[thechat] rationality is not enough (was: New Year's Resolution)

[Madhu Menon]

At 02:49 AM 04-01-03, Syed Zeeshan Haider wrote:
>My personal belief is that spirituality DOES exist.

Of course it does. It's a personal belief system. You believe in it,
therefore it exists. I believe in purple three-headed monsters from
Jupiter, so they exist too. (Not making fun of you, just making a point.)

>My belief is based on some
>practical experiences of some of my relatives and of my own.

I have no idea what these experiences may be, but let's just say these
things never happen to me. Why do these experiences happen only to certain
types of people?

Much lies in interpretation. If a telephone call from a friend delayed your
leaving the house, which saved you from the torrential rain that came about
the same time as your initial time of departure, you could interpret it as
an act of kindness from a supernatural power, or you could just consider it
random chance.

Got any experiences to share?

>I think spirituality exists but scientists are simply ignoring it.

I doubt it. If spiritual phenomena manifested themselves consistently and
in some measurable way, we might actually be able to study them. If the
Lord stopped acting in "mysterious ways" (wats wit dat?) and just made an
appearance to clear things up, it would be so much more helpful. Instead,
we have to depend on accounts from thousands of years back, and they didn't
even have the Internet back then. ;)

Science is about discovery. I suppose that scientists would be thrilled at
the prospect of conclusively proving any of the supposed spiritual
mysteries that surround us. Think of the fame.

The burden of proof is on the person making the assertion, not the one
questioning it. Otherwise, you'd get into situations like this:

Me: There are purple three-headed monsters from Jupiter who are 10 feet
tall and can melt you with their gaze.
Scientist: Not that we know of. We've never seen one.
Me: See, you never seen any. So how do you know that they don't exist?
Scientist: We've never seen the Loch Ness monster, the Yeti, or Bigfoot. Do
we just assume they exist?
Me: Damn it, I'm *telling* you they exist. They appeared to me in a dream.
Scientist: Can you get them to appear for the rest of us too so we can
capture it on tape?
Me: Not sure. They only talk to some special people.

>Spirituality is based on science which is unknown to man yet.

To call it "science" would be very misleading. People once believed that
the Earth was the centre of the Universe. They didn't have any way to prove
it, but they probably expected that science of the future would do so. It
didn't.

Just because one has a theory, it doesn't automatically make it true, or
even have a higher probability of being true.


>If it is
>studied scientifically, it will be explainable by rationality to some extent.

Human beings have an amazing capacity to rationalise *anything* if they
*want* to believe in it. I prefer to use Occam's Razor.

See: http://skepdic.com/wishfulthinking.html and
Forer effect: http://skepdic.com/forer.html

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Madhu Menon
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