I always turn to Santa Worship in December, just in case the presents are better. I become a Santa atheist in January because I know in my heart he’ll forgive me in December when I return to worshiping him.
@@aidenmartin6674You, my friend, are the shining example of contingency-based belief we have been waiting for. We pray now, earnestly and whole-heartedly, that your display of seasonal piety and calendar-limited good works will usher in a new millenium, one of conditional humility, convenient humanity, rewards-based charity, and limited accountability. Amen.
Parents indoctrinate kids to think there is a Santa and t the same time some god. Later when the kid gets older it's funny if they still believe in Santa. The adult still believes in an imaginary friend.
If someone claimed to have seen a new creature, but no-one else saw it in the following 2000 years, it would seem unreasonable to spend time worrying about it.
There is no human that has ever lived whose testimony that they witnessed an event is to be believed because of their trustworthiness. There i fixed it for you- human testimony is VERY low on the list of proving anything.
A more direct analogy would be "If you claim to enjoy sushi, then no problem. If you claim to enjoy sushi made from fish caught on Jupiter's moons by aliens, then that requires much much more evidence to accept." Worse still would be a claim "I enjoy sushi miraculously teleported to me from Jupiter's moons." The first claim is easy to accept straight up, the stakes are low. The second claim might be *possible* but is vastly less easy to accept. The final claim might not even *be possible* and is much harder to accept accordingly.
Nope. If _'fish caught on Jupiter's moons by aliens'_ were already as thoroughly verified as 'fish caught on Earth.. it would be sufficient.. The evidence merely needs to be about the same..
I'm glad Jack acknowledged that he was hoping the hosts would lower their standards. He should ask himself why he wants others to settle for something inferior.
When scientists were presented with the idea of a platypus from someone who had seen one they didn't believe in it, because it was so far out of the range of their experiences. When scientists were provided with the carcass of a dead platypus they didn't believe it was real, thinking it was a beaver with a duck bill attached via taxidermy. It was only when scientists were presented with a living platypus that they accepted the reality of the platypus. Platypus = this guy's crocodile story.
@@Julian0101 Now I am torn. Do I follow our glorious Christian Overlord from another dimension, or do I worship the sacred Alien Crocochicken instead? This religious gig is hard work. No wonder there are so many denominations. Next, you'll be telling me there is an Elephant headed god called Ganesha.
Exactly this! Every time I hear a theist suggest that testimony or a single book source is sufficient, it always is for THEIR SPECIFIC religious belief. It somehow never applies to EVERY SINGLE OTHER RELIGION that has the EXACT same level of claim. It's always some special pleading for theirs that doesn't apply to others, and when you dig down it comes out to "but I really want to believe what I believe" (a.k.a. faith).
@@davenchop Well just to argue for argument's sake 😁 I would say that "same" could mean "relatively similar but with extremely minor differences". If you held two cameras side by side and took a picture at the same time you might say it's the "same picture" even though a pixel by pixel analysis would reveal differences that you couldn't tell by sight. Adding the "exact" modifier to "same" would remove the possibilities of any differences. To go back to the example if you took a picture with one camera and then made a digital copy of that picture, changing none of the attributes, that would make it an "exact same" picture as compared to the "same" picture from the two cameras.
The alien comparison is a good one. If you told me that you believe you saw an alien, I’d believe that you believe that. If you tried to convince me that you knew a guy who saw an alien a very long time ago and that encounter was absurdly similar to the plot of E.T, I’d probably need some evidence.
"I’d believe that you believe that" This is the sticking point. It's such a big annoyance to me when people think that if you don't believe their conclusions then you're calling them a liar. I could have 100% absolute trust in someone and still think they're wrong because they can be sincere in their wrong belief. It just means I trust that they aren't deceiving me. If my mom told me she needs to borrow some money because she took her car in for service and it suddenly needs the headlight fluid replaced I wouldn't think that she's trying to trick me into giving her money, I'd think the mechanic is the one lying to her because she knows nothing about cars. I believe her that that's what she was told and that she believes it.
@@Dr_Wrong No, you're ignoring the rest of my comment. I suppose an asshole or liar would frame their accusation of lying as simply disbelief but that's not how other people use it. I don't need to re-explain, I already said what it means, I trust they aren't lying and are just mistaken.
@@xipheonj _"I suppose an asshole or liar would frame their accusation of lying"_ Wow, you went to extremes quick.. Did you think I was calling you a liar because I didn't believe your opinion? If enough people *_act_* like disbelieving them = calling them a liar, then maybe _(like the word 'liar' having a commonly accepted meaning)_ enough people *_believe_* disbelieving them has the same meaning.. Which is exactly how ridiculous word connotations work.. You expect Christians to read dictionaries?? 🤣🤣
With the crocodile story, on a long enough timeline, if the crocodile is real, enough corroborating witnesses and evidence will accumulate to prove it. Plenty of people claim to have seen yeti, sasquatch, the loch ness monster or a chupacabre, but we haven't established enough corroborating evidence to believe they exist.
One possible spin on the crocodile example might be that, in the absence of any other corroboration and say the person had been drinking or was somewhat short sighted, it may well be rational to doubt someone who claims to see such a creature. It would be incorrect but rational. I wonder if that is what the caller was getting at.
@@TheChancellor212 Thanks The Chancellor. I start from the position that religious faith (like most of our seemingly essential identifications) is a measure of how we end up coping with the terrors of human existence and mortality (and maybe the beauty and wonder too - it's complicated!) As such and for now this caller, it seems to me , really needs his ideology to be true. I think he's wrong and deluded but then we are all lost babes in the wood and it is befitting to be kind to each other. (as RD Laing once said.)
Its bizarre to me that people still think that its incumbent on the listener to disprove a claim. The caller is trying to argue that because science cant investigate supernatural claims then we cant dismiss them so we should believe them. This is just a variation on russells teapot and suffers from the same problem.
I keep thinking of children and abuse. Or women and rape. But there are clues there as well as it conforms with what we know about human behaviors, psychology etc. The claim matches science, and it’s also potentially provable.
There's plenty of people in my life that I believe enough to believe THEY THINK they had a "personal experience". I would not assume they were lying. But there is a HUGE gulf believe believing they thought they experienced something and believing that what they thought they experienced comports to the reality of what they actually experienced. There is a massive amount of scientific evidence towards the unreliability of humans being able to correct interpret and remember events. And there's even a good evolutionary reason for superstition - if you hear a rustling in a bush and attribute it to a lion about to pounce and you're right you have a better chance of survival than the person who heard a rustling in a bush and didn't attribute it to a lion and was wrong. So the superstitious person, i.e. the person who ALWAYS attributes a rustling in the bush to a lion, is selected for.
All those "But I experienced it and I can trust my senses!"-guys! - I wonder, if they ever saw a stage magician's show (I'd recommend Penn & Teller!) 😂
“If only science could give us some sort of protocol for dealing with novel phenomena. Some kind of Method…. Oh, well. Since science doesn’t have anything like that my god claim is valid.”
My Jack special-pleading form MD has twisted his rationalization coping mechanism into pretzels. Self-contradiction and inconsistency isn't a problem when you're a believer.
“I don’t know what to do if I can’t trust my own senses” Says a guy who’s never seen a magic show. Our senses are notoriously unreliable in the moment. The fact that he doesn’t understand that (or doesn’t want to admit it) is telling.
People really don't like thinking about the fact that they're made of meat which evolved to only care about reality as much as necessary to reproduce and get high/drunk.
When i travelled to Far North Queensland,(Townsville),i’d seen crocs only on TV,BIG mfkrs,but while taking a walk,i nearly SAT on a 4 metre crocodile,despite being hyper-vigilant for the beasts,&i completely forgot about it almost immediately,our brains are weird,&frequently wrong,never believe anything any”swears”to..
❤Jesus power ❤ All black and white sheep will receive ( level 1) portion of youth longevity digestion an self beauty Jesus energy wash tonight at( ( 11 07 ) eastren. Negative energy will creep out yr feet tell it's time. Starting now
Religious people were raised (indoctrinated) that unseen/untestable things are okay to accept (the opposite of critical thinking). When someone they trust (a parent) makes claims they accept with no good evidence (like their parents did before them) in direct contradiction to critical thinking (whereby good evidence still only tentatively 'proves' something), the child's thought process has been conditioned to accept these supernatural type claims, especially from an authority figure. They are also told they MUST accept them (nor even question them), or there's consequences. Those claims could be anything, as adjudicated by the existence of contradictory religions. When any two people disagree on the 'existence' of something fundamental to their everyday lives, it seem obvious to me that much more work needs to be done using much better evidence.
I find that when someone like this keeps saying "you know" as a verbal tick, it's because they're basically telling you that you already agree with them but you might not realize it yet. It's especially funny because it's often accompanied by vague descriptions of the opposing premise while insisting on precision for their own.
You can trust someone to not lie to you. You cannot trust someone to not be mistaken. There is no such thing. It is the nature of perception to not be 100% reliable.
It feels as if theists (and I’m a theist, to be clear), put WAY TOO MUCH energy into spinning philosophical answers to things that aren’t really questions…. Like meanwhile, wouldn’t it be neat if we could instead, collaborate on redirecting resources to elevating the disadvantaged and marginalized amongst us?
If you’re a theist, I can only imagine you’ve done the same thing as the ones you’re criticizing: philosophizing about things that aren’t in question or don’t really matter. Are you trying to include yourself in that? If not, what is the difference between you and them?
@@Dr_Wrong If you are in a position to enrich the whole, and do not do it you are impoverishing yourself, by enriching the whole there is a more dynamic economy to take advantage of. This is why the term greed is used for such, all for me and none for you eventually fails.
All these people forget that in 2024 virtually everybody carry digital video cameras around. I don't want to see *one* video of all these events, I expect to see *thousands* with the same subject. It's not the 13th century, bro, your "word" doesn't cut it.
I will note that if someone I trust makes an extraordinary claim, I might be less likely to think they're intentionally wrong. But that still leaves the possibility that they are sincerely mistaken entirely intact.
A giraffe in Chinese is called 'chang-jing lu' which means "long-necked deer". The first giraffe in China was presented to the emperor by the king of Bengal, and walked all the way to Beijing. Crowds of people turned out to see this exotic animal, which they classified as a mythical creature from Chinese folklore.
The Japanese language followed a similar process; “giraffe” is “kirin”, a mythical creature of Chinese origin that is also the logo of the beverage/beer brand named after it.
The first person who saw a crocodile was probably eaten by the crocodile, so he cannot tell his fellow villagers. Man, who knows how many people saw a crocodile before the villagers ever found out that a crocodile existed.
@@WolfA4 Mr MD is a tireless verbalizer that takes Forever to try and talk his way out of the rationality based scientific method which would expose his opinion based gullibility approuch that best fits the mind of a young child, not an adult serious about finding the truth or what is Real.This guy is a long winded dead end.
I think we finally got to an interesting discussion and the fundamental problem with his view right at the end, that he trusts his initial interpretations of his personal experiences and cannot imagine doing otherwise. He seemed in total disbelief when Paul mentioned learning that he was wrong. The hardest part about watching these videos is most of them are just everyone talking past each other and making their own points without ever actually talking about what each other is talking about. He started the call with the meat analogy and it seemed clear to me that he was putting the burden of proof onto the tests, that you need to prove that the tests are accurate, meaning you can't just not belief in god without proving that the method you used to get there is accurate. That point took way too long to finally make it back around to be refuted.
No, burden of proof is on the person making the positive claim. I hadn't heard of Christianity or god until I was in first grade. Yea, my parents NEVER brought any of it up. Fellow students asked me if I believed in god, and I said that I did not, and that I didn't even know there was one. I did not have a strong framework, and held NOTHING in the way of the burden of proof.
If I said I saw pixies in the bottom of my garden. No one would believe me. Yet someone says a book has a story where a man turned water into wine and they believe it. Ridiculous!
This caller, however eloquent and well mannered, though slightly too prone to offer apologies, basically spent the whole time griping about the concept of a burden of proof. I can't go as far as likening this to a child stating; "It's not fair!", but... it is withing eyesight. Or perhaps within earshot. If believers, instead of griping about the burden of proof, spent that time considering the factual foundations for their beliefs; perhaps they would be happier believers.
I include myself in believers here. We are definitely burning WAY too much mental energy on arguing what can’t be proven. Imagine a world where theists all worked instead on doing good.
@@irenafarm God's good work, you mean? Like burning witches, and stoning abominations? Preventing women from living full, free lifes, equal to men? Or conducting genocide on neighbouring towns, ie creating _lebensraum_ ? The word _good_ , is very much subjective. Which is sort of a proof, that all religious texts using the word as an absolute, have an initial flaw somewhere. A fatal flaw. Atheists usually have the notion that _good_ is defined by the consideration that the possible outcome and its consequences, will be beneficial to wellbeing. But also here, we must consider for _whom_ . Soo... subjective again. Is this difficult concept of everything being subjective, a basis for the will to subjugate oneself, in order to find (make believe) something to be objectively true?
The difference between a crocodile and a person rising from the dead are two totally different things though! You can eventually see that crocodile again.
When Forrest begins to grab his hair, spin in his chair, fall backwards, something is wrong with the caller. Forrest: "Do you see where I'm coming from?" Jack: "I do understand where you are coming from... The one thing I have... Just and, and this to be clear... Is not like... To be clear..."
I'm 5 minutes into this video at the moment and I don't have the first clue what point this caller is trying to make. Pause the video at 4:47 to look at Forrest's and Paulogia's faces! 😂
I really wish callers would start with their thesis statement and not some weird analogy. If he starts with "Testimonial evidence from a trustworthy source is sufficient evidence for belief." Then we can discuss how there is no sufficiently trustworthy source for extraordinary claims. Nobody should believe in the chupacabra or the loch ness monster just because their saintly great aunt said she had seen it.
That chicken example at the beginning would be better if they couldn’t see, touch, smell, hear or even test for it It’s like finding out if the chicken you can’t even tell is there or not is cooked
I trust my sister in law. But she claims she experienced a haunted house - actually, a demon possessed house. I still trust her ideas for cooking, however
I think technically seeing a crocodile in wilderness for the first time one would basically do a scientific research on the spot to double check what he saw. For instance. I saw a log near water, I looked somewhere else and then back and saw the log just go into the water on its own will, then it's gone. I wouldn't be sure what I saw so later when telling the story I would say I saw something weird, my eyes could have been playing tricks on me. Which is totally different to a situation: I was tracking some deer and they went to drink from a river, then something like a living log jumped up, tear one of the deer to pieces and went back to water. All the other deer ran away. At that point I definitely know I saw something - I can see evidence - blood in the water, maybe some remains of the deer around, the rest of the deer running away. I have sufficient evidence that I saw some creature. Even if I come back there would be no evidence left - the blood was taken by the flow, deer remains were taken off by scavengers and even the herd of deer is back to drink. Yet I observed enough stuff earlier, that I can conclude that there is a actual predator creature looking like a living log in the water. In both cases if then there would be a watch established observing the spot for weeks and no other incident of the creature was observed (it was just one of those rare situations where a creature is taken by water currents hundreds of miles from its natural habitat) people would be equally justified in not believing you. But in the second case you would start to doubt yourself much later (or even never?) as your own evidence from the time it happened was much stronger.
The initial logical fallacy with the chicken experiment is that we already know that the possible outcomes are scientifically true: we already understand - through observation - that chicken can either be cooked all the way through or not. You can't compare that with trying to test for something that's been proven contrary to natural physical laws. This caller is a very well-spoken silly person.
The fallacy is comparing existing things with imaginary ones. The chicken is REAL, we can make all sorts of experiments on it! What experiments can we make on Jesus, or angels, or satan?
If the caller would have stopped after saying: - sometimes something unexpected or even unbelievable ACTUALLY is true (and it is important to check more than what you ALREADY find reasonable). I would have supported him in that. It is even possible that there is a God (of sorts) and this entity has done things it would be hard to believe with our limited human minds. That is OK. What I DO NOT accept is that it is IMPORTANT for me to TRUST things I cannot know just because they MAY be correct or just because some deity put enourmous CONSEQUENSES on whether I am gullible enough to just blindly trust those HUMANS who relayed it! That is unacceptable! Gullability as a PREREQUISITE for salvation is not just a dumb idea, it is EVIL!
I think one issue that was missed by the caller is many times we hear the witnesses’ conclusion about the observation. If the first person to see a crocodile came back and simply described the observation. I would think wow, I wonder what it was we should go investigate more. But instead, what we more commonly have to deal with is people coming back saying, I saw a dragon in the swamp. I didn’t see it breath fire, but we all know they can. So, the bigger problem for me is not the observation (although that can be wrong) it is the conclusion. Since we have no verified examples of God or supernatural, it seems irrational to label an observation that way. By definition it would have to be an argument from ignorance.
Shakespeare never left England but he knew about crocodiles. Humans pass knowledge onto each other. That's how we learn. With a crocodile we can have the skin, the teeth, the observation, the eggs, the footprints etc. With the supernatural we have nothing but "personal experiences" or just plain exaggeration or lies.
It's ironic that theist defensive rationalization is so thoroughly irrational. ```While rationalization is similar to lying, there are important distinctions. Lying is a conscious attempt to deceive, while rationalization often occurs partly or primarily outside of conscious awareness. And while both disguise a person's real motives for self-serving purposes, rationalization protects them from being fully aware of their true motivations.```
The example the caller used about being more willing to believe a fantastical story from someone they/we trust is BS. I have people I trust in normal everyday situations and if they said their car jumped the curb and went high enough to miss a poor innocent dog on the sidewalk I might believe them, but if they told me they were visited by god or told by god to do something I would not believe them and probably suggest they see a doctor, as Paul said later.
Look, all experiences should be met with some amount of skepticism if there is no other proof that it could be true. If I say I saw a squirrel, people believe because I live where there are lots of squirrels and lots of people have seen them. If I say a squirrel came out of my toaster, there will be considerably more doubt and a lot more evidence needed. Another example: I once had sleep paralysis (the opposite of sleep walking, your brain is starting to wake up but your voluntary muscles haven't turned back on). I hallucinated that my fuzzy koala blanket was trying to drag me under the bed and eat me. Our experiences can be quite misinterpreted. I think this is why all "near death experiences" can be discounted. People were in a very confusing circumstance and desperately trying to make sense of it while their brain was not at optimal functioning. Oh, and absolutely no physical evidence for any of the claims. That too.
That which is real requires testable proof as well as testable disproof. If neither is testable, then that which is asserted in NOT in the set of things that are defined as real, as knowledge. Assertions that are untestable are defined as belief.
His argument amounts to, we should believe any "credible" witness because more evidence and "scientific" study may prove them right at some time in the future. Except he wouldn't be able to show a logical difference between believing the first person who claimed to have seen a crocodile, and the first person who claimed to have seen a unicorn. Without resorting to scepticism again.
All he's trying to do is shift the burden of proof. The thing he missed is that one of the guys looking at the chicken could just say, "I don't have any reason to think it is cooked, so I can't ant accept that it is." He thinks you have to have some evidence to say, " I have no evidence." You are warranted and not believing that the chicken is cooked until somebody proves that the chicken is in fact cooked
There needs to be an argument for why the supernatural needs to be considered possible? Anything the supernatural can explain the unknown natural can equally explain. The natural has already been demonstrated to be possible.
For me, Forrest hits the nail on the head at 20:50 - the truth claim and the extent to which I believe the messenger are _different_; caller wanted to conflate them, which isn't precise enough for such big claims.
We as intelligent apes have to believe, at least to some extent, our experiences. But that cant transfer over to fact. If you interpret an experience and take it as fact you are most assuredly to form the wrong conclusion. Our thoughts and ways of thinking are influenced by so many factors that induce incorrect conclusions. I always question my conclusions as so many, in the past have proven at least partialy incorrect. Which tells us to continuously question everything we know. Always.
The biggest issue, i think, is that every god claim should be accepted by the local in group, while simultaneously rejecting every other god claim since those come from people not in your in group.
@irenafarm you miss understand. I'm referring to belief system in / out groups. If I'm from ancient Greece, I would accept claims for Zeus from the people I trust while rejecting claims of Odin from people I don't know. If I'm from ancient Scandinavia, it would be the exact opposite. Neither case would help me get any closer to the truth
these reports of mystical visitations,feeling the presence of god,blessings via the holy spirit etc. are rationally explained by our deeper understanding of the brain itself and mapping the areas of the brain influenced by altered brain/body chemistry,and these experiences are further shaped by subconscious desires nurtured by the believers mind,they exist within our brains/craniums, not outside of it /and Why is it that believers most commanly have these experiences, while nonbelievers rarely report spontaneous specific "religious" experiences.....
Probably could have gotten to exactly what he was trying to describe by asking if he's religious, if so what religion, and then asked him to relate his idea as he applies it to dismissing other religion's supernatural/god claims.
He's not wrong that you could totally end up with hard solipsism, but his example yeah, it's just going to de facto make more sense and be more likely that seeing someone rise from the dead is a hallucination. Every. Single. Time. And no matter how many theists try throwing the idea of bias against supernatural out there as though it's a failing, it doesn't help them, at all. What they are actually saying is that someone is biased towards an explanation in accord with known reality. It's that simple. And the biggest refutation of this entire argument is their own certainty that the claims of the miraculous from all over the world, other religions, ages gone by, whatever, are all nonsense, because miracles don't fkn happen. JFC. These people.
‘It doesn’t seem like the scientific method can describe novel experiences.’ Giving every benefit of the doubt, this guy doesn’t know what the scientific method is. If I were the most generous person on Earth, I’d say he’s failing to communicate that we only can describe what we don’t know in terms of what we do know. A lot of English words have Latin roots literally describing the thing they symbolize as if an observer is giving a quick summary/description of the animal or what it looks like. A symbol is not an object. A map is not a place. How are maps of new places made? Observation made through exploration and measurement. Finally, science discovers new things all the friggin time. It’s pretty much science’s thing!
Don't compare objective experiences with subjective (purely personal) experiences. SMH Subjective testimony needs consistency, ie. me and my buddy pray for and both keep getting hundred digit numbers that match when we later compare them.
I saw a UFO in 1975 that was almost certainly ET. I have considered for years that it was a hallucination and various other "refutations," but a hallucination made no sense because at least three of us saw it and I have no trouble distinguishing dreams from real life. (Another explanation I heard was that it was Venus, which was an assumption that didn't fit with what I saw because Venus doesn't have three huge antennas and does not fly with instant acceleration, and so forth.) I see stars all the time, and it is impossible for what I saw to be a star. I don't expect anyone to believe me because at one time I wouldn't have believed anyone else who claimed to see what I saw. I wouldn't have disbelieved them either because my philosophy since a teenager (in the 1960s and 1970s) was not to believe or disbelieve unusual claims, but to remain as neutral as I could. I have considered the other objections to what I saw. Some are valid alone, but there were too many other counter-indications that it was not a hallucination or a star, etc., together that has made it where, so far, I haven't changed my mind. Because of what I saw, my hackles rise when atheists (I'm an atheist) use UFOs as an example of ridiculous claims as if they are equivalent to fairies. I acknowledge that some UFO claims are no doubt lies, hallucinations, and mistakes, and even I believe that fits most UFO claims. I try as hard as I can to figure out a non-ET explanation, but so far, I have seen none that fit the facts of what I saw. I do not believe what I saw was supernatural, even though it could be explained by the supernatural if there was evidence supernatural exists. I can promise that anyone, except the most extremely irrational, would likely never again dismiss the possibility that what they saw was likely ET or at least a strong possibility ETs are here. I would love to be convinced I was hallucinating so I could quit trying to figure out how something could instantly fly at "warp speed"** straight up, stop at the snap of the fingers, and then take off again with instant acceleration to a steady warp speed. I didn't like time and our vehicle lights didn't flicker or the engine died and we didn't lose time or get abducted, etc.
![ILLSLICK - THE KING'S LANDING [Freestyle]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/feIJJnNkTfk/mqdefault.jpg)
"OMG I went to the mall, and I saw Santa and all his elves, and there were a bunch of other people there! Santa is really real!!!"
I always turn to Santa Worship in December, just in case the presents are better. I become a Santa atheist in January because I know in my heart he’ll forgive me in December when I return to worshiping him.
@@aidenmartin6674You, my friend, are the shining example of contingency-based belief we have been waiting for. We pray now, earnestly and whole-heartedly, that your display of seasonal piety and calendar-limited good works will usher in a new millenium, one of conditional humility, convenient humanity, rewards-based charity, and limited accountability. Amen.
I was amused by Kevin McCallister's take on mall Santas in _Home Alone_ i.e. that they're fake but work for the real Santa.
Parents indoctrinate kids to think there is a Santa and t the same time some god. Later when the kid gets older it's funny if they still believe in Santa. The adult still believes in an imaginary friend.
The longer jack talked, the larger the word salad became. He's currently feeding all the hungry in the world
😂 if only ifs and buts were candy and nuts!
If someone claimed to have seen a new creature, but no-one else saw it in the following 2000 years, it would seem unreasonable to spend time worrying about it.
There is no human that has ever lived whose testimony that they witnessed a supernatural event is to be believed because of their trustworthiness.
There is no human that has ever lived whose testimony that they witnessed an event is to be believed because of their trustworthiness. There i fixed it for you- human testimony is VERY low on the list of proving anything.
Yup, and not one of the NT authors was an eyewitness, and I believe it's evident that those authors did not speak to any eyewitnesses.
So.. Necromancy ftw?
Caller's arguments disintegrate immediately under the slightest pressure.
deja vu, QED.
How is this still confusing? If you make a claim, you need to prove it. Simple as that
A more direct analogy would be "If you claim to enjoy sushi, then no problem. If you claim to enjoy sushi made from fish caught on Jupiter's moons by aliens, then that requires much much more evidence to accept." Worse still would be a claim "I enjoy sushi miraculously teleported to me from Jupiter's moons." The first claim is easy to accept straight up, the stakes are low. The second claim might be *possible* but is vastly less easy to accept. The final claim might not even *be possible* and is much harder to accept accordingly.
Nope.
If _'fish caught on Jupiter's moons by aliens'_ were already as thoroughly verified as 'fish caught on Earth.. it would be sufficient..
The evidence merely needs to be about the same..
If sushi became a state religion there would be a name for people that did not believe in it.
Asushi
I'm glad Jack acknowledged that he was hoping the hosts would lower their standards. He should ask himself why he wants others to settle for something inferior.
The analogy of the chicken should include the theistic test: Pick up the chicken and take a huge bite of raw chicken.
When scientists were presented with the idea of a platypus from someone who had seen one they didn't believe in it, because it was so far out of the range of their experiences. When scientists were provided with the carcass of a dead platypus they didn't believe it was real, thinking it was a beaver with a duck bill attached via taxidermy. It was only when scientists were presented with a living platypus that they accepted the reality of the platypus.
Platypus = this guy's crocodile story.
Chicken. Crocodiles. Aliens... This clinches it for me. I am now a believer. Hallelujah Praise the... What were we talking about?
The sacred alien crocochicken obviously.
@@Julian0101 Now I am torn. Do I follow our glorious Christian Overlord from another dimension, or do I worship the sacred Alien Crocochicken instead? This religious gig is hard work. No wonder there are so many denominations. Next, you'll be telling me there is an Elephant headed god called Ganesha.
I don’t know how you guys do this. Every time he mentioned crocodiles, my brain just shut down. 😂
Let me be clear. It’s not like I believe every supernatural claim out there.
Just the ones that I desperately want to be true.
WTF!
😂
Exactly this! Every time I hear a theist suggest that testimony or a single book source is sufficient, it always is for THEIR SPECIFIC religious belief. It somehow never applies to EVERY SINGLE OTHER RELIGION that has the EXACT same level of claim. It's always some special pleading for theirs that doesn't apply to others, and when you dig down it comes out to "but I really want to believe what I believe" (a.k.a. faith).
@@Nymaz ..good point but on a lighter side "exact same " is a redundant phrase
@@davenchop Well just to argue for argument's sake 😁 I would say that "same" could mean "relatively similar but with extremely minor differences". If you held two cameras side by side and took a picture at the same time you might say it's the "same picture" even though a pixel by pixel analysis would reveal differences that you couldn't tell by sight. Adding the "exact" modifier to "same" would remove the possibilities of any differences. To go back to the example if you took a picture with one camera and then made a digital copy of that picture, changing none of the attributes, that would make it an "exact same" picture as compared to the "same" picture from the two cameras.
The alien comparison is a good one.
If you told me that you believe you saw an alien, I’d believe that you believe that.
If you tried to convince me that you knew a guy who saw an alien a very long time ago and that encounter was absurdly similar to the plot of E.T, I’d probably need some evidence.
"I’d believe that you believe that" This is the sticking point. It's such a big annoyance to me when people think that if you don't believe their conclusions then you're calling them a liar. I could have 100% absolute trust in someone and still think they're wrong because they can be sincere in their wrong belief. It just means I trust that they aren't deceiving me.
If my mom told me she needs to borrow some money because she took her car in for service and it suddenly needs the headlight fluid replaced I wouldn't think that she's trying to trick me into giving her money, I'd think the mechanic is the one lying to her because she knows nothing about cars. I believe her that that's what she was told and that she believes it.
@@xipheonj _"people think that if you don't believe their conclusions then you're calling them a liar."_
Sorta are..
I don't believe they believe that. They don't act like it.
@@Dr_Wrong No, you're ignoring the rest of my comment. I suppose an asshole or liar would frame their accusation of lying as simply disbelief but that's not how other people use it. I don't need to re-explain, I already said what it means, I trust they aren't lying and are just mistaken.
@@xipheonj _"I suppose an asshole or liar would frame their accusation of lying"_
Wow, you went to extremes quick..
Did you think I was calling you a liar because I didn't believe your opinion?
If enough people *_act_* like disbelieving them = calling them a liar, then maybe _(like the word 'liar' having a commonly accepted meaning)_ enough people *_believe_* disbelieving them has the same meaning..
Which is exactly how ridiculous word connotations work..
You expect Christians to read dictionaries?? 🤣🤣
With the crocodile story, on a long enough timeline, if the crocodile is real, enough corroborating witnesses and evidence will accumulate to prove it. Plenty of people claim to have seen yeti, sasquatch, the loch ness monster or a chupacabre, but we haven't established enough corroborating evidence to believe they exist.
Yes.
Multiple avenues of evidence, not multiples of the same thing..
Bob : 1 = 1
Patty : 1 = 1
Biff : 1 = 1
Einstein : 1 = 1
Does not equal 4
One possible spin on the crocodile example might be that, in the absence of any other corroboration and say the person had been drinking or was somewhat short sighted, it may well be rational to doubt someone who claims to see such a creature. It would be incorrect but rational. I wonder if that is what the caller was getting at.
@@martifingersthat’s pretty charitable. You’ve certainly given the metaphor much more thought than the caller did.
@@TheChancellor212 Thanks The Chancellor. I start from the position that religious faith (like most of our seemingly essential identifications) is a measure of how we end up coping with the terrors of human existence and mortality (and maybe the beauty and wonder too - it's complicated!) As such and for now this caller, it seems to me , really needs his ideology to be true. I think he's wrong and deluded but then we are all lost babes in the wood and it is befitting to be kind to each other. (as RD Laing once said.)
I nearly sat on a 4metre crocodile,tru story.😂
Its bizarre to me that people still think that its incumbent on the listener to disprove a claim. The caller is trying to argue that because science cant investigate supernatural claims then we cant dismiss them so we should believe them. This is just a variation on russells teapot and suffers from the same problem.
Russell never owned a teapot, and his mom wants her's back..
Literally the “trust me bro”argument
5:30 minutes in and Forrest is about to fall asleep. I am right there with him. Get On With It!
There is no one I trust enough to believe a "personal experience" claim.
I keep thinking of children and abuse. Or women and rape. But there are clues there as well as it conforms with what we know about human behaviors, psychology etc. The claim matches science, and it’s also potentially provable.
There's plenty of people in my life that I believe enough to believe THEY THINK they had a "personal experience". I would not assume they were lying. But there is a HUGE gulf believe believing they thought they experienced something and believing that what they thought they experienced comports to the reality of what they actually experienced.
There is a massive amount of scientific evidence towards the unreliability of humans being able to correct interpret and remember events. And there's even a good evolutionary reason for superstition - if you hear a rustling in a bush and attribute it to a lion about to pounce and you're right you have a better chance of survival than the person who heard a rustling in a bush and didn't attribute it to a lion and was wrong. So the superstitious person, i.e. the person who ALWAYS attributes a rustling in the bush to a lion, is selected for.
All those "But I experienced it and I can trust my senses!"-guys! - I wonder, if they ever saw a stage magician's show (I'd recommend Penn & Teller!) 😂
“If only science could give us some sort of protocol for dealing with novel phenomena. Some kind of Method…. Oh, well. Since science doesn’t have anything like that my god claim is valid.”
My Jack special-pleading form MD has twisted his rationalization coping mechanism into pretzels. Self-contradiction and inconsistency isn't a problem when you're a believer.
“I don’t know what to do if I can’t trust my own senses”
Says a guy who’s never seen a magic show.
Our senses are notoriously unreliable in the moment. The fact that he doesn’t understand that (or doesn’t want to admit it) is telling.
People really don't like thinking about the fact that they're made of meat which evolved to only care about reality as much as necessary to reproduce and get high/drunk.
When i travelled to Far North Queensland,(Townsville),i’d seen crocs only on TV,BIG mfkrs,but while taking a walk,i nearly SAT on a 4 metre crocodile,despite being hyper-vigilant for the beasts,&i completely forgot about it almost immediately,our brains are weird,&frequently wrong,never believe anything any”swears”to..
This is brilliant, Paul. Great job by Forrest, as well.
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Wow! Thank you so much.
Religious people were raised (indoctrinated) that unseen/untestable things are okay to accept (the opposite of critical thinking). When someone they trust (a parent) makes claims they accept with no good evidence (like their parents did before them) in direct contradiction to critical thinking (whereby good evidence still only tentatively 'proves' something), the child's thought process has been conditioned to accept these supernatural type claims, especially from an authority figure. They are also told they MUST accept them (nor even question them), or there's consequences. Those claims could be anything, as adjudicated by the existence of contradictory religions. When any two people disagree on the 'existence' of something fundamental to their everyday lives, it seem obvious to me that much more work needs to be done using much better evidence.
I find that when someone like this keeps saying "you know" as a verbal tick, it's because they're basically telling you that you already agree with them but you might not realize it yet. It's especially funny because it's often accompanied by vague descriptions of the opposing premise while insisting on precision for their own.
You can trust someone to not lie to you.
You cannot trust someone to not be mistaken. There is no such thing. It is the nature of perception to not be 100% reliable.
Testimony has to also conform to reality in order to include it as proof.
“You know what I mean?” No we don’t 🙄
It feels as if theists (and I’m a theist, to be clear), put WAY TOO MUCH energy into spinning philosophical answers to things that aren’t really questions…. Like meanwhile, wouldn’t it be neat if we could instead, collaborate on redirecting resources to elevating the disadvantaged and marginalized amongst us?
If you’re a theist, I can only imagine you’ve done the same thing as the ones you’re criticizing: philosophizing about things that aren’t in question or don’t really matter. Are you trying to include yourself in that? If not, what is the difference between you and them?
Hard to get rich stealing the poor blind, if you keep giving them all your money..
Taxing the church would be a good start.
They also need to agree on who's disadvantaged..... good luck with that one 😂😂😂😂
@@Dr_Wrong If you are in a position to enrich the whole, and do not do it you are impoverishing yourself, by enriching the whole there is a more dynamic economy to take advantage of. This is why the term greed is used for such, all for me and none for you eventually fails.
@@brianstevens3858
You guy's really outta stop sealing from the poor.
All these people forget that in 2024 virtually everybody carry digital video cameras around.
I don't want to see *one* video of all these events, I expect to see *thousands* with the same subject.
It's not the 13th century, bro, your "word" doesn't cut it.
"........anyway" i almost died laughing Paul!
I will note that if someone I trust makes an extraordinary claim, I might be less likely to think they're intentionally wrong. But that still leaves the possibility that they are sincerely mistaken entirely intact.
Jack is working hard to justify his hilariously low evidence bar
A giraffe in Chinese is called 'chang-jing lu' which means "long-necked deer". The first giraffe in China was presented to the emperor by the king of Bengal, and walked all the way to Beijing. Crowds of people turned out to see this exotic animal, which they classified as a mythical creature from Chinese folklore.
The Japanese language followed a similar process; “giraffe” is “kirin”, a mythical creature of Chinese origin that is also the logo of the beverage/beer brand named after it.
"My girlfriend lives in Kuala Lumpur. And the phone service there is kinda dodgy."
So what I learned was the moon is hollow and run by gophers. All hail our new gopher overlords.
The first person who saw a crocodile was probably eaten by the crocodile, so he cannot tell his fellow villagers. Man, who knows how many people saw a crocodile before the villagers ever found out that a crocodile existed.
7:31 Valkai gets more and more slumped with frustration and that’s such a mood.
i don't like it a bit
If you notice in the video there are jump cuts, that's because live this guy rambles on and on, he is incredibly frustrating to listen to.
@@WolfA4 Mr MD is a tireless verbalizer that takes Forever to try and talk his way out of the rationality based scientific method which would expose his opinion based gullibility approuch that best fits the mind of a young child, not an adult serious about finding the truth or what is Real.This guy is a long winded dead end.
Matt Dillahunty breakdown mk.2..
I think we finally got to an interesting discussion and the fundamental problem with his view right at the end, that he trusts his initial interpretations of his personal experiences and cannot imagine doing otherwise. He seemed in total disbelief when Paul mentioned learning that he was wrong.
The hardest part about watching these videos is most of them are just everyone talking past each other and making their own points without ever actually talking about what each other is talking about. He started the call with the meat analogy and it seemed clear to me that he was putting the burden of proof onto the tests, that you need to prove that the tests are accurate, meaning you can't just not belief in god without proving that the method you used to get there is accurate. That point took way too long to finally make it back around to be refuted.
Forrest and Paul's hair though. 🤌🏾🤌🏾🤌🏾
When Forrest talks, Paul's hair moves in the wind. So funny. 😂
At least the piece of chicken is in front of us so we can test out if it is cooked.
Great editing. Kudos Editor.
Another way to check if the cooken is chicked, is to eat it. But keep a bucket by the bed.
Fortuitously, certain cooked chickens come with a bucket included.
No, burden of proof is on the person making the positive claim.
I hadn't heard of Christianity or god until I was in first grade. Yea, my parents NEVER brought any of it up.
Fellow students asked me if I believed in god, and I said that I did not, and that I didn't even know there was one. I did not have a strong framework, and held NOTHING in the way of the burden of proof.
"Ya know..." Ad nauseum
If I said I saw pixies in the bottom of my garden. No one would believe me.
Yet someone says a book has a story where a man turned water into wine and they believe it.
Ridiculous!
The kelpies who live in our koi pond, told me that pixies aren’t real.
@@irenafarmBet those kelpies have never been to Devon.
This caller, however eloquent and well mannered, though slightly too prone to offer apologies, basically spent the whole time griping about the concept of a burden of proof. I can't go as far as likening this to a child stating; "It's not fair!", but... it is withing eyesight. Or perhaps within earshot.
If believers, instead of griping about the burden of proof, spent that time considering the factual foundations for their beliefs; perhaps they would be happier believers.
I include myself in believers here. We are definitely burning WAY too much mental energy on arguing what can’t be proven. Imagine a world where theists all worked instead on doing good.
@@irenafarm God's good work, you mean?
Like burning witches, and stoning abominations? Preventing women from living full, free lifes, equal to men?
Or conducting genocide on neighbouring towns, ie creating _lebensraum_ ?
The word _good_ , is very much subjective. Which is sort of a proof, that all religious texts using the word as an absolute, have an initial flaw somewhere. A fatal flaw.
Atheists usually have the notion that _good_ is defined by the consideration that the possible outcome and its consequences, will be beneficial to wellbeing.
But also here, we must consider for _whom_ . Soo... subjective again.
Is this difficult concept of everything being subjective, a basis for the will to subjugate oneself, in order to find (make believe) something to be objectively true?
If this god exists, it should just show up and clarify everything.
nope he wrote a book that 10,000 diff forms of christianity will explain it to you...
at least in their minds..
The faces Forrest makes when trying to compose himself while listening to such bullshit gibberish 😂
The difference between a crocodile and a person rising from the dead are two totally different things though! You can eventually see that crocodile again.
Trust & credibility doesn't cover outlandish or stupid.
When Forrest begins to grab his hair, spin in his chair, fall backwards, something is wrong with the caller. Forrest: "Do you see where I'm coming from?" Jack: "I do understand where you are coming from... The one thing I have... Just and, and this to be clear... Is not like... To be clear..."
Some call in dude wants to school Paul Paul and Forrest about Burden of Proof! Just let me get my popcorn.
I'm 5 minutes into this video at the moment and I don't have the first clue what point this caller is trying to make. Pause the video at 4:47 to look at Forrest's and Paulogia's faces! 😂
Ikr, like wtf he just say?
Watching the rest of it won't enlighten you much.
Forrest's testimony was enough to convince me. The moon is a spaceship run by gophers.
You put up the chicken and you got three different ways to evaluate the chicken now do the same for you God.
Forrest has the best WTF faces during this call 😂
Forrest @7:30:
"Oh my glob! Tuning out..."
I really wish callers would start with their thesis statement and not some weird analogy. If he starts with "Testimonial evidence from a trustworthy source is sufficient evidence for belief." Then we can discuss how there is no sufficiently trustworthy source for extraordinary claims. Nobody should believe in the chupacabra or the loch ness monster just because their saintly great aunt said she had seen it.
That chicken example at the beginning would be better if they couldn’t see, touch, smell, hear or even test for it
It’s like finding out if the chicken you can’t even tell is there or not is cooked
So basically he is saying HAVE FAITH THAT IT IS TRUE UNTIL YOU PROVE IT FALSE
I trust my sister in law. But she claims she experienced a haunted house - actually, a demon possessed house. I still trust her ideas for cooking, however
I think technically seeing a crocodile in wilderness for the first time one would basically do a scientific research on the spot to double check what he saw.
For instance.
I saw a log near water, I looked somewhere else and then back and saw the log just go into the water on its own will, then it's gone. I wouldn't be sure what I saw so later when telling the story I would say I saw something weird, my eyes could have been playing tricks on me.
Which is totally different to a situation: I was tracking some deer and they went to drink from a river, then something like a living log jumped up, tear one of the deer to pieces and went back to water. All the other deer ran away. At that point I definitely know I saw something - I can see evidence - blood in the water, maybe some remains of the deer around, the rest of the deer running away. I have sufficient evidence that I saw some creature. Even if I come back there would be no evidence left - the blood was taken by the flow, deer remains were taken off by scavengers and even the herd of deer is back to drink. Yet I observed enough stuff earlier, that I can conclude that there is a actual predator creature looking like a living log in the water.
In both cases if then there would be a watch established observing the spot for weeks and no other incident of the creature was observed (it was just one of those rare situations where a creature is taken by water currents hundreds of miles from its natural habitat) people would be equally justified in not believing you.
But in the second case you would start to doubt yourself much later (or even never?) as your own evidence from the time it happened was much stronger.
The initial logical fallacy with the chicken experiment is that we already know that the possible outcomes are scientifically true: we already understand - through observation - that chicken can either be cooked all the way through or not. You can't compare that with trying to test for something that's been proven contrary to natural physical laws. This caller is a very well-spoken silly person.
The fallacy is comparing existing things with imaginary ones.
The chicken is REAL, we can make all sorts of experiments on it!
What experiments can we make on Jesus, or angels, or satan?
Wait no one told me about the moon gophers
I’m sad that the moon gophers are so unlikely. :(
possibly Forrest hasn’t gotten beyond the “anger” stage yet??!?
If the caller would have stopped after saying: - sometimes something unexpected or even unbelievable ACTUALLY is true (and it is important to check more than what you ALREADY find reasonable).
I would have supported him in that.
It is even possible that there is a God (of sorts) and this entity has done things it would be hard to believe with our limited human minds. That is OK.
What I DO NOT accept is that it is IMPORTANT for me to TRUST things I cannot know just because they MAY be correct or just because some deity put enourmous CONSEQUENSES on whether I am gullible enough to just blindly trust those HUMANS who relayed it!
That is unacceptable!
Gullability as a PREREQUISITE for salvation is not just a dumb idea, it is EVIL!
I think one issue that was missed by the caller is many times we hear the witnesses’ conclusion about the observation. If the first person to see a crocodile came back and simply described the observation. I would think wow, I wonder what it was we should go investigate more. But instead, what we more commonly have to deal with is people coming back saying, I saw a dragon in the swamp. I didn’t see it breath fire, but we all know they can. So, the bigger problem for me is not the observation (although that can be wrong) it is the conclusion. Since we have no verified examples of God or supernatural, it seems irrational to label an observation that way. By definition it would have to be an argument from ignorance.
Didn't Dillahunty already trounce this guy with the same argument?
he was talking about falsifiability
Shakespeare never left England but he knew about crocodiles. Humans pass knowledge onto each other. That's how we learn. With a crocodile we can have the skin, the teeth, the observation, the eggs, the footprints etc. With the supernatural we have nothing but "personal experiences" or just plain exaggeration or lies.
As a cook those are all valid ways to temp meat depending on the situation.
This guy is so sneaky..talking in circles to set up his pre defense for his inevitable nonsense
This guy Jack is amazing; after 10,000 words shot in high speed and trembling-nervous voice, he didn't say anything.
It's ironic that theist defensive rationalization is so thoroughly irrational. ```While rationalization is similar to lying, there are important distinctions. Lying is a conscious attempt to deceive, while rationalization often occurs partly or primarily outside of conscious awareness. And while both disguise a person's real motives for self-serving purposes, rationalization protects them from being fully aware of their true motivations.```
Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug
Forrest lookslike his headis going to explode. Also, bro, can you be more specific. Specifically he can wander around in invalid allegory.
I felt fidgety just watching it! At one point he starts doing a little dance and I feel that with all my heart.
why everyone calls him lost-in-the-forrest he's like an alzymer's patient trying to be an atheist.
The example the caller used about being more willing to believe a fantastical story from someone they/we trust is BS. I have people I trust in normal everyday situations and if they said their car jumped the curb and went high enough to miss a poor innocent dog on the sidewalk I might believe them, but if they told me they were visited by god or told by god to do something I would not believe them and probably suggest they see a doctor, as Paul said later.
Look, all experiences should be met with some amount of skepticism if there is no other proof that it could be true. If I say I saw a squirrel, people believe because I live where there are lots of squirrels and lots of people have seen them. If I say a squirrel came out of my toaster, there will be considerably more doubt and a lot more evidence needed.
Another example: I once had sleep paralysis (the opposite of sleep walking, your brain is starting to wake up but your voluntary muscles haven't turned back on). I hallucinated that my fuzzy koala blanket was trying to drag me under the bed and eat me. Our experiences can be quite misinterpreted. I think this is why all "near death experiences" can be discounted. People were in a very confusing circumstance and desperately trying to make sense of it while their brain was not at optimal functioning. Oh, and absolutely no physical evidence for any of the claims. That too.
That which is real requires testable proof as well as testable disproof. If neither is testable, then that which is asserted in NOT in the set of things that are defined as real, as knowledge.
Assertions that are untestable are defined as belief.
Waiting for Forrest's head to pop off or him to throw a clot
His argument amounts to, we should believe any "credible" witness because more evidence and "scientific" study may prove them right at some time in the future. Except he wouldn't be able to show a logical difference between believing the first person who claimed to have seen a crocodile, and the first person who claimed to have seen a unicorn. Without resorting to scepticism again.
I like the first part you said about future study may prove it later 👍
Jack has wandered into the realm of belief. He has used the words "belief" and "believe" numerous times.
Therein lies the self-deceit in his argument.
All he's trying to do is shift the burden of proof. The thing he missed is that one of the guys looking at the chicken could just say, "I don't have any reason to think it is cooked, so I can't ant accept that it is." He thinks you have to have some evidence to say, " I have no evidence." You are warranted and not believing that the chicken is cooked until somebody proves that the chicken is in fact cooked
forrest is the ken ham of atheism. my my my my paul has become a stooge 😆
Thanks again, Guys. Stump these christian, AH'S, Big Time. Cheers🥃.
Forrest needs to be the next Jimmy Olsen. That hair is fire 🔥
There needs to be an argument for why the supernatural needs to be considered possible? Anything the supernatural can explain the unknown natural can equally explain. The natural has already been demonstrated to be possible.
Caller trusts *_family members?_* Hasn't he lived with them?
For me, Forrest hits the nail on the head at 20:50 - the truth claim and the extent to which I believe the messenger are _different_; caller wanted to conflate them, which isn't precise enough for such big claims.
We as intelligent apes have to believe, at least to some extent, our experiences. But that cant transfer over to fact. If you interpret an experience and take it as fact you are most assuredly to form the wrong conclusion. Our thoughts and ways of thinking are influenced by so many factors that induce incorrect conclusions. I always question my conclusions as so many, in the past have proven at least partialy incorrect. Which tells us to continuously question everything we know. Always.
The biggest issue, i think, is that every god claim should be accepted by the local in group, while simultaneously rejecting every other god claim since those come from people not in your in group.
Imagine a world where we recognize everyone as “our group.” Yes, I’m a ridiculous dreamer….
@irenafarm you miss understand. I'm referring to belief system in / out groups. If I'm from ancient Greece, I would accept claims for Zeus from the people I trust while rejecting claims of Odin from people I don't know. If I'm from ancient Scandinavia, it would be the exact opposite.
Neither case would help me get any closer to the truth
these reports of mystical visitations,feeling the presence of god,blessings via the holy spirit etc. are rationally explained by our deeper understanding of the brain itself and mapping the areas of the brain influenced by altered brain/body chemistry,and these experiences are further shaped by subconscious desires nurtured by the believers mind,they exist within our brains/craniums, not outside of it /and Why is it that believers most commanly have these experiences, while nonbelievers rarely report spontaneous specific "religious" experiences.....
Probably could have gotten to exactly what he was trying to describe by asking if he's religious, if so what religion, and then asked him to relate his idea as he applies it to dismissing other religion's supernatural/god claims.
He's not wrong that you could totally end up with hard solipsism, but his example yeah, it's just going to de facto make more sense and be more likely that seeing someone rise from the dead is a hallucination. Every. Single. Time.
And no matter how many theists try throwing the idea of bias against supernatural out there as though it's a failing, it doesn't help them, at all. What they are actually saying is that someone is biased towards an explanation in accord with known reality. It's that simple.
And the biggest refutation of this entire argument is their own certainty that the claims of the miraculous from all over the world, other religions, ages gone by, whatever, are all nonsense, because miracles don't fkn happen. JFC. These people.
I saw a crocoduck!
Yeah....I could have a cooked piece of chicken that has been sitting in the fridge over night
Heat might mean nothing
‘It doesn’t seem like the scientific method can describe novel experiences.’
Giving every benefit of the doubt, this guy doesn’t know what the scientific method is. If I were the most generous person on Earth, I’d say he’s failing to communicate that we only can describe what we don’t know in terms of what we do know. A lot of English words have Latin roots literally describing the thing they symbolize as if an observer is giving a quick summary/description of the animal or what it looks like.
A symbol is not an object. A map is not a place. How are maps of new places made? Observation made through exploration and measurement.
Finally, science discovers new things all the friggin time. It’s pretty much science’s thing!
Don't compare objective experiences with subjective (purely personal) experiences. SMH
Subjective testimony needs consistency, ie. me and my buddy pray for and both keep getting hundred digit numbers that match when we later compare them.
A log with teeth! ❤
A log. With teeth.
Floating in the river Sticks.
I saw a UFO in 1975 that was almost certainly ET. I have considered for years that it was a hallucination and various other "refutations," but a hallucination made no sense because at least three of us saw it and I have no trouble distinguishing dreams from real life. (Another explanation I heard was that it was Venus, which was an assumption that didn't fit with what I saw because Venus doesn't have three huge antennas and does not fly with instant acceleration, and so forth.) I see stars all the time, and it is impossible for what I saw to be a star.
I don't expect anyone to believe me because at one time I wouldn't have believed anyone else who claimed to see what I saw. I wouldn't have disbelieved them either because my philosophy since a teenager (in the 1960s and 1970s) was not to believe or disbelieve unusual claims, but to remain as neutral as I could.
I have considered the other objections to what I saw. Some are valid alone, but there were too many other counter-indications that it was not a hallucination or a star, etc., together that has made it where, so far, I haven't changed my mind.
Because of what I saw, my hackles rise when atheists (I'm an atheist) use UFOs as an example of ridiculous claims as if they are equivalent to fairies. I acknowledge that some UFO claims are no doubt lies, hallucinations, and mistakes, and even I believe that fits most UFO claims. I try as hard as I can to figure out a non-ET explanation, but so far, I have seen none that fit the facts of what I saw.
I do not believe what I saw was supernatural, even though it could be explained by the supernatural if there was evidence supernatural exists.
I can promise that anyone, except the most extremely irrational, would likely never again dismiss the possibility that what they saw was likely ET or at least a strong possibility ETs are here.
I would love to be convinced I was hallucinating so I could quit trying to figure out how something could instantly fly at "warp speed"** straight up, stop at the snap of the fingers, and then take off again with instant acceleration to a steady warp speed.
I didn't like time and our vehicle lights didn't flicker or the engine died and we didn't lose time or get abducted, etc.