RE: Can you still be an atheist if you believe in the paranormal?
February 13, 2015 at 8:28 am
(This post was last modified: February 13, 2015 at 8:32 am by Homeless Nutter.)
Most of what people perceive as paranormal events are simply our brains f-ing up.
Our brains can re-create pretty much anything they can experience. All of our senses are connected to the brain and their input is automatically processed, filtered and given at least partial meaning by it, before we're even aware of anything. When you see a horse, you don't have to look it up and down, checking its features against your definition of a horse, before you determine what it is (provided you've seen one before). A vaguely horse-like shape automatically makes you think "horse" and you consciously take it from there.
That's why most of the time we don't know, we're dreaming, while we're dreaming, even though the difference in reality perception becomes obvious after awakening. Some part of the brain creates "virtual" sensory inputs, that can fool the "conscious" part, although it's probably just simple signals, like "I'm seeing a horse", or "I'm flying" rather than a full-blown detailed sensual experience. The part of the brain that receives those signals - interprets them just as it does when we're consciously imagining, or remembering something we've experienced. Now, when we're awake - some "circuit" keeps what we perceive and what we imagine separately. When we're sleeping that reality-checking "circuit" is "switched off", or at least impaired, so we can't tell the difference.
According to modern science brain is modular - certain parts are responsible for certain faculties and functions. Ideally - all the modules work perfectly together, but it's possible for one, or more parts to "glitch" - including the one responsible for "reality checks" - sometimes permanently, like when part of a brain is physically damaged, sometimes briefly, because of chemical intoxication, for example (which doesn't have to mean "drugs"- it can be caused by hormonal imbalance, or other chemicals present in our bodies) - without the consciousness being any the wiser.
Schizophrenia sufferers can't tell the difference between things, that are real and things, that are imaginary (there's a theist joke in here somewhere...), because the "reality checking" center in their brains is impaired, even though they're awake. Similar, but momentary effect can be observed in sleep-deprived people. People with Tourette's syndrome are often unaware of their - even very pronounced - verbal outbursts and ticks. Their brains filters those out - even though intuitively it may seem impossible to bystanders.
A good pseudo-paranormal example of healthy brains f-ing up is the experience of "deja vu" - some center in the brain is supposed to detect and inform you - through a feeling of "familiarity" - whenever you're experiencing something you've experienced before (so that you can make use of what you learned the last time, instead of starting from scratch). If that module briefly malfunctions, it gives you the "familiarity" feeling for no reason, which leads to contradicting information from different parts of the brain, that is interpreted as "uncanny" and "inexplicable".
Another good example is sleep paralysis - a well known and documented phenomenon, where a person wakes up, but can not move, because the parts of the brain responsible for controlling the body are still "asleep". It used to happen to me (also - sleepwalking) and it was a pretty unsettling experience, especially that it can be accompanied by hallucinations. I used to wake up in the middle of the night, or early morning with an overwhelming and unexplained sense of fear, able to see my darkened bedroom, but unable to move or wake myself up properly. It would last - in my perception - a few minutes, during which I would sometimes see strangers walking around my room or sitting on my bed. Then I'd fall back asleep, or wake up completely. If I was an irrational person I'd totally believe I was visited by ghosts and NOBODY could tell me I didn't experience what I thought I did.
Brains - like any other living thing - are "imperfect" and prone to malfunctions and mistakes. They've also evolved to err on the side of caution, when detecting entities and patterns - "skeptical" and overly curious cavemen were more likely to be killed by predators, or hostile humanoids, than the ones, who assumed every strange noise or other inexplicable event to be a real threat and fled. That's why we only need two symmetrically placed dots, circles, or blotches and a line, to be able to instinctively "see" a face - ( o_o ) Our survival depended on being able to spot another humanoid at a glance and consequences of missing one were way more dangerous than those of a false positive. Hence, it takes very little for us - especially at night - to interpret an inanimate object outside our window as a face of a stranger, a ghost or an alien, and a weird noise as speech, or other meaningful signal. Our brain really doesn't want to miss anything important, so it makes us look for - and often find - meaning, even where objectively there is none.
Of course - none of that categorically proves there are no truly "paranormal" phenomena. However - we have no proof of those and plenty of proof that human perception and experience are fallible. And Occam's Razor easily deals with this sort of situation.
Our brains can re-create pretty much anything they can experience. All of our senses are connected to the brain and their input is automatically processed, filtered and given at least partial meaning by it, before we're even aware of anything. When you see a horse, you don't have to look it up and down, checking its features against your definition of a horse, before you determine what it is (provided you've seen one before). A vaguely horse-like shape automatically makes you think "horse" and you consciously take it from there.
That's why most of the time we don't know, we're dreaming, while we're dreaming, even though the difference in reality perception becomes obvious after awakening. Some part of the brain creates "virtual" sensory inputs, that can fool the "conscious" part, although it's probably just simple signals, like "I'm seeing a horse", or "I'm flying" rather than a full-blown detailed sensual experience. The part of the brain that receives those signals - interprets them just as it does when we're consciously imagining, or remembering something we've experienced. Now, when we're awake - some "circuit" keeps what we perceive and what we imagine separately. When we're sleeping that reality-checking "circuit" is "switched off", or at least impaired, so we can't tell the difference.
According to modern science brain is modular - certain parts are responsible for certain faculties and functions. Ideally - all the modules work perfectly together, but it's possible for one, or more parts to "glitch" - including the one responsible for "reality checks" - sometimes permanently, like when part of a brain is physically damaged, sometimes briefly, because of chemical intoxication, for example (which doesn't have to mean "drugs"- it can be caused by hormonal imbalance, or other chemicals present in our bodies) - without the consciousness being any the wiser.
Schizophrenia sufferers can't tell the difference between things, that are real and things, that are imaginary (there's a theist joke in here somewhere...), because the "reality checking" center in their brains is impaired, even though they're awake. Similar, but momentary effect can be observed in sleep-deprived people. People with Tourette's syndrome are often unaware of their - even very pronounced - verbal outbursts and ticks. Their brains filters those out - even though intuitively it may seem impossible to bystanders.
A good pseudo-paranormal example of healthy brains f-ing up is the experience of "deja vu" - some center in the brain is supposed to detect and inform you - through a feeling of "familiarity" - whenever you're experiencing something you've experienced before (so that you can make use of what you learned the last time, instead of starting from scratch). If that module briefly malfunctions, it gives you the "familiarity" feeling for no reason, which leads to contradicting information from different parts of the brain, that is interpreted as "uncanny" and "inexplicable".
Another good example is sleep paralysis - a well known and documented phenomenon, where a person wakes up, but can not move, because the parts of the brain responsible for controlling the body are still "asleep". It used to happen to me (also - sleepwalking) and it was a pretty unsettling experience, especially that it can be accompanied by hallucinations. I used to wake up in the middle of the night, or early morning with an overwhelming and unexplained sense of fear, able to see my darkened bedroom, but unable to move or wake myself up properly. It would last - in my perception - a few minutes, during which I would sometimes see strangers walking around my room or sitting on my bed. Then I'd fall back asleep, or wake up completely. If I was an irrational person I'd totally believe I was visited by ghosts and NOBODY could tell me I didn't experience what I thought I did.
Brains - like any other living thing - are "imperfect" and prone to malfunctions and mistakes. They've also evolved to err on the side of caution, when detecting entities and patterns - "skeptical" and overly curious cavemen were more likely to be killed by predators, or hostile humanoids, than the ones, who assumed every strange noise or other inexplicable event to be a real threat and fled. That's why we only need two symmetrically placed dots, circles, or blotches and a line, to be able to instinctively "see" a face - ( o_o ) Our survival depended on being able to spot another humanoid at a glance and consequences of missing one were way more dangerous than those of a false positive. Hence, it takes very little for us - especially at night - to interpret an inanimate object outside our window as a face of a stranger, a ghost or an alien, and a weird noise as speech, or other meaningful signal. Our brain really doesn't want to miss anything important, so it makes us look for - and often find - meaning, even where objectively there is none.
Of course - none of that categorically proves there are no truly "paranormal" phenomena. However - we have no proof of those and plenty of proof that human perception and experience are fallible. And Occam's Razor easily deals with this sort of situation.
"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." - George Bernard Shaw
