What creationists need to do to win against evolution.

[messianist]

Most of the time they do a good enough job. But if you think your senses and perceptions are entirely trustworthy you're mistaken. Visual and auditory illusions are just the most obvious examples (I rather like the McGurk Effect).

If my beliefs changed, I would have different beliefs... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's possible - but people have many different reasons for their beliefs.

I'm not suggesting that Christians have more hallucinations than anyone else. Some types of hallucination (e.g. voices) are more common than others, but around 5% of people report having them.

Only if the reported experience strains credulity - and credulity varies from person to person. But it is often the case that reports of extraordinary (e.g. seemingly inexplicable) experiences, when investigated, have plausible mundane explanations.

Nonsens

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

You don't trust your own senses and you think no one else should trust theirs.

I trust mine.
So our conversation is ended here.

OK. So presumably your senses have never misled you, you've never seen an illusion, and you didn't watch the video because you don't want to see one... I'm sceptical about the first two and willing to accept the last.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Nonsens

In what respect?

 

[Ophiolite]

You don't trust your own senses and you think no one else should trust theirs.

A very sensible approach based upon the careful, informed observation of countless people and validated by demonstrable, repeatable experiment.

I trust mine.

Sadly a mistake. It's the kind of mistake that has led to serious errors of judgement and flawed, dangerous decisions. (As well as amusing incidents, or events of no consequence.) By adhering to that belief so rigorously you do yourself a great disservice.

 

[GodsGrace101]

OK. So presumably your senses have never misled you, you've never seen an illusion, and you didn't watch the video because you don't want to see one... I'm sceptical about the first two and willing to accept the last.

Never seen an illusion.
I'm not a young kid...I've seen plenty of stuff...
no need to watch your video.

You can accept or deny what you wish.

 

[GodsGrace101]

A very sensible approach based upon the careful, informed observation of countless people and validated by demonstrable, repeatable experiment.

Sadly a mistake. It's the kind of mistake that has led to serious errors of judgement and flawed, dangerous decisions. (As well as amusing incidents, or events of no consequence.) By adhering to that belief so rigorously you do yourself a great disservice.

I must be in a mess of a life.
Haven't noticed it though.
My senses must be fooling me.

 

[Ophiolite]

Are you kidding?
You think I'd even watch that video?

I would have thought you might be willing to watch the video.
I would have thought you would be willing to explore alternative viewpoints.
I would have thought the strength of your faith would have given you the confidence to consider such alternatives.
I would have thought that your natural human curiosity would have encouraged you to view the video.

Thank you for the timely reminder that my thoughts can be mistaken. Quite apposite, really. A shame you cannot experience the same doubts.

 

[GodsGrace101]

I would have thought you might be willing to watch the video.
I would have thought you would be willing to explore alternative viewpoints.
I would have thought the strength of your faith would have given you the confidence to consider such alternatives.
I would have thought that your natural human curiosity would have encouraged you to view the video.

Thank you for the timely reminder that my thoughts can be mistaken. Quite apposite, really. A shame you cannot experience the same doubts.

LOL
Nice try O....
but this stuff doesn't work with me.
The strength of my faith.....
You're funny.
Just imagine how smart I'd be if I watched the video!
It would be unbearable.

 

[pitabread]

Thousands of claims of X don't mean much UNLESS the infamous catholic church investigates it. I can't convince you of how thorough they are...you either accept it or you don't. They don't like all this talk of miracles either --- it waters down the meaning of what they really are.

I would be more impressed with an independent party doing the investigation, not an organization that actively encourages belief in the supernatural.

As I said earlier, the Church has a clear conflict of interest.

And believing in the supernatural because there's no other explanation is pretty dumb -- I think.

That's not the only reason, but it clearly is a driving force for a lot of beliefs in the supernatural.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Never seen an illusion.
I'm not a young kid...I've seen plenty of stuff...
no need to watch your video.

You can accept or deny what you wish.

You've been missing some interesting experiences...

Spoiler

How many cubes - 7 or 6?

Duck or rabbit?

The triangle is an illusion:

There is only one shade of green:

This is a true circle:

There is only one shade of pink:

Ambiguous figure from Arvind Narale. A single cow grazing and looking toward you or two animals looking at each another:

 

[GodsGrace101]

You've been missing some interesting experiences...

Spoiler

How many cubes - 7 or 6?

Duck or rabbit?

The triangle is an illusion:

There is only one shade of green:

This is a true circle:

There is only one shade of pink:

Ambiguous figure from Arvind Narale. A single cow grazing and looking toward you or two animals looking at each another:

Oh for goodness sake FB...
Are you for real?
Do you think you're the only person on earth that
knows this stuff?

Nuff said.

Maybe you could stop playing with optical illusions now and find our whether or not God is real?

 

[GodsGrace101]

I would be more impressed with an independent party doing the investigation, not an organization that actively encourages belief in the supernatural.

As I said earlier, the Church has a clear conflict of interest.



That's not the only reason, but it clearly is a driving force for a lot of beliefs in the supernatural.

OK.
I can't convince you.
But YOU would love to convince others that what YOU believe is true...your world view is correct and all the others are wrong.
Interesting.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Oh for goodness sake FB...
Are you for real?
Do you think you're the only person on earth that
knows this stuff?

Nuff said.

Maybe you could stop playing with optical illusions now and find our whether or not God is real?

Illusions give us important information about our perceptions. You claimed you'd never seen an illusion - were you lying? Were you lying when you said you trust your senses?

Multiple independent lines of objective evidence strongly suggest that no god or gods are physically real, but are human inventions.

 

[GodsGrace101]

Illusions give us important information about our perceptions. You claimed you'd never seen an illusion - were you lying? Were you lying when you said you trust your senses?

Multiple independent lines of objective evidence strongly suggest that no god or gods are physically real, but are human inventions.

It's not easy speaking to you.
I meant AN ILLUSION....
you know....like a ghost.

OF COURSE I'VE SEEN the type of illusions you posted.
Perhaps you could have said OPTICAL ILLUSION?

Even small kids look at optical illusions for fun.
The church I go to has a black and white marble floor that is the exact replica of that first illusion of yours (the boxes).

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

It's not easy speaking to you.
I meant AN ILLUSION....
you know....like a ghost.

That would be a hallucination - "A sensory perception of something that does not exist."

OF COURSE I'VE SEEN the type of illusions you posted.
Perhaps you could have said OPTICAL ILLUSION?

Optical illusions are just the most familiar type of illusion. Other types of illusion (e.g. the McGurk Effect) are often more revealing.

Our brains make continual adjustments to our perceptions to make them coherent with our expectations; for example, when you touch your finger to your nose, it feels like the finger and the nose sense the touch at the same time, but it actually takes significantly longer for the signal to get from your finger to your brain than from your nose to your brain - so the brain synchronizes the signals by delaying the signal from the nose. Similarly, when you watch someone making a noise by hitting something (a nail, a baseball, etc), or bouncing a ball, the brain synchronises the sound with your vision up to about 50 metres, beyond which you start to notice a distinct gap between the sight of the impact and the sound.

For sensory events that happen rarely or where the synchronisation isn't particularly important, the differences are noticeable - when you stub your toe, you feel the impact right away because touch signals travel at 250 feet per second. But you don't feel the pain for two or three seconds, because pain signals from the foot travel at only 2 feet per second - sometimes it's long enough for you to think, "Uh-oh, this is gonna hurt!".

We have the impression that our visual field is all high-resolution and full colour, but only a tiny region (about the size of a thumbnail at arm's length) actually is; the rest is filled in from an internal model of what we expect to see, which is corrected and updated about three times a second by the scrappy image our eyes actually provide.

The image the eye makes before processing:

Our eyes are constantly jumping around taking in different parts of the scene ('saccades'), but these sudden movements are edited out of the final perception, so you don't notice them visually - you're more likely to feel them occasionally as your eyeballs move in their sockets.

Like it or not, our perception is a collection of heuristics, shortcuts, and guesses, dressed up to feel like accurate high-resolution sensing of the world.

Trust it at your own risk.

 

[pitabread]

But YOU would love to convince others that what YOU believe is true...your world view is correct and all the others are wrong.

I don't generally try to convince people my own worldview is correct. People can believe what they want.

I'm just stating what I believe and what my standard of evidence is for things like the supernatural.

 

[bhillyard]

Further your brain shuts out what your eyes see as they move across the image so you do not see the blur. To test this out get close to a mirror and look at one of your eyes, then at the other and repeat. You won't see your eyeballs move. Your brain has shut off the image whilst your eyes moved.
So there are always gaps (timewise) in what you see.

 

[GodsGrace101]

That would be a hallucination - "A sensory perception of something that does not exist."

Optical illusions are just the most familiar type of illusion. Other types of illusion (e.g. the McGurk Effect) are often more revealing.

Our brains make continual adjustments to our perceptions to make them coherent with our expectations; for example, when you touch your finger to your nose, it feels like the finger and the nose sense the touch at the same time, but it actually takes significantly longer for the signal to get from your finger to your brain than from your nose to your brain - so the brain synchronizes the signals by delaying the signal from the nose. Similarly, when you watch someone making a noise by hitting something (a nail, a baseball, etc), or bouncing a ball, the brain synchronises the sound with your vision up to about 50 metres, beyond which you start to notice a distinct gap between the sight of the impact and the sound.

For sensory events that happen rarely or where the synchronisation isn't particularly important, the differences are noticeable - when you stub your toe, you feel the impact right away because touch signals travel at 250 feet per second. But you don't feel the pain for two or three seconds, because pain signals from the foot travel at only 2 feet per second - sometimes it's long enough for you to think, "Uh-oh, this is gonna hurt!".

We have the impression that our visual field is all high-resolution and full colour, but only a tiny region (about the size of a thumbnail at arm's length) actually is; the rest is filled in from an internal model of what we expect to see, which is corrected and updated about three times a second by the scrappy image our eyes actually provide.

The image the eye makes before processing:

Our eyes are constantly jumping around taking in different parts of the scene ('saccades'), but these sudden movements are edited out of the final perception, so you don't notice them visually - you're more likely to feel them occasionally as your eyeballs move in their sockets.

Like it or not, our perception is a collection of heuristics, shortcuts, and guesses, dressed up to feel like accurate high-resolution sensing of the world.

Trust it at your own risk.

Nice reply.
Thanks.

You mean like when we see the lightening before hearing the sound because light travels faster than sound?

You mean like when we were travelling through Arizona and we saw these tall mountains of sand that turned out to be little hills because our mind was used to translating these objects as mountains?

Yes. The mind is truly amazing.
Were we discussing God??
Does what you posted have something to do with God?

 

[GodsGrace101]

Further your brain shuts out what your eyes see as they move across the image so you do not see the blur. To test this out get close to a mirror and look at one of your eyes, then at the other and repeat. You won't see your eyeballs move. Your brain has shut off the image whilst your eyes moved.
So there are always gaps (timewise) in what you see.

And if you close one eye and then the other while looking at a still image,,,,the image will seem to move depending on which eye is open (or closed).

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

You mean like when we see the lightening before hearing the sound because light travels faster than sound?

That's an example of your senses not misleading you - sound really does travel slower than light.

You mean like when we were travelling through Arizona and we saw these tall mountains of sand that turned out to be little hills because our mind was used to translating these objects as mountains?

Yes, that's an example of your perceptions not being trustworthy.

Were we discussing God??

Not directly - we were discussing evidence - anecdotal evidence - and you posed the example of you seeing a phantasm and asked what it would take to convince me:

"I mean, let's say I see a phantasm.
I'd need to see it again to convince you?
And we'd need reliable evidence?

Wouldn't my eyesight be enough?" (#1556)

Since then I've been trying to explain how that's the weakest form of evidence because your senses and perception are unreliable and can be misleading, but you have insisted that you trust your senses (even though you've given an example of them being mistaken).

Does what you posted have something to do with God?

It was answering your post #1556 (above), so you tell me.

In #1595 you asked me to "... find our<sic> whether or not God is real". It's clearly not possible to give a definitive answer, because absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence, but I did answer your question:

"Multiple independent lines of objective evidence strongly suggest that no god or gods are physically real, but are human inventions." (#1597).