Why does science always upstage God?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

And this one time, I lit a white candle in my bedroom, and said a prayer for Saint Lucy, and my chest/heart area got all warm and I suddenly felt better. I had been feeling like shit at the time, and after the prayer, I felt a lot better.

You can achieve the same results by farting.

Boru

[vulcanlogician]

Claiming god does things with no evidence results in cognitive dissonance. You demonstrate it with your rationalization, justification and confirmation bias.

Cognitive dissonance is a sensation, not a state of mind, or at least not a "state of mind" in the most decent sense. I've never felt cognitive dissonance, because I know what I'm saying is true.

I disagree with the cognitive dissonance claim.

But still, your guitar skills, your dog... these things have natural explanations. I mean, yeah, you can credit God for creating nature, but that's a whole can of worms of good and bad. There's an issue with how people selectively credit God for things.

At the very least, you gotta see how some people, regardless of whatever "blessings" they may have, fail to see God in any of it.

As for the Saint Lucy candle, it could be confirmation bias at work. That's a much more plausible explanation to me than divine forces at work.

[Gwaithmir]

Claiming god does things with no evidence results in cognitive dissonance. You demonstrate it with your rationalization, justification and confirmation bias.

Cognitive dissonance is a sensation, not a state of mind, or at least not a "state of mind" in the most decent sense. I've never felt cognitive dissonance, because I know what I'm saying is true.

Yeah, and I'm King Isildur. 

[brewer]

I disagree with the cognitive dissonance claim.

But still, your guitar skills, your dog... these things have natural explanations. I mean, yeah, you can credit God for creating nature, but that's a whole can of worms of good and bad. There's an issue with how people selectively credit God for things.

At the very least, you gotta see how some people, regardless of whatever "blessings" they may have, fail to see God in any of it.

As for the Saint Lucy candle, it could be confirmation bias at work. That's a much more plausible explanation to me than divine forces at work.

My claim, yea, I agree. Should have used delusion or maybe magical thinking.

[Ahriman]

I disagree with the cognitive dissonance claim.

But still, your guitar skills, your dog... these things have natural explanations. I mean, yeah, you can credit God for creating nature, but that's a whole can of worms of good and bad. There's an issue with how people selectively credit God for things.

At the very least, you gotta see how some people, regardless of whatever "blessings" they may have, fail to see God in any of it.

As for the Saint Lucy candle, it could be confirmation bias at work. That's a much more plausible explanation to me than divine forces at work.

My claim, yea, I agree. Should have used delusion or maybe magical thinking.

I almost feel bad for people who can't think in terms of magic and miracles. Almost. But not quite.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

My claim, yea, I agree. Should have used delusion or maybe magical thinking.

I almost feel bad for people who can't think in terms of magic and miracles. Almost. But not quite.

Isn’t there a bridge you should be under?

Boru

[Ahriman]

I almost feel bad for people who can't think in terms of magic and miracles. Almost. But not quite.

Isn’t there a bridge you should be under?

Boru

You wish I was a troll. Then you could easily discredit everything I say. But I am not a troll. I hold sincere beliefs and I attempt to live by them, with mixed success.

[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.)

[Ahriman]

You're right about the biases. I just think in terms of magic, miracles, angels, demons, all that stuff. My tendency to think that way, actually became more pronounced after I left Catholicism, almost as if God was saying, "No Jacob, come back, we need you". I used to have friends and a social life, so maybe back then, I didn't feel as much of a need to indulge in magical thinking, because I was more fulfilled?

[Silver]

Seems you know the magical thinking is irrational yet still want to indulge just because.

So, yes, to whomever first brought it up, that is cognitive dissonance.