RE: Why does science always upstage God?
August 21, 2021 at 8:48 am
(This post was last modified: August 21, 2021 at 8:49 am by vulcanlogician.)
Maybe I'm a sucker for a hippie demeanor, but I'm thinking we give Ahriman the benefit of the doubt. I mean, maybe they are trolling. It's a possibility. And if that turns out to be true, we wasted time and intellectual energy. And that sucks. But I still think we lose more in that situation they aren't trolling and we assumed they were.
But back to the topic. Ahriman, the candle thing hardly proves anything. What if you weren't feeling well and you decided to do the dishes or something? In that case, if you felt better afterward, you would be less inclined to credit you doing the dishes being causally related to your feeling better? You'd just say, "My bad feelings just went away." That's a possibility with when you lit the candle. But biases are at work when you do something like light a candle or pray. You set up expectations when you do things like that.
Additionally, sitting down and calming yourself (which may have occured when you quieted down and lit the candle) has been shown to produce health benefits. Meditation, for instance, can reduce stomach discomfort.
There are many factors that could be at work, and your analysis of the situation was hardly rigorous. You are obviously biased. (We all have biases. The thing we need to do is check our work, so to speak, and make sure we haven't jumped to conclusions.)
But back to the topic. Ahriman, the candle thing hardly proves anything. What if you weren't feeling well and you decided to do the dishes or something? In that case, if you felt better afterward, you would be less inclined to credit you doing the dishes being causally related to your feeling better? You'd just say, "My bad feelings just went away." That's a possibility with when you lit the candle. But biases are at work when you do something like light a candle or pray. You set up expectations when you do things like that.
Additionally, sitting down and calming yourself (which may have occured when you quieted down and lit the candle) has been shown to produce health benefits. Meditation, for instance, can reduce stomach discomfort.
There are many factors that could be at work, and your analysis of the situation was hardly rigorous. You are obviously biased. (We all have biases. The thing we need to do is check our work, so to speak, and make sure we haven't jumped to conclusions.)
