Confirmation Bias

[Presbyterian Continuist]

Here is an interesting video about Confirmation Bias.

What are your thoughts about it?

 

[SkyWriting]

Here is an interesting video about Confirmation Bias.What are your thoughts about it?

It's a well studied fact that people have extremely limited perception and they also seek out information that confirms their thoughts. Like when you buy a car of a unique color, to you, and suddenly that color appears all the time. You were blind to the issue, until you process it, then suddenly it's nearly universal.

Whatever you focus on, is reality to you.

 

[martymonster]

Oh, I see a lot of that on here.

 

[Original Happy Camper]

Oh, I see a lot of that on here.

were you looking in a mirror when you posted this?

 

[Pavel Mosko]

Here is an interesting video about Confirmation Bias.

What are your thoughts about it?

We all have it. I have brought it up when talking to some close minded people, especially atheists. The usual reflex action is to say "Well this also applies to you too!" But there can be really huge differences between how people apply theirs, as far as their willingness to consider another person's point of view vs. immediately looking for any excuse you can muster to not ever consider it.

I also tend to like to bring up the Joehari window and some of my own life experiences etc. As well as the general idea of using other people as a resource to gain info about the world, and various subjects. Basically you do not have to believe in every thing the other person believes, but sometimes the opinions and information of the most dogmatic and close minded person can be very useful.


e.g.- As a young person I gained some valuable insight into the Bible from an older friend/associate that was hostile to the faith. He basically believed that the Judeo-Christian religion evolved out of paganism. I however took the old saying of Benjamin Franklin to heart ("Our critics are our friends because they show us our faults"). In his arguing with my best friend (who got me into the Charismatic movement in 1990), he tried to argue his point of view rhetorically asking him questions like "Why does God appear as fire to Abraham and in the Old Testament?" His answer was because Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldees, where the local deity "was a fire god".

I thought that was very interesting, it wasn't devastating as far as disproving the faith, but it did explain some things. Today their is a Protestant Bible scholar, Michael Heiser, that gets a lot of attention because he explains "the ancient far eastern context of the Bible", (How God used some of the symbolism, tropes and other elements of the surrounding cultures to communicate his unique message) and I refer to him as well. But I gained a 20-25 year head start on this subject by basically listening to this hostile person's point of view and seeing if their was anything truthful or useful in it.


Johari window - Wikipedia.

 

[Skye1300]

Yup, exactly. That's why society should not give in to people's delusions of themselves and change the whole world to fit into their delusions.

 

[Skye1300]

We all have it.
.

Yup, everyone has some kind of denial about something in their life. Narcissists are convinced it's the rest of the world who's crazy and not them. LOL

 

[BPPLEE]

Here is an interesting video about Confirmation Bias.

What are your thoughts about it?

Yes there are many people on this forum who think that their views are the only ones that deserve merit

 

[Pavel Mosko]

Yup, everyone has some kind of denial about something in their life. Narcissists are convinced it's the rest of the world who's crazy and not them. LOL

Yep and it is funny you have brought up Narcists that has been a topic I have really been interested in the last few years, and not just in general life, but Christianity too. I believe I survived 2 pastors in the days of my youth that I thought had that orientation. Maybe not full blown NPD but definitely they were in the 10% of the population that has the general traits, and could be toxic.


It really has been a kind of a pet topic among a number of different pet topics. A friend of mine a few years ago, left an abusive marriage where his wife basically became abusive kind of like the Amber Heard relationship with Johnny Depp except he had a lot more stuff in his favor than in that case that has been in the news of late.


On the Christian front, this is been a pet topic of mine. I'm very concerned about people selectively quoting the Bible, and preying on Christian sympathies and such. Besides that I also came very close to being a therapist/counselor as my career (went to school for it) so notions that trust should be earned etc. if definitely in my mind as well. Besides that I also studied social psychology and that has a number of interesting applications for job and everyday life including church life.

 

[Rachel20]

Here is an interesting video about Confirmation Bias.

What are your thoughts about it?

It confirms what I believed all along

 

[Clare73]

We all have it. I have brought it up when talking to some close minded people, especially atheists. The usual reflex action is to say "Well this also applies to you too!" But there can be really huge differences between how people apply theirs, as far as their willingness to consider another person's point of view vs. immediately looking for any excuse you can muster to not ever consider it.

I also tend to like to bring up the Joehari window and some of my own life experiences etc. As well as the general idea of using other people as a resource to gain info about the world, and various subjects. Basically you do not have to believe in every thing the other person believes, but sometimes the opinions and information of the most dogmatic and close minded person can be very useful.


e.g.- As a young person I gained some valuable insight into the Bible from an older friend/associate that was hostile to the faith. He basically believed that the Judeo-Christian religion evolved out of paganism. I however took the old saying of Benjamin Franklin to heart ("Our critics are our friends because they show us our faults"). In his arguing with my best friend (who got me into the Charismatic movement in 1990), he tried to argue his point of view rhetorically asking him questions like "Why does God appear as fire to Abraham and in the Old Testament?" His answer was because Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldees, where the local deity "was a fire god".

I thought that was very interesting, it wasn't devastating as far as disproving the faith, but it did explain some things. Today their is a Protestant Bible scholar, Michael Heiser, that gets a lot of attention because he explains "the ancient far eastern context of the Bible", (How God used some of the symbolism, tropes and other elements of the surrounding cultures to communicate his unique message) and I refer to him as well. But I gained a 20-25 year head start on this subject by basically listening to this hostile person's point of view and seeing if their was anything truthful or useful in it.


Johari window - Wikipedia.

My confirmation bias is somewhat in the order of a young man's bias for his father--whose love has been demonstrated to him throughout his whole life--when anything to the contrary is maintained.

My bias is toward the Scriptures in relation to anything anyone says to the contrary . . .and for which I do not apologize, but adamantly defend.

 

[Rachel20]

. . .and for which I do not apologize, but defend.

Good point - confirmation bias doesn't speak to the truth of the thing. The video could just as easily be titled "Confirmation Bias - Helping You Keep Your Truths"

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

Good point - confirmation bias doesn't speak to the truth of the thing. The video could just as easily be titled "Confirmation Bias - Helping You Keep Your Truths"

One good piece of advice I read was to take three weeks off going to your church and hearing the sermon, and spending the time reading just the Bible. Not just the familiar verses you have heard in the church sermons, but reading the whole Bible to see what it actually says. Then after the three weeks, go back to church and take careful notes of the sermons you hear. Then compare them with what you have discovered in your reading of the Bible. This is a good way of knowing whether the content of the preaching you are hearing at church agrees with what you see in your Bible readings.

Also, when the preacher quotes a verse, look it up and read the whole section where that verse is located. Ask yourself whether the preacher's interpretation of the verse is the same as what was intended by the author.

I spent 11 years as part of a movement that had tongues and prophecy in the meetings. I accepted everything that was taught, because I thought that these Bible teachers were men of God and were hearing from Him, so they must have known what they were talking about. But as I started to mature in the Lord, I started to see differences between what I was seeing in the Bible and what was being preached and taught in the church. For instance: Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 14 that speaking in tongues publicly without interpretation was inappropriate, yet everyone in the church spoke in tongues without interpretation. I started to wonder whether those church leaders actually read the chapter, and if they did, why are they going against what Paul taught? I also read in the chapter that prophecy was supposed to exhort, edify, and comfort believers, but the long, drawn out KJV prophecies I was hearing were not like that, and they were mostly forgotten by the singing of the next hymn. Also, the "Thus says the Lord" seemed to be adding to the Scripture, when the Scripture itself forbade adding to it. It was then that I started to carefully examine what was being preached and found that I couldn't find anything in the New Testament that related to what I was hearing. Also, I read Paul's statement, "If even an angel of the Lord comes preaching a different gospel to what I have preached, let them be accursed." I discovered that much of the preaching did not include the Gospel that Paul preached, but dealt more with getting an anointing to be able to move in power with God, be able to move in the gifts of the Spirit, improve ourselves spiritually, etc., but very little of sin, repentance, the Cross, Jesus shedding His blood and dying for us. It seems that these things were being put on the back burner in favour of improving ourselves in our walk in the Spirit.

Discovering these things was the main factor why I left that movement in 1979 and as I moved cities with my job, I joined churches that preached the same Gospel that Paul preached. It took me a number of years to be totally deprogrammed from the non-Biblical teaching that was drummed into me in that first 11 years. I am only now (after over 50 years), discovering that some of the founders of the movement were exposed as frauds. It made me wonder about the rest of the movement and gave me fears for the people who are in it who are not aware of the fraud and non-Biblical teaching that riddles it.

So that is my experience with Confirmation Bias. When I was in the movement I would have fought tooth and nail to defend it. If you read my historic posts on the Spirit-filled forum, you will see that, and when you compare them with my more recent posts, you will see how I have amended my views based on my progressive discoveries about what is true or false.

 

[Rachel20]

It made me wonder about the rest of the movement and gave me fears for the people who are in it who are not aware of the fraud and non-Biblical teaching that riddles it.

I don't worry about true seekers, and you're a good example why.

"All that the Father giveth me shall come to me ..." John 6:37

 

[BPPLEE]

One good piece of advice I read was to take three weeks off going to your church and hearing the sermon, and spending the time reading just the Bible. Not just the familiar verses you have heard in the church sermons, but reading the whole Bible to see what it actually says. Then after the three weeks, go back to church and take careful notes of the sermons you hear. Then compare them with what you have discovered in your reading of the Bible. This is a good way of knowing whether the content of the preaching you are hearing at church agrees with what you see in your Bible readings.

Also, when the preacher quotes a verse, look it up and read the whole section where that verse is located. Ask yourself whether the preacher's interpretation of the verse is the same as what was intended by the author.

I spent 11 years as part of a movement that had tongues and prophecy in the meetings. I accepted everything that was taught, because I thought that these Bible teachers were men of God and were hearing from Him, so they must have known what they were talking about. But as I started to mature in the Lord, I started to see differences between what I was seeing in the Bible and what was being preached and taught in the church. For instance: Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 14 that speaking in tongues publicly without interpretation was inappropriate, yet everyone in the church spoke in tongues without interpretation. I started to wonder whether those church leaders actually read the chapter, and if they did, why are they going against what Paul taught? I also read in the chapter that prophecy was supposed to exhort, edify, and comfort believers, but the long, drawn out KJV prophecies I was hearing were not like that, and they were mostly forgotten by the singing of the next hymn. Also, the "Thus says the Lord" seemed to be adding to the Scripture, when the Scripture itself forbade adding to it. It was then that I started to carefully examine what was being preached and found that I couldn't find anything in the New Testament that related to what I was hearing. Also, I read Paul's statement, "If even an angel of the Lord comes preaching a different gospel to what I have preached, let them be accursed." I discovered that much of the preaching did not include the Gospel that Paul preached, but dealt more with getting an anointing to be able to move in power with God, be able to move in the gifts of the Spirit, improve ourselves spiritually, etc., but very little of sin, repentance, the Cross, Jesus shedding His blood and dying for us. It seems that these things were being put on the back burner in favour of improving ourselves in our walk in the Spirit.

Discovering these things was the main factor why I left that movement in 1979 and as I moved cities with my job, I joined churches that preached the same Gospel that Paul preached. It took me a number of years to be totally deprogrammed from the non-Biblical teaching that was drummed into me in that first 11 years. I am only now (after over 50 years), discovering that some of the founders of the movement were exposed as frauds. It made me wonder about the rest of the movement and gave me fears for the people who are in it who are not aware of the fraud and non-Biblical teaching that riddles it.

So that is my experience with Confirmation Bias. When I was in the movement I would have fought tooth and nail to defend it. If you read my historic posts on the Spirit-filled forum, you will see that, and when you compare them with my more recent posts, you will see how I have amended my views based on my progressive discoveries about what is true or false.

I always wondered why God spoke in King James English. I know exactly what you're talking about

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

I don't worry about true seekers, and you're a good example why.

"All that the Father giveth me shall come to me ..." John 6:37

It was when I started to read Charles Spurgeon's sermons and saw the marked differences between his ones and the ones I was hearing at church. Then I studied the lives of every man of God who was successful at winning souls for Christ, and discovered that they had one thing in common: The preached Jesus and Him crucified, and that conversion to Christ involved faith in the finished work of Christ on the Cross. Then I started reading Puritan Christian literature and saw that the theology they had was markedly different from the theology that was presented at church.

When I started sharing my discoveries with friends at church, I was treated as if I was "off" and was starting to become separate from "the body of Christ". I had a discipleship group in my home, based on Winkie Pratney's "Youth Aflame" which was securely founded in the Gospel and discipleship based on faith in Christ. One of the church leaders who disagreed with what I was doing telephoned all the members of my group and told them that unless they joined an "official" home group, they were being disobedient to the Spirit. As a result my group folded. Not long after that, I left that church, and the movement as a whole.

It was a couple of years after I left the movement that my Baptist pastor friend and I attended a conference sponsored by the movement, and saw, during the altar call, the woman preacher actually rocking people back and forth until they fell backwards. She was clearly pushing them over. Yet most who were there sincerely believed it was the power of the Holy Spirit that was doing it. What I witnessed in that meeting cured me of any residual belief that the Holy Spirit was actually involved in meetings like that.

Around five years ago, I was a visitor in an AOG Sunday morning service. During the worship time, the pastor went around whispering in people's ear, "Jesus is here". As a result people would start shaking and falling over. He tried it on me for quite a while, but I wasn't going to shake or fall over, yet he was determined to get me to do it. I also saw a woman writhing around the floor like a snake, and I told the pastor that she needed deliverance. He didn't want to listen to me. I decided never to go back to any meetings like that. It is really sad that so many people think that stuff like that is actually the Holy Spirit, and they don't want to see any different.

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

I always wondered why God spoke in King James English. I know exactly what you're talking about

Someone once told me that if the KJV was good enough for Jesus and Paul, it should be good enough for us!

 

[Rachel20]

It was a couple of years after I left the movement that my Baptist pastor friend and I attended a conference sponsored by the movement, and saw, during the altar call, the woman preacher actually rocking people back and forth until they fell backwards. She was clearly pushing them over. Yet most who were there sincerely believed it was the power of the Holy Spirit that was doing it. What I witnessed in that meeting cured me of any residual belief that the Holy Spirit was actually involved in meetings like that.

Around five years ago, I was a visitor in an AOG Sunday morning service. During the worship time, the pastor went around whispering in people's ear, "Jesus is here". As a result people would start shaking and falling over. He tried it on me for quite a while, but I wasn't going to shake or fall over, yet he was determined to get me to do it. I also saw a woman writhing around the floor like a snake, and I told the pastor that she needed deliverance. He didn't want to listen to me. I decided never to go back to any meetings like that. It is really sad that so many people think that stuff like that is actually the Holy Spirit, and they don't want to see any different.

I remember attending a service once where they had a "laying on of hands" at the beginning and the person in front of me fell backward, nearly knocking me over. My attempt to keep my balance and not fall caused a bit of a stir, and I looked up embarrased, catching the eye of the preacher. The way he was looking at me - very angry, with cold steely eyes. It was at that moment I knew all I needed to know. I've seen many examples of what I deem false ministry, emotionalism, etc... since, like "laughing in the spirit", and I've just stayed away completely. I do believe, though, that the Lord knows the sincere ones who may not have much light or discernment.

 

[BPPLEE]

I remember attending a service once where they had a "laying on of hands" at the beginning and the person in front of me fell backward, nearly knocking me over. My attempt to keep my balance and not fall caused a bit of a stir, and I looked up embarrased, catching the eye of the preacher. The way he was looking at me - very angry, with cold steely eyes. It was at that moment I knew all I needed to know. I've seen many examples of what I deem false ministry, emotionalism, etc... since, like "laughing in the spirit", and I've just stayed away completely. I do believe, though, that the Lord knows the sincere ones who may not have much light or discernment.

There was a man who came to the Church I was a youth pastor at and the kids had started asking me questions about what he was saying. Amazing teenagers picked up on it but the adults didn't. One night he started telling people one leg was shorter than the other and he would push one shoe and pull the other. I had seen this on TV. I was done

 

[Pavel Mosko]

One good piece of advice I read was to take three weeks off going to your church and hearing the sermon, and spending the time reading just the Bible. Not just the familiar verses you have heard in the church sermons, but reading the whole Bible to see what it actually says. Then after the three weeks, go back to church and take careful notes of the sermons you hear. Then compare them with what you have discovered in your reading of the Bible. This is a good way of knowing whether the content of the preaching you are hearing at church agrees with what you see in your Bible readings.

I actually really love Biblegateway. They got an audio function for King James and NIV where you can listen to the Bible. So I have been doing what you mention for years but especially using that audio function to do that kind of study. It's really great for things like multitasking, like you want to play a computer game that is kind of slow but also listen to something useful.

Besides all that, I had issues with my glasses for years where my reading became a little difficult because if the Optometrist tried to increase my reading power it screwed up my long distance vision needed for driving, so web sites like this were really great with that for 5 years or so.



You can learn or notice all kinds of cool stuff by listening to things in context, rather than just selectively reading Bible quotes. And it is cool if you keep some kind of record, or at least mental note of things that you noticed doing this. I had a thread that sort of covered this but about one of my surprising discoveries.

Moses was right the first time (killing the Egyptian)


A sample of Bible gateway audio
BibleGateway.com: A searchable online Bible in over 150 versions and 50 languages.: Audio