positive thinking stuff because I understand the theory of it, if not the practice (unfortunately... most of the time). I can also get behind the mindfulness and meditation for similar reasons.

We discuss different therapy approaches and one we're looking at the moment, and which I'm willing to try, involves something similar to what you've said... sort of... faith without investment. The idea in this is to just sow seeds of thought as it were that will come to fruition in the long term. The difference is though, in her perspective it is the universe that will provide the answer when the time comes but in mine, that sowing of seeds just gets the subconscious cogs turning... just - to use my own vernacular - sets up a context which will influence thinking in the future. So I'm all for it if it works essentially as a long term means to implant some useful foundations subconsciously, similar to hypnotic suggestion.

But I can't get behind the cosmic ordering stuff or the birth chart stuff. She paid a lot of money to have this birth chart thing done and the thing was remarkably specific... I can fully understand why she believed in it... and for a second there I believed in it and for a second I wanted to have one done for myself just out of curiosity. But snapping out the trance, the only real curiosity I have left is how it was done. So I'd still like to have one done, but trying to figure out what the catch is, like trying to figure out how a magician performs his trick. It's mostly done by email with a half hour skype chat at the end to deliver it... so I think that's where I think the 'magic' must happen... where the astrologer or whatever they're called reads the client's reactions to what they say.

And likewise for the cosmic ordering. She was 100% convinced that a particular decision was right... it just the felt the exact right time and place for this decision. All the signs converged and some pretty freaky (even objectively) coincidences. She just felt to the core of her being that this was the right decision. And asking for my input, my internal response was the same as always, but nonetheless I suggested she should go with it... go with her gut... because I knew she wouldn't be happy if she'd done anything else. And ultimately that's what I want for my sister - for her to be happy. But anyway, right after she'd committed to this decision the situation went tits up and she was devastated. But there were no 'I told you sos' from the skeptics, me included, because we just wanted her to be happy. She bounced back anyway and found new meaning for what she'd been 100% certain about before... saying making that decision stopped her making this other even worse decision which was related to it. And so it goes... endlessly shifting the goalposts and ignoring the certainty from before from when things turned out to be wrong.

I'm happy for her that she has this effect in her life... it makes her happy, strong, incredibly driven, and purposeful... but I can't buy into it myself. I can't see anything more than the psychology that underlies it and I don't believe in any external force in the universe, be it the stars or god, conspiring as it were to provide any more meaning and purpose in our lives than what we create/perceive for ourselves through psychology.

Great story... but how does this apply?

Again, you seem to fail to acknoweldege that the God I found was not the God I originally pictured. Nothing I 'imagined' was correct. I had to change my behavior, perceptions and expectation all along the way.

This is the difference between imagining being married to prince charming and then being made too face the up and downs of actual marriage to anyone.

The two experiences perception and the reality of marriage is not the same thing.

My sister doesn't know where she's going to end up either... she has, and continues to, 'change [her] behaviour, perceptions and expectation all along the way', jumping from one certainty to the next and rewriting the narrative every time she has a setback.

You said yourself that you only engage with people who want answers from you. So why are we even talking? I'm saying to you what I've been trying to say from the beginning; I'm not trying to convince you - I know I can't, just as I know I can't convince my sister either - I'm just saying that you will never convince me as long as ASK is all you have to offer and therefore that there is no point in us talking... in other words you're wasting your efforts on me. I'd have a far better chance of going back to Christianity through Chad and his philosophical arguments (if only I understood them) than your ASK bullshit. So let me make it clear; to the extent that finding god relies on prophecies, signs, and coincidences I'm not interested. Full stop. Neuroscience and psychology tells me all I need to know about them.

Okay Drich, here's your citation, which I managed to find from an online preview of a chapter in the book, on Google books. There is not a full e-version of this book anywhere that I can find so I was lucky to find that. I'm having to type this thing out because the preview is in PDF form. The bolding and italics is theirs, but I'm adding underlining to point out what I've been talking about.


And this comes from "Computational Explorations in Cognitive Neuroscience: Understanding the Mind by Simulating the Brain (Bradford Books)", by Randall C. O'Reilly and Yuko Munakata, 2000, page 113.

You can read the chapter it comes from, and maybe others, same place I've quoted it from... (unless you also want to claim that this link doesn't work):
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BLf3...&q&f=false

"you have reached a page unavailable for viewing."

Google book allows for a random selection of pages. Go to another computer and click on your link. chances are you will not be able to access it either.

Even so I will work with your definition.

That said "bi-directional" phenomena described here does support portions of your argument but it does not seem to coinside with your initial statement nor it's first evolution/moving of the goal posts.
First assessment, was A/S/K was a confirmation bias:
https://atheistforums.org/thread-42987-page-21.html post 202

Your second assessment had you Moving the goal posts because I asked what if God placed someone infront of you to change what you believe. you did not address that question, but rather created a strawman that stated "if you searched for 40 years with no results, any result would be bias" which completely ignored the specifics of my account.
https://atheistforums.org/thread-42987-page-27.html post 266.
Then railed on about bias.

Which has morphed again to this 'bi directional' phenomena. all under the story that your 'superior' understanding of neuro science provided you with a neuro science specific definition of the commonly misunderstood word "Confirmation bias or 'bias.' (Remember all the High horse B/S you were spewing about how it was your fault that you were using a word (common dumb folk) often did not properly understand and you failed to provide a proper definition (that I could understand)

Now that you have we can clearly see, You have substituted the "bi-directional" phenoma with the defination of the word bias. In the defination provided by YOU, It clearly states that 'bias' is a sub phenoma OF the Bi-directional pheonma.

There are several other important subtypes of amplifying effects due to to bidirectional excitatory connections, including: mutual support, top-down support or biasing,

Meaning Biasing can NOT be a sub-type of Bidirectional phenomena if Bias is apart of the general meaning. Rather from what I read here it is entirely possible to experience this bi directional phenomena and not be biased, but all bias does indeed come from this phenomena.

....AND That is Why I asked for a citation. Because YOUR BIAS has corrupted your own ability to to analyze and address data not consistent with your beliefs. This was made very apparent when you blew past the specifics I gave you n favor of your "40 year argument." I knew then that even if you knew the correct definition of the word, you were not immune to it's effects on your thinking. Which is why I pressed for the definition/citation.

Now I know you're full of shit... I wasn't sure before... two links that don't work for you but do for me? Either that or a crap browser. Anyone else wanna verify whether my links work?

And you're getting desperate. You remind me of a scum player desperately trying to twist someone's words on the run up to a lynch. You really should play... you'd be great at it and you certainly have a lot of 'transferable skills'. I'm sure you'll be calling me out on my spelling next.

I have no further interest in talking to you. You should've stopped when I said I had no interest in - or expectation of - convincing you. I've wasted enough of this week already with this stupid conversation, and I have no intention of letting you drag me down any more, pedantically picking at every little thing for weeks on end only to come to the same conclusion you started with. Believe what you want - seriously - about me or ASK. If it makes you happy, great, and as long as you're not hurting anyone, even better. But don't expect to sell it to me.

You can even have the last word, twisty and turny as I'm sure it will be, or you can do your pigeon dance. But as far as I'm concerned, we're done here.