A supernatural hand mark?

[Pixel42]

No, he just attempted to show me "well documented" events, because he thought that I wouldn't believe the anecdotes that happened with the people he knows.

"The correct scientific response to something that is not understood is always to look harder for the explanation, not give up and assume a supernatural cause". Sir David Attenborough.

In the absence of objective evidence the explanation of any anecdote no matter how supposedly mysterious, is, in rough order of likelihood:

1. Something utterly mundane, which there is insufficient information to determine

2. Cognitive biases and/or fallible perceptions/memories

3. Deliberate deception/practical joke etc by person or persons unknown

4. Mental impairment.

Only if all these possibilities can be reliably ruled out does the possibility of a supernatural event even arise.

 

[steenkh]

Many here have noted that it does not look like a print of a hand at all because of the placement of the thumb. I would like to add that to me those fingers do not look natural at all. They look too long, and the joints do not look to have the right proportions. So the imprints are probably made with something else than fingers.

But never mind, there is something else that bothers me. The entire idea that a saint grabs your arm and leaves a disfiguring imprint, seems to me to be odd. Why on earth would he do that? If the saint knew about this effect, he should rather keep his fingers away from people than grab them by the arm.

It sounds like a punishment to me.

But that is how believers think: anything that happens can be construed to be a sign, if it suits them.

 

[Carrot Flower King]

Moral credibility for him is trusting people even when they tell unbelievable stories just because they seem to be sane, sincere, honest, not deluded or mentally ill. This was illustrated in his thought experiment of the miraculously survived friend. According to him many people who claim to experience miracles are very sane, sincere, honest, kind, have no interests in money or in being the center of attention. He thinks that it's very difficult to doubt their claims since there is no reason to for them to lie and it's very hard to imagine that they are hallucinating, mistaken or deluded. He claims that most miracles changed their lives to the better, they became more spiritual. He doesn't deny that some people abuse miracles, but he argues that despite that miracles really happen.

And his experience of mental health assessment is what? Does he even know what delusions or hallucinations actually are? These terms are bandied around a lot in general conversation without getting close to what they actually are.

Terms like "moral credibility" and "spirituality" are meaningless drivel, frequently used to add an air of spurious "meaning" to someone's nonsense.

Religionists have numerous reasons to lie: mostly to justify their particular brand of mumbo and jumbo and to claim it's better than someone else's brand of jumbo and mumbo. "Miracles" are just a willy-waving variant on this.

 

[Carrot Flower King]

Oh, Stuart Vyse's Believing in Magic (The Psychology of Superstition) might be an interesting read.

 

[thaiboxerken]

"The correct scientific response to something that is not understood is always to look harder for the explanation, not give up and assume a supernatural cause". Sir David Attenborough.

In the absence of objective evidence the explanation of any anecdote no matter how supposedly mysterious, is, in rough order of likelihood:

1. Something utterly mundane, which there is insufficient information to determine

2. Cognitive biases and/or fallible perceptions/memories

3. Deliberate deception/practical joke etc by person or persons unknown

4. Mental impairment.

Only if all these possibilities can be reliably ruled out does the possibility of a supernatural event even arise.

The other thing about invoking the supernatural or paranormal as an explanation is that ANY supernatural or paranormal phenomena can be used to explain what is unknown. Why is it a saint's touch, miracle from a god that caused the marking? Maybe the "saint" was possessed by satan, and that's why there was a burn. Maybe the "saint" was actually a robot from the future sent to see how silly people are in our time when trying to explain the marking. Maybe I used my godly powers to make it all seem like it happened.

 

[abaddon]

I remember some of them, some of them are quite interesting but not fully convincing for me.

From my memory, his main arguments are these:

• There is something instead of nothing.
• Something cannot come from nothing.
• The reality itself is self sufficient which is for him is a mystery.
• Ordered things like the laws of physics cannot be accidental and come from chaos, they must have a purpose, even the randomness in quantum physics has some order (he said something about frequency of events/atom decay).
• Materialism (or physicalism) cannot explain the existence of subjective feelings and morality cannot be supported by a materialistic worldview, since a bunch of molecules, even as complex as humans, is not fundamentally different from inanimate objects. A fully materialistic worldview implies that we have as much moral rights as other inanimate or animate objects, but we see no such things. He claims that even most of the atheists are actually unconsciously spiritual despite of their materialism. This implies that there is a mental dimension or soul. He also talked about the hard problem of consciousness he sent me links of David Chalmers' videos.
• The existence of soul means that we are not accidental and we have a purpose.
• Randomness of quantum mechanics allows us to have free will (non-randomness means determinism which makes free will impossible).
• Christians were martyred for their beliefs. If Jesus' resurrection was a lie they wouldn't sacrifice their lives and Christianity wouldn't spread so rapidly. He argues that atheists' explanations such as hallucinations are ridiculous. Also the martyrdoms of other religions, even taken together, are far from the scale that Christianity had. He says it's because Christianity was spreading the truth and truth hurts. People don't like the truth, they only want to see the flaws of other people instead of theirs.
• Christianity gave the rise of science and medicine, by founding schools, universities and hospitals, and many many Christians were scientists. Other religions couldn't do a comparable job. Also he showed a statistics that most of the Nobel Prize laureates are Christians. He thinks that Christianity changed the world and without Christianity we wouldn't have now a modern science, institutions, hospitals, etc.
• He thinks that Christianity is unique by claiming that only God's self sacrifice can pay out our sins. He said other things like unconditional love and something like that, but I don't remember well.

I could trivially do a point by point rebuttal of all of those talking points. But such rebuttals are freely available on the intertubes already.

My question is why have you not even googled them already?

And I will if you want. But these are some of the most common, most debunked apologetic baloney claims that have been trashed for years.
There is nothing in it that I have not seen countless times before. They were not convincing then and they are not convincing now. Some of them are blatant logical fallacies.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Why do believers fall back on deception to try and convince people? I don't buy Suren's "I'm not quite convinced but here are the arguments for believing" line of BS. Suren is a believer and is here to convince people of "the truth" with his anecdotes and supposed evidence while pretending to be just a skeptical inquirer.

 

[suren]

Suren is a believer and is here to convince people of "the truth" with his anecdotes and supposed evidence while pretending to be just a skeptical inquirer.

No, I'm skeptical, just not a convinced atheist. The issue is I think is just the evidence from religious people sometimes seemed to me striking and this sometimes caused cognitive dissonances. I'm now more interested in psychology, and study about cognitive errors, delusions, hallucinations/visions, etc. I was much more unconfident and vulnerable to emotional arguments, but my confidence is improving gradually.

I'm definitely not a theist, I find most religions (including Christianity) quite irrational and contradictory. I would rather call myself an agnostic naturalist.

 

[thaiboxerken]

Right. "The Truth" for you is that something supernatural exists, you just don't have the balls to define it out loud.

 

[suren]

Right. "The Truth" for you is that something supernatural exists, you just don't have the balls to define it out loud.

I noted that I believe (not 100% convinced though) that the reality is ordered and there are natural laws going on. Actually naturalism contradicts theistic beliefs. Have you seen me preaching something?

 

[thaiboxerken]

I noted that I believe (not 100% convinced though) that the reality is ordered and there are natural laws going on. Actually naturalism contradicts theistic beliefs. Have you seen me preaching something?

Nope. That's part of the deception. Bringing up questions and arguments/apologetics from others in attempt to convince people that there is "something" to them.

 

[abaddon]

No, I'm skeptical, just not a convinced atheist.

No such thing. What is an atheist convinced of? You have no idea. You simply have some caricature in your mind. That is on you, not on atheists. We are not responsible for the false ideas in you head, we can do nothing about those.

The issue is I think is just that the evidence from religious people sometimes seemed to me striking and this sometimes caused cognitive dissonances. I'm now more interested in psychology, and study about cognitive errors, delusions, hallucinations/visions, etc. I was much more unconfident and vulnerable to emotional arguments, but my confidence is improving gradually.

I am not convinced that is true.

I'm definitely not a theist, I find most religions (including Christianity) quite irrational and contradictory. I would rather call myself an agnostic naturalist.

"most religions" are irrational and contradictory? OK, which ones are not?

 

[suren]

Nope. That's part of the deception. Bringing up questions and arguments/apologetics from others in attempt to convince people that there is "something" to them.

Even by bringing his arguments I often mentioned that they're not completely convincing, is there something wrong to bring somebody else's arguments? Just one of the miracles seemed impressive to me (also because it was often used as an argument even by non-lebanese Christians like that guy and there were almost no attempts to debunk it) and I posted here to know some possible and likely explanations, including fraud. I have limited knowledge and skills in such things.

 

[theprestige]

No, he just attempted to show me "well documented" events, because he thought that I wouldn't believe the anecdotes that happened with the people he knows.

He's making claims of moral integrity about people he's never met, but only heard about second- or third-hand.

Why are you having so much trouble dismissing his claims for lack of evidence?

 

[suren]

What is an atheist convinced of?
You simply have some caricature in your mind.

I didn't imply that all atheists are convinced in non existence of God or in something particular. Some are, some are not. I'm not a convinced atheist, but also not a theist. I'm an agnostic and naturalist. I can be atheist in a sense that I lack belief in God, which is compatible with agnosticism.

We are not responsible for the false ideas in you head.

What false ideas?

 

[theprestige]

No, I'm skeptical, just not a convinced atheist. The issue is I think is just the evidence from religious people sometimes seemed to me striking and this sometimes caused cognitive dissonances.

The evidence you've described so far isn't actually "striking", though. You're letting people get away with vague, unverifiable, and oftentimes fallacious claims. You're manufacturing your own cognitive dissonances for no reason. Stop playing their game. Stop trying to get us to play their game.

 

[suren]

The evidence you've described so far isn't actually "striking", though. You're letting people get away with vague, unverifiable, and oftentimes fallacious claims. You're manufacturing your own cognitive dissonances for no reason. Stop playing their game. Stop trying to get us to play their game.

Thanks for trying to understanding me, I'm really working on overcoming this problem, this is probably caused by the fact that since my childhood I received inconsistent information about the reality. From the one hand parents bought me scientific books and I enjoyed these books, and I really love science, naturalism, scientific method, but also I was told about superstitious things, like extrasensory perception, aura, miraculous curings, real (non hallucinatory) out of body experiences during NDE, etc. When I was teenager my mother showed me videos about Baba Vanga and her alleged abilities "that left scientists and skeptics speechless". The same about religion, although to a lesser degree. Even then I was somewhat skeptical to supernatural/paranormal but because of lack of knowledge at that time a lot of garbage got into my brain. By the time I gradually recovered from most of this problems by subscribing to scientific channels and watching debunking videos about paranormal and supernatural.

But these conflicting feelings always persecuted me, because many people without obvious signs of insanity, dishonesty, delusion and stupidity keep telling paranormal and miraculous stories and the idea "but what if I'm just doing tons of mental gymnastics to defend my naturalistic world view and they are indeed right?" sometimes tormented me. All this hit my confidence. I admit this is psychological. I don't preach here anything supernatural, just wanted to strengthen my confidence that this alleged story is a fraud, since most of you have more skills and knowledge in such things.

I hope others will understand me.

 

[thaiboxerken]

There's no need to debunk the claims. They haven't been established as being credible or even possible.

 

[Carrot Flower King]

If one wants to take the view, it is perfectly possible and feasible to argue that any form of religious belief, belief in "miracles", anything "supernatural", "unexplained cures" and all the rest are actually delusional, as they lack any form of external, even slightly objective, evidence to support them, and are thus heading in the direction of psychosis.

And do you, Suren, have any experience in mental health assessments? If not, please stop making some of the statements you have: you just are not in a position to know.

All you have decribed so far is a set of claims, which are at best second hand and more often further away, with no supporting evidence and a lot of vague hand waving and dismissal of any slightly sceptical view with spurious things like "moral credibility" and the like.

 

[abaddon]

I didn't imply that all atheists are convinced in non existence of God or in something particular. Some are, some are not. I'm not a convinced atheist, but also not a theist. I'm an agnostic and naturalist. I can be atheist in a sense that I lack belief in God, which is compatible with agnosticism.


What false ideas?

Then explain this...

No, I'm skeptical, just not a convinced atheist.

What on earth is a "convinced atheist"? Convinced of what, exactly?