Michael Shermer in Scientific American: Why People Believe Invisible Agents Control The World

[Hissyspit]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=skeptic-agenticity&SID=mail&sc=emailfriend

Why People Believe Invisible Agents Control the World

A Skeptic's take on souls, spirits, ghosts, gods, demons, angels, aliens and other invisible powers that be

By Michael Shermer

Souls, spirits, ghosts, gods, demons, angels, aliens, intelligent designers, government conspirators, and all manner of invisible agents with power and intention are believed to haunt our world and control our lives. Why?

The answer has two parts, starting with the concept of “patternicity,” which I defined in my December 2008 column as the human tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise. Consider the face on Mars, the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich, satanic messages in rock music. Of course, some patterns are real. Finding predictive patterns
in changing weather, fruiting trees, migrating prey animals and hungry predators was central to the survival of Paleolithic hominids.

- snip -

But we do something other animals do not do. As large-brained hominids with a developed cortex and a theory of mind—the capacity to be aware of such mental states as desires and intentions in both ourselves and others—we infer agency behind the patterns we observe in a practice I call “agent icity”: the tendency to believe that the world is controlled by invisible intentional agents. We believe that these intentional agents control the world, sometimes invisibly from the top down (as opposed to bottom-up causal randomness). Together patternicity and agent icity form the cognitive basis of shamanism, paganism, animism, polytheism, monotheism, and all modes of Old and New Age spiritualisms.

- snip -

There is now substantial evidence from cognitive neuroscience that humans readily find patterns and impart agency to them, well documented in the new book SuperSense (HarperOne, 2009) by University of Bristol psychologist Bruce Hood. Examples: children believe that the sun can think and follows them around; because of such beliefs, they often add smiley faces on sketched suns. Adults typically refuse to wear a mass murderer’s sweater, believing that “evil” is a supernatural force that imparts its negative agency to the wearer (and, alternatively, that donning Mr. Rogers’s cardigan will make you a better person). A third of transplant patients believe that the donor’s personality is transplanted with the organ. Genital-shaped foods (bananas, oysters) are often believed to enhance sexual potency. Subjects watching geometric shapes with eye spots interacting on a computer screen conclude that they represent agents with moral intentions.

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[jody]

1. I'm always amazed when someone limited to knowledge of the natural world tries to explain the

unnatural or supernatural.

The moment someone understands unnatural laws, would not those become part of the natural laws upon which science is based?

For me, I'm content with immutable laws of nature as we know them or as they will be discovered as we humans progress toward oblivion.

:toast:

[troubledamerican]

2. Was PNAC an invisible agent? Was torture-leveraged WMD evidence an open secret in 2002?

How did the October 2008 meltdown happen without any whistleblowers preventing it in advance?

How did Iran-Contra happen, or Watergate, or the Gulf of Tonkin "incident"?

Shermer needs to buy a copy of Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine", stat -- followed quickly by a dose of Naomi Wolf's "End of America."

Conflation of UFOs & Bigfoot with rabid right-wing oligarchs is something you'd expect out of COINTELPRO. (And COINTELPRO is yet another reason they invented the term "covert").

[Bolo Boffin]

3. Wow, way to miss his point.

Shermer doesn't go into any of those ideas in his piece.

[Why Syzygy]

4. He mentions

"government conspirators". Much of that information can be substantiated. He missed.

[Silent3]

15. There's a big difference between whether "government conspirators"...

...of any type exist (clearly they have in the past, and many most certainly exist now), or whether a particular conspiracy exists.

If a prominent person is dies suddenly it could well be the result of a conspiracy. That conspiracy, if it exists, could be large or small. There are some people who will never, ever accept, however, that such a thing could happen any other way than by Big Conspiracy. Even if the circumstance look more like an accident than an assassination, there are people who will say with deep fervor and conviction, with scorn towards anyone who would for a moment entertain otherwise, "THERE ARE NO ACCIDENTS!". There is, in this conspiracy-oriented world view, no such thing as a crazy lone gunman.

For such people, there are only two of reasons to disagree with them:

(1) You're "in on it".
(2) You're pathetically too trusting, naive, and/or ignorant of the "facts" to see the TRUTH.

[glitch]

10. Welcome to DU! excellent points. nt

[pscot]

5. This is one of those self-evident truths

that's right under our noses, yet people have a hard time seeing. A surprising amount of human behavior is a result of this kind of imaginary "pattern detection". In fact it pretty much accounts for all the "thinking" on the lunatic right. It's Rush Limbaugh's stock in trade. It's the organizing principle for conspiracy theorists and religious prophets. It's the way little kids make sense of the world. It's the way technical analysts explain (or don't explain) the stock markets. We all indulge in it to some degree. We really want to believe.

[struggle4progress]

6. This is a remarkably superficial article, something of a disappointment from Scientific American

Their articles used to be rather more careful and detailed

The fact that people find patterns, where none exist, is well-known -- it occurs naturally in neural processing, even before signals reach the brain: such processing in the optical system, even of lower animals, has been studied for decades. It merits serious attention, but Shermer merely provides an off-hand ideological off-hand treatment

The idea that "agents" are important is one of the first real lessons learned in infancy -- and I suspect it is closely related to the human social abilities that underlie all our slow cultural advances, including scientific advances. Many parts of the world seem to best understood as conscious actors with their own subjective experiences and intentions: these include parents, siblings, friends, enemies, cave bears, the wolf pup that sleeps by the campfire and follows us on hunts, and so on. This original animism is closely related to human ethical notions. -- and I shudder at the idea of a person who simply does not believe there are agents other than him/herself in the world. Shermer, however, views the idea of other agents simply as a source of superstitions

Some of Shermer's examples are simply laughable:

(1) The idea that the sun or moon follows one around is a natural childhood notion, especially when one travels a distance by automobile or train, since the apparent position of the sun or moon does not change quickly, compared to the changes in the immediate landscape: the question, Why does the sun or moon follow me around? can be (and is) asked by children without any particular relation to their views about the "agency" of the sun or moon

(2) Personally, I do not believe that transplanting someone's organ into me would bring aspects of their personality with it -- but I am not entirely sure that this is an irrational belief. Anyone who expects to give a completely material account of humans, and who (in particular) expects that the mind can be explained entirely in material terms, might expect that personality to be related to the entire body that embodies that personality; since organs are not entirely identical, it might be rational to expect that swapping organs could have some effects

(3) Similarly, people culturally use clothing to define themselves. So willingness or refusal to wear certain items is not merely a matter of superstition

Finally, we should notice that "invisible things" actually play a large role in the modern scientific view of the world: if you have a fever with diarrhea and projectile vomiting, I'm not coming over for dinner, because I really afraid of those invisible germs; similarly, I can't see the broadcast signals that reproduce corporate propaganda in homes across America, but their political effects are real. It is, of course, true that science leads us to believe in the existence of radio waves but not in the existence of ghosts -- but it is also true that the scientific education of most Americans is of such poor quality, that they have no real basis for distinguishing between evidence for radio waves and evidence for ghosts

[The Doctor.]

7. Hehehe....

The 'ready impartation of agency' does not preclude such agency thereof.

Fun stuff though... humans just love to put handles on things.

[progressoid]

8. Bah, just another one of those who limits himself to verifyable data and stuff like that.

He needs to open his mind to alternative realities.



He can start by wearing these special glasses...



Putting some crystals in his ears...



And drinking his own urine...
{picture unavailable}

[flyarm]

9. Guess this guy never read "Barry and the Boys " eh?

or does this person realize this happened and so many innocent people were killed by the secret conspiracies??????

Operation Condor: Dirty War, Death Squads and The Disappeared

"These military regimes hunted down dissidents and leftists, union and peasant leaders, priests and nuns, intellectuals, students and teachers and other people not just guerrillas (who, under international law are also entitled to due legal process). These illegal military regimes defied international law and traditions of political sanctuary to carry out their ferocious state terror and destroy democratic opposition forces."

http://freethoughtmanifesto.blogspot.com/2008/02/operation-condor-dirty-war-death-squads.html

just to mention one such real life...conspiracy ..........

[paulsby]

11. but the experts are wrong on both sides

for example, so called "experts" in economics/markets claimed for a very long time (some STILL do) that there are no "beatable" patterns in the market.

i've been a futures trader for way too long to believe that crap. edges exist. and patterns exist.

of course when specific patterns/edges become too well known, they become priced in and start to lose validity.

but there are ALWAYS edges to be exploited.

as to the external world, what he says about our tendency to see patterns even when they don't exist, is true. we create patterns where none are there, but we also miss patterns that are there, and discover patterns that are there.

it does not therefore follow that any of the above so called agents DON'T exist, merely because we have a tendency to create them, so to speak

we can never truly see causality anyway. we can see two pool balls interact, but we can only see the results of causation. we can't "see" the causation itself. so there is always inference involved. it's how we make sense of the world.

and considering how the deeper we delve into the physical structure of the world (quantum level, etc.) the MORE mysterious and bizarre (and happy and strange too!) it becomes, is part of the reason why there are quite a few very brilliant and leading edge physicists etc. who are theists.

[Jim__]

12. Shermer is less than convincing.

For example:

The problem is that we did not evolve a baloney-detection device in our brains to discriminate between true and false patterns. So we make two types of errors: a type I error, or false positive, is believing a pattern is real when it is not; a type II error, or false negative, is not believing a pattern is real when it is. If you believe that the rustle in the grass is a dangerous predator when it is just the wind (a type I error), you are more likely to survive than if you believe that the rustle in the grass is just the wind when it is a dangerous predator (a type II error). Because the cost of making a type I error is less than the cost of making a type II error and because there is no time for careful deliberation between patternicities in the split-second world of predator-prey interactions, natural selection would have favored those animals most likely to assume that all patterns are real.

Horseshit. Yes, his single example is true. However, it is a single example that applies to making a type I error in a particular case of sensing danger. It really says nothing at all about the relative costs of type I errors versus type II errors in the general case of detecting patterns nor about the more specific case he is talking about, sensing agent generated patterns.

[Silent3]

14. It's not like you can run an experiment...

...on a group of early humans, catalog all type I and type II errors, and sit back for several generations and correlate that data with patterns of survival.

This is the kind of thing where intelligent guesswork might be as good as it gets. It's hard to find thought processes in fossil evidence. Are you disagreeing with the premise itself? What would the "the general case of detecting patterns" be? Are you merely saying the evidence isn't strong, but not saying anything for or against Shermer's premise?

In light of a clear lack of solid evidence regarding these things, to what view about patterns and agency, if any, would you lend the benefit of the doubt in the meantime?

[Jim__]

16. I'm disagreeing with 2 of his premises.

Specifically, I disagree with:

The answer has two parts, ... (I'm rejecting this premise as being "the answer has exactly 2 parts".)

The problem is that we did not evolve a baloney-detection device in our brains to discriminate between true and false patterns.

He offers nothing in support of either premise - I'm discounting his superficial claim, and false evidence, that natural selection favors those animals that assume all patterns are real. My expectation is that the real cause (of attributing agency) is more complex than his simplistic explanation. My expectation is that there will a combination of more than 2 parts to the answer. Does dreaming enter into this? Does the death of loved ones enter into it? I don't know. But based on this article, Shermer doesn't know either.

I would probably lend benefit of the doubt to his claim if he stated it as speculative and, most likely, a partial explanation. I would lend support to an effort to study whether humans ever reject potential patterns - actually, I would lend more support to a study of what percentage of patterns, what types of patterns, do people generally reject? My personal experience tells me we reject some.

[Silent3]

17. It certainly is overstated to say there is NO "baloney detection"...

...but (and I'd admit this is merely speculation) I'd guess that what we have that's natural (rather than, in some people culturally inculcated) in the way of rejecting false patterns and agencies is probably pretty weak.

In addition to the "rustling grass" example, I can think of many examples of things where a false positive has a lower cost than a false negative: avoiding an area where you saw someone else die, avoiding eating a food that you'd eaten once before just before becoming sick, not trusting outsiders, repeating an action/utterance/ritual which happened to coincide with a positive outcome or avoidance of a negative outcome, etc.

Many false positives lead to behavior that excludes the possibility of ever encountering contradiction: If you never go back to a place you consider dangerous, you will never find out if it's really perfectly safe most of the time. If you refuse to eat the same food you ate when you got sick, you will never find out that the food might be perfectly safe and that your sickness was merely coincidental. If you can survive well enough with the support of your family/band/tribe, always avoiding outsiders, you'll never find out that an outsider might have been a good friend or ally, or had something useful to teach you.

Seeking shelter in a storm is a good behavior whether or not you believe there's an angry spirit behind the storm or not. If the belief in an angry spirit bolsters the speed and effectiveness of your response to a storm, that belief will be beneficial to your survival so long as it doesn't drive you to do counter-productive things too often (like tossing your children into a volcano to appease the god, sacrificing too much of your crop or your kill to the god).

It's harder to imagine examples of false positives for patterns and agency that, especially in early human history before the multiply effects technology can have on bad decisions existed, would lead to costs that are typically higher than potential benefits. If you false confuse a bear cave with your home cave, or a poisonous plant with a safe one, the penalty is swift, but those types of error don't correspond well to the types of modern-day false beliefs that are of concern here, like religious beliefs and conspiracy theories.

I'm not at all sure about what point you're trying to make about dreaming or the death of loved ones.

[Jim__]

18. "It's harder to imagine examples of false positives ... that... would lead to costs that are ...

typically higher than potential benefits." Really?

Take Shermer's example and let the animal be a grass eater that lives on a windy savanna. I don't think that feeling its life is threatened everytime the grass rustles is a very good survival strategy.

I'm not at all sure about what point you're trying to make about dreaming or the death of loved ones.

It has to do with Shermer's main point:

Souls, spirits, ghosts, gods, demons, angels, aliens, intelligent designers, government conspirators, and all manner of invisible agents with power and intention are believed to haunt our world and control our lives. Why?

Dreaming is a form of another world, a world inhabited by all kinds of strange creatures, including, in my experience, dead loved ones. Also, in my experience, when a loved one dies suddenly, I often think I "see them" walking down the street. I know I'm not alone in that, I've spoken to other people who've had similar experiences. This could easily lead people to believe that the "dead" are still somehow living, living in some other world; and that they are near but can't normally be seen.

My only point being that Shermers speculation seems to leave out far more possibilities than it includes. Since he doesn't cite anything to support his claim, I think he should take more care than to talk pure speculation, without explicitly qualifying it as such, in a magazine that is accepted as a valid science forum.

[Silent3]

19. We are talking about human evolution...

...so the behavior of a grazing animal doesn't really apply. We're also talking about higher order mental concepts which are either absent or not as highly developed (as far as we know from current research) in non-human animals, such as "theory of mind" (being able to consider the world from the perspective of a different individual, one who has different available information, and speculate on what their thoughts or actions from that different perspective might be).

At any rate, the argument about susceptibility to false positives is a separate case from the types of things Shermer considers as examples of false positives. If you believe in some sort of connection through dreams with the spirits of the dead, nothing Shermer says can prove you're definitely making a false positive error, but, without intending to, I think, you've given an example of what Shermer is talking about, at least in part: even if what you believe is false, there's little downside risk in evolutionary terms to your mistake. It's a mistake nature will let you get away with.

You obviously won't be inclined to see things this way, but I rather doubt you have anything more than anecdote and confirmation-biased data to support your... well, whatever it is. You're being a bit vague about it, but I'll call it a belief in a spirit world inhabited by those who have died. Given the choice between believing that you are experiencing something that is real, but conveniently elusive by standards of scientific evidence, and that what you're experiencing is related a psychological principle that makes sense in view of our evolutionary past, I'd say the psychological/biological explanation holds more weight.

[Jim__]

21. Shermer's claim: natural selection would have favored those animals most likely to assume that ...

all patterns are real. - That's straight from his article. -

I'm offering a counterexample to his claim.

But, even if you limit it to humans, change the example to a human who lives on a windy savanna. If he believes his life is threatened everytime the grass rustles, he's going to be wasting a lot of energy. My bet is that other people, who are not fearful of rustling grass, do better.

As to my beliefs, no I don't believe that the dream world is another world. I've read of people (I'm talking about groups of people, tribes, etc), usually less civilized people, who do consider the dream world to be another actual world. I should have been clearer about that.

I don't believe I actually see the dead walking around; however, when someone close dies suddenly, it's an experience I have, I tend to see them. I know it's not them, but I tend to "see" them. That's not a matter of assigning agency to anything. It's a physical experience. It's not unusual. Same thing happens after a sudden break-up. I tend to "see" my former girlfriend. My point is that this type of experience could also lead to the types of conclusion that Shermer is talking about.

Shermer is addressing one small possibility, my guess is that it's a part of the explanation. I doubt very much it's the whole explanation, I'm not sure it's even a big part of it. Shermer offers nothing substantial to back up his claim. He's not very convincing.

[Silent3]

24. Let's put it this way...

What seems more likely to you? That an amended, more refined, less overstated version of Shermer's conjecture is true, or that the ghosts and spirits and gods that people believe in are true? I realize that that's not an exhaustive set of possibilities -- I'm not trying to force a false dichotomy -- I just want to get at which of those two ideas seems more likely.

Part of what matters here is the expense of the response to a falsely perceived pattern. If an animal were to flee a great distance at top speed every time it heard the slightest rustle, that would indeed be costly to survival. If an animal's main response is only a heightened state of awareness, a few moments of holding still and being quiet, the cost of false positives isn't very high, especially compared to the price of false negatives.

Where this applies mainly or only to humans is where "patternicity" and "agenticity" meet. That might be uniquely human, or at least most advanced in humans. An animal responding to a noise need merely flee, or become more alert, as a hardwired response to the stimulus. Humans might have some hardwired responses too, but those can be combined, enhanced, or overridden by higher mental functions where the concept of a cause behind the perceived stimulus becomes involved. Humans can also respond to far more complex patterns than a simple sound.

I think the important thing to take away from this is that evolution doesn't care about philosophical niceties like TRVTH. What matters more is effective survival strategies, If believing false ideas more often leads to improved survival than hesitancy, doubt, and the careful weighing of evidence, the likely outcome is clear. That we have the capacity to sit and ponder such things is a luxury that civilization affords us, and evolution hasn't had time to weigh all of the pluses and minuses yet. We're doing both positive and negative things to our chances of survival as a species using the recent intellectual capacity we've gained.

[Jim__]

26. Your question is moot.

I don't believe in ghosts, spirits, or gods. So, just about any guess that Shermer, or anyone else, made about what leads to people believing in these beings would seem more likely to me than their actual existence.

My point is that Shermer is writing in a scientific magazine, as an expert, and is making categorical statements for which he offers no substantial backing. The little bit of argument that he offers deals with people treating visible objects as if they have agency. Hardly sufficient reason to claim, as he does in the article, that this tendency to assign agency to visible objects is the cause for people seeing the world as being controlled by invisible agents. He fails to make the connection. His claim is speculative. He should make that clear in the article.

[moobu2]

27. The article is posted in the opinion section

On the Scientific American website and it say’s “A Skeptic's take on…”

So, it’s just an opinion piece, not a research paper or anything like that. Interesting anyhow.

[Jim__]

30. See response #12 - n/t

[Why Syzygy]

20. Yeah, it's just overly

simplistic, in agreement with struggle4progress above. In the REAL WORLD, the rustle in the grass would be accompanied by either the scent of wind or the scent of a predator. Hearing is not the only input device used in survival.

Actually, I'm not interested enough in the author's line of thought to give it much contemplation.

[Silent3]

13. It's amazing how defensive some people get...

...in response to this article. Just bringing up the not-so-surprising ideas that humans have a tendency to see patterns that aren't really there, and a tendency to see intentional intelligent agency behind patterns, has some people up in arms that their particular beliefs are under attack.

The article is hardly a detailed, well-referenced scholarly research piece. Would matter if it were, however? I doubt the response would be much different. All research with which one disagrees can readily be dismissed as the biased product of someone with an agenda.

I don't like everything about the article myself. Shermer's snarky comment about Obama and the economy seemed off the mark -- even among those who believe Obama can help the economy, I don't think many see it as a matter of Obama simply working his will and the economy responding.

If you think your own personal beliefs stand up on their own, that they aren't "false positives" in the sense of the article, why not either quietly sit back, unconcerned that the article applies to your beliefs, or, if you do feel a need to defend something, why not explain how these ideas don't apply to your beliefs?

I don't think many people actually would disagree with Shermer's basic ideas here, at least at an abstract level. If I'm wrong about that -- if there are people who think that humans only rarely detect false patterns, or that humans only rarely imagine non-existent intelligent agents, that humans have no basic tendency to do these things -- I haven't heard anyone make that case yet.

What I am hearing is more like annoyance that Shermer would mention these ideas because, even if true, just mentioning these ideas is viewed as advancing an a disliked agenda.

[trotsky]

22. "just mentioning these ideas is viewed as advancing an a disliked agenda"

Certainly parallels the kind of reception any mention of Richard Dawkins gets in this forum. By many of the same players, I might add.

Shermer's thoughts on this are interesting and do seem to have validity to explain why false beliefs are so common, and so embraced. That's it.

[onager]

25. Science-Nazis!

:hi:

And since you mentioned Dawkins, he made a very similar "survival" point about religion in one of his documentaries.

He pointed out that very skeptical children would have been quickly escorted out of the gene pool. Because kids depend on parents for such advice as "Don't play near the edge of that cliff" or "Don't go swimming here, the crocodiles will eat you."

Unfortunately, absorbing the good advice means kids listen just as uncritically when parents tell them a big man in the sky will roast them for eternity if they piss him off.

And the world's oldest con game depends on that for ITS survival.

[struggle4progress]

29. A detailed well-referenced scholarly piece would actually be very interesting, I think

Either of the concepts "patterns" or "agents" could be the topic of useful careful investigation

It's well known, as I said before, that the human nervous system finds nonexistent patterns: this underlies several optical illusions, for example. The topic is interesting and amenable to detailed study

Similarly, again as I said before, the notion that there are other agents than myself is critical to human society. The development of the notion, and the ways in which it might go awry, could be the topic of not only psychological but ethical study

My objection to the Shermer piece is that it is dull and superficial -- and his examples are lousy

[Odin2005]

23. Sounds similar to my "instinctive naive Animism" hypothesis.

[bananas]

28. Michael Shermer on Scientism

From page 60 of "How We Believe" by Michael Shermer:

What is most striking about this group, however, is the quasi-religious nature of their beliefs, including an almost faithlike devotion to science as a higher power. Scientism is their religion, technocracy their politics, progress their God.

[trotsky]

31. Now why would you post that quote without noting its context?

Shermer is specifically referring to a group ("this group") called Extropians (now pretty much defunct). Google 'em. I assume you weren't just posting an out-of-context quote to try and stir things up, right?

[TZ]

33. Of course not.

Nobody would ever try to claim that people treat science as a religion...:sarcasm:

[bananas]

34. I'm just pointing out usage of the term.

In another thread, somebody said it was a "made up word".
Duh, most words were "made up".
There are some we seem to know instinctively, like "ouch!" and "ooh!" and "uh-oh!"
But Shermer, founder of The Skeptics Society, considers it a valid term.
So I'll keep using it.
:)

[trotsky]

35. Wait, so you are responding on this thread to someone on another thread?

Was there a reason for this, or was it just to be a dink? And again, will you acknowledge that he was very specific about who the term applied to?

[bananas]

36. "just mentioning these ideas is viewed as advancing an a disliked agenda"

In post #22, you wrote:

22. "just mentioning these ideas is viewed as advancing an a disliked agenda"

Certainly parallels the kind of reception any mention of Richard Dawkins gets in this forum. By many of the same players, I might add.

Shermer's thoughts on this are interesting and do seem to have validity to explain why false beliefs are so common, and so embraced. That's it.

You yourself have expanded this thread to a discusion of Shermer's writing and how topics are received on this forum. You yourself expanded this thread into a discussion of Dawkins and this forum. So, no, I wasn't responding on this thread to someone on another thread, I was just responding to the discussion in this thread.

[trotsky]

39. I didn't expand anything.

You admitted yourself that you were responding to someone else on another thread who claimed that "scientism" wasn't a word.

But keep grasping if you must, to distract from your behavior.

[bananas]

41. Yes you did.

And I was just using one example.
The responses here provide more examples.

[trotsky]

43. Okey dokey, if you insist. n/t

[bananas]

37. Will you acknowledge that for some people, "Scientism is their religion"?

Will you acknowledge that it is a valid, and in some cases very appropriate, phrase?
In the reference I used, Shermer was referring specifically to a certain group of people.
However, Shermer has also used the term Scientism to refer to other groups of people.

[trotsky]

38. Why, is there a reason I should?

Am I required to march in lockstep with Michael Shermer?

[bananas]

42. Yes, there is a reason you should.

And no, you are not required to march in lockstep with Michael Shermer.

[trotsky]

44. Well then, tell me the reason. n/t

[Silent3]

32. This seems to be your MO.

You post out-of-context or easily debunked crap, never answer any challenges to that crap, then later, showing absolutely no signs of learning anything from having your BS challenged, you pop up like a jack-in-the-box and do it all over again.

Please, take note of your own lack of substance and grow up. Being effectively annoying hardly makes you right, and that's all you've got going for yourself.

[bananas]

40. "It's amazing how defensive some people get..."

In post #13, you wrote:

13. It's amazing how defensive some people get...

...in response to this article.

<snip>

What I am hearing is more like annoyance that Shermer would mention these ideas because, even if true, just mentioning these ideas is viewed as advancing an a disliked agenda.

:rofl:

[Silent3]

45. You think you've pointed out something of substance?

All I see is more of the same MO in effect. You haven't offered any substance, although apparently you think you've once again found a new "zinger" to zing with, some "Hah, hah! I got you there!" that hasn't really "got" anything. You argue at about the same level as a small child who says something that, for reasons unknown to him, gets a laugh from his parents, so he keeps repeating the same thing without the slightest understanding of why the laughter turns into annoyance or embarrassment.

Are you capable of any form of argument beyond linking to or pointing at something you think proves a point you're trying to make, and acting triumphant and self-satisfied about your supposed discovery?

[Jeffersonian Dem]

46. It's all in the mind.

I think Sherman makes a good point, even though I don’t agree with some of what he says.

I don’t believe in any spiritual forces outside of ourselves. I believe it’s all within, all in the mind, created by the mind, whether for good or bad.

Some folks claim that if you believe in angelic forces out there, you must therefore believe in demonic forces out there. And most Christians claim that if you believe in the Christ out there or up there, you must also believe that there is an opposing force-entity called the Devil Satan who is out there or down there.

Today there are all kinds of other claims, and lots of people believe in them. It’s amazing.

For example, one claim was initialy made by Benjamin Creme, who founded Share International. His claim for many years has been that the expected Buddha Maitreya magically took human form in 1977, having been an immortal being of light prior to that. And the claim is that Maitreya is the World Teacher, the Avatar-Christ-Buddha, and that he is not alone but is accompanied by a number of other enlightened ascended masters.

I believe in the Christ-Avatar-Buddha-Saoshyant-Mahdi-Sage in heaven, who can be realized from within us all.

I think that’s why the Christ Jesus, when he was in the world, said he had to “go away and be seen no more,” but “the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it sees him not and does not know him. But you shall know him; for he dwells with you, and shall be in you... Yet a little while, and the world sees me no more ... (And one) day you shall know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” (John 14:17-20)

In other words, seek what is within, not without. It's all in the mind.