It doesn't seem to me like this fallacy needs a new name, it is just the gambler's fallacy in a new wrapping. "Things happen for a reason" and "past random events affect future random events" combined.

It is very reasonable to assume these are the result of overeager pattern recognition in our brain, which is very easy to show. Consider that our human brains tend to see this as "very" random:
163958407

and this as "less" random:
861418554

The first number is carefully designed by me to look random by exploiting the brain's pattern recognition, the second is number of an an actual pseudorandom number generator (first rolled).



The same goes for universal morals; John hits Karen, John gets hit by a car... pattern. John hits Karen, both lead relatively normal lives thereafter... not so much.

I don't think this is true. I don't believe in karma or any other spiritual system of merit/dismerit but I still find myself looking for reasons why bad things happen to people to reassure myself that it won't happen to me.

This holds true in reverse, that we also like to believe that good things happen to good people but I'm not looking at that aspect ITT.



This is why I don't want to go into detail on the problem, it's been done to death. When you discussed it, did you factor in any known cognitive biases that might contribute to an explanation of how we justify evil?

God could have stopped it, why didn't he? I think it's just a volcano, Theists have to justify why it happened.

Why do you need reassurance, couldn't you just accept that the universe works in such a way that bad things just happen [and while I'm a theist] I am supposing here that the laws of the universe work in such a way that there exists both good and bad?


Why do only Theists have to justify why it happened? Couldn't it be the case that as part of our free will [if you subscribe to that] we experience evil? After all, couldn't it be that if we didn't have any will, the universe could work in such a way that there isn't any evil?

Actually, by my understanding, the Gambler's Fallacy is another name for the Illusion of Control and has nothing to do with the Just World fallacy which is more about us trying to make ourselves feel better about bad things happening than imagining that we can influence them.

Are you now not moving onto Apophenia?

Ok, but Ken rationalises it that John must have not have been paying attention when he crossed the road, or he was drunk, or he was playing chicken, because good people don't get knocked over by cars without a reason and that makes Ken feel better. That's the Just World Fallacy.

I don't need reassurance, I'm an atheist, materialist, monist etc etc. I think random stuff happens all the time.

Because I asked the question about it in the context of religion, because I wondered if it played a part in helping Theists specifically cope with the specific issue of the problem of evil. They think it's faith, it actually might just be another cognitive bias kicking in. I also think it may have deeper implications in that it could be the part of the reason that so many religions have vengeful, violent, evil gods. Why did that bad thing happen to Joe? He angered the Gods, he deserved it. Now I feel better because I haven't done anything to deserve it, it won't happen to me.

What is it with your obsession with the psychology of theists? If you are trying to be demeaning, trolling, and coming off as a haughty jerk, then you are doing a good job. There's a lot of that here.

What is it with atheists and psychology and social psychology in particular? If I had the time I'd love to rip into the pseudoscience that these two twin programs of do-nothing crackpots represent. I've noticed a tendency of wooly liberals to attach themselves to these crank majors in college.

Most of the time, you find that their offerings are of someone presenting opinion or theory as fact -- under the guise of "science."

But seriously, why not look inward, at yourself? I bet you will learn much more that way -- about others.

I think it's a pertinent question. Do you have anything to say about the OP?

You're a human being, you're as vulnerable to cognitive bias as anyone else. They explain much of our behaviour and that may include religious behaviour. If you think that the identification of these cognitive biases is 'pseudoscience' you are swimming against the tide but your argument would be worth hearing?

Please explain why the idea of a cognitive bias is pseudoscience. At least that would be relevant to the OP since it does rely on the Just World Fallacy being an accepted behaviour.

Perhaps you can explain then, why the Just World Fallacy plays no part in how Theists deal with the problem of evil rather than just offering vague and generalised objections that don't seem to have much to do with what we're discussing.

Reasonable explanations are not necessarily causative explanations.

The dream Team dazzled the OJ Simpson jury and won a not-guilty verdict. But did he murder them? What is the truth?

Does the truth even matter today?

Just like so much of the liberal theory here, it is designed merely to dazzle you, and sound convincing, but there is little hard science involved, no valid and unifying framework to work off of and test from. It's just a light-show that amounts to mental masturbation by those involved in a great big circle-jerk-- particularly among university professors and research departments-- the professors that need to beef up their CV, the departments that need to justify their grants: not by a demonstration of practical effects and positive changes in people's lives, but by writing more papers and launching more studies.

Also, I never claimed that a cognitive bias was pseudoscience.

It's something I have no interest in debating, besides launching the occasional broadside attack.

Edit: But for clarity.. this is the kind of thing I'm talking about-- http://www.weeklystandard.com/articl...ct_610143.html

In Christian doctrine everybody who has sinned (or even been born under sin) deserves something bad to happen to them.

So, if something bad happens to a believer, then it is earned, and if something bad happens to a non-believer, it is earned.

At least you abandoned this socratic prologue and finally said what you wanted to say.

So bad things just happen and as a materialist you believe there isn't any sort of ultimate consequence? [in other words you're a moral nihilist] tbh I'm more agnostic than a theist but I still believe in some sort of ultimate consequence, it seems that there is some sort of creator to the universe and it seems that as being of higher consciousness we are somehow held responsible for our actions, then again that may be some sort of cognitive bias, but I'm inclined to think otherwise.

While Mightyboosh might be a moral nihilist (I don't know his views well enough to say), believing that bad things "just happen" and that there are not any "ultimate consequences" is not the same thing as being a nihilist. Stoic views of morality and their later transformation in Christianity have led many to assume that a satisfactory moral theory must show that the universe is morally just, but many modern (and ancient) theories of morality do not include this assumption.

1. No, the gambler's fallacy is not the same as illusion of control. These are actually fairly different, not only in name but also in content.
2. Apophenia is a clinical term that is synomous with what I would call "seeing patterns in randomness". It would cover both gambler's fallacy and just world fallacy. That I could possibly "move over to it" in this debate is therefore very questionable.

What I am saying, which would maybe have been more clear if you stopped wiki-hunting and read it instead, is that we don't need the term "just world fallacy" (and ultimately we don't really need the term gambler's fallacy either). Both terms are more than likely referring to the exact same cognitive mechanism.

I think well named is right to criticize your terminology here. Calling it a fallacy implies that the Christian is making some mistake of reasoning, but yet the idea that everything happens for a reason follows pretty naturally from the foundational Christian belief that there is am all powerful creator of the universe who is uniquely concerned with humans. Thus, the Christian is not making a logical error here; if she is wrong it is because her premise is false, not because of an error of implication.

I'm also struggling to see the causal story you are telling here. If anything, it seems to me that the problem of evil is a result of the just world hypothesis rather than a salve for it. After all, if you don't think the world is always just, then presumably the problem of evil, at least as a logical problem, disappears.

I think there is a general lesson here about how to think about cognitive biases. I find the research in cognitive psychology and economics on this topic very interesting. But I have noticed that it is often misused in online discussions of religions, usually by very enthusiastic atheist posters. They will sometimes try to show that an argument fails or that a claim is false by appeal to some cognitive bias that might have led the person with whom they are arguing to hold that belief (or make that argument).

But this is a mistake. The truth or falsity of a claim is separate from the way in which we come to hold it. In fact, the same literature on cognitive biases also describes heuristics we use to shortcut our way to true (or at least useful) beliefs as well. But it wouldn't be adequate to show that a claim is true merely to show that we used a well functioning heuristic to acquire it.

The literature on cognitive biases should not really be used in this way to criticize specific claims. Instead, it should be used to understand why certain kind of (presumably false) belief are commonly held, or what kind of modules in our minds might be causing us to make some error of reasoning. But, it is not the error of reasoning itself.

So social Psychology is a den of crackpots but the things social psychologists study are valuable?

Dogggggggggggggggg!!!!!

(forgive me, I've been spending too much time in the politics forum. Seriously though, holy cow)

interesting thread. i wish i had the clarity, insight and energy to explain fully my stance on the matter, but i don't.

I will just say that the word "theist" gets banded about too much and carries too many assumptions. Try to be specific and say "In my opinion most mainstream christians in the modern west..." or whatever group of theists it is you're talking about, from your understanding. I am a "theist" but I find myself resistant to most every assumption you make about theists (mightyboosh).

Correction: it should be noted that there are higher angels involved within the recreation of Man who have anxiety that Man will not reach that next state of consciousness, that of an angel being. this is noted in the Revelation of John.

John, Chapter 21 Verse 17

17] And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel.

As one of the crackpots (social psychologist), this type of argument is very common. When studies/theory confirm people's intuition they agree and psychology is wondrous and useful, when it doesn't confirm their intuition it is often seen as hazy, unscientific and sometimes outright dangerous. That being said, seeing someone play both sides of the coin so close together is a rarity.

However, this is about what you would expect. When you study the behaviour of people, you will eventually stumble onto the uncomfortable and alien - and humans don't like the uncomfortable and alien. If we did, there would be far less conflict.

I don't mind whether we use 'fallacy' or 'hypothesis', it's referred to as both. The causal story I'm suggesting is that the religious belief that bad things happen to people because they have somehow brought it upon themselves, which is why their god allowed it to happen to them, or actually did it to them, is simply the Just World Hypothesis manifesting in a religious context. Further, that it then becomes a salve for the problem of evil.

I can quote hard scientists all day that demonstrates the quackery that is social psych. My critique of the pseudoscience is purely from a scientific viewpoint.

Start with the article I posted.

Rather than stand my ground on exactly what each bias is and how it works, I'd prefer to ask instead then if you can take the OP, replace Just World hypothesis with whatever cognitive mechanism you would agree is causing that particular behaviour (of believing that bad things happen to people who have somehow deserved it) and then apply that to the problem of evil. So my question could be rephrased as 'do Theists sidestep the problem of evil through their human tendency to engage in said cognitive mechanism?'. In other words, the way that our brains are wired provides a natural out from the problem.

Wtf are you talking about?

I said that I *did not claim* that a cognitive bias is pseudoscience. I said this because I understand that there are a few social psychologists around these parts, and I don't feel like getting drawn into a debate with those who have nothing of credibility to offer besides endless speculation about the motivations of others (under the guise of science).

Confirmations of my initial intuitions about this "science" are in the paper daily lately:

Hell, they are now outing themselves in their own journals. Very rich.

But you did... you did claim this. "Implication, how does it work?" and all that. Also please have that debate with Ganstman... that would be so much fun to see.

This is called 'confirmation bias.' Something else those dumbs study that is of absolutely no use to any one.

learning is fun!

You are of course entitled to your opinions, and psychology has a tendency to make many people angry... you aren't exactly unique in this.

Would you mind clarifying exactly what you mean by "a scientific viewpoint" is? It's a diverse term, and it would be nice to know your reasoning a bit better.

Well, first things first... it is impossible to make such a broad conjencture on so many people and such a diverse set of beliefs. How Christians view evil and choice is very diverse. You have everything from "god punishes people for their choices" too "there is no free will and no control over anything". You also have groups such as JW who think the world is under the control of the devil untill armageddon.

As OrP have noted that explaining how a belief could be formed, doesn't necessarily explain how it is formed. Pending on the nature of your knowledge of the could, it can lend some support to such conjenctures however, which I don't think he mentioned.