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What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god?

12-01-2014 , 03:21 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Naked_Rectitude
Also, you have my post under well named, which I'm sure he can't be pleased to see.
I squinted a little bit and said "did I write that?" But I think I agree with you anyway so I'll take all the credit :P

MB: Thanks for the response. Perusing more of the thread it seems likely I'd just end up posting stuff other people already have in response, so I guess I can go back to absentmindedly following along.
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-01-2014 , 03:22 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by zumby
I think NR's point here is this.

- Our brains detect patterns (e.g. faces) very readily.
- But merely recognising that a pattern resembles e.g. a face is not 'wrong'.
- So unless a person goes on to make some demonstrable mistake based on pareidolia, the existence of the phenomenon is not relevant to the discussion.
No one said that it was 'wrong', nor does a mistake have to be made for it to be Pareidolia. I think that it's confusing that definitions of Pareidolia often contain the word 'significant'. In this instance it simply means that you saw a face when there wasn't one actually there, the random, chaotic data forms into a 'significant' pattern. It doesn't mean that you've then gone on to attach a significance to that face, that it's a particular person's face, for example. If I look at a cloud and don't see a face, then there's nothing of significance there.

So yes, this is very relevant to the discussion, with it being a well known Cognitive bias and therefore useful as an example. It also has a religious connection thanks to the grilled cheese sandwich crowd.
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-01-2014 , 03:39 PM
How is it relevant? Useful as an example of what? Please spell it out as clearly as possible.

You brought it up (the second time?) in response to OrP's premise about reliable faculties:

Quote:
Originally Posted by OrP
An experience is reliable if it derives from faculties or processes that when working properly give us true beliefs.
I'd specifically like to know if you are making an argument that our visual perception systems are unreliable (with pareidolia being used as an example), and also whether you are distinguishing between seeing pattern X and noticing a resemblance to object Y, and seeing pattern X as being object Y.

Last edited by zumby; 12-01-2014 at 03:45 PM.
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-01-2014 , 03:59 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyboosh
Yes because what you're seeing is not a human face, it's the illusion of a face created with pigments on a two dimensional medium.
At this point, it appears you've reduced pareidolia to something it's not. I don't think that anyone talks about pareidolia in the context of looking at pictures of faces and thinking that they're seeing faces.
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-01-2014 , 04:12 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Naked_Rectitude
I think he's starting to become more clear, but given that there is always room for doubt, his argument seems to rely on plausibility like Aaron mentioned.
"looking harder at what you experienced" means precisely nothing
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-01-2014 , 05:25 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by zumby
I think NR's point here is this.

- Our brains detect patterns (e.g. faces) very readily.
- But merely recognising that a pattern resembles e.g. a face is not 'wrong'.
- So unless a person goes on to make some demonstrable mistake based on pareidolia, the existence of the phenomenon is not relevant to the discussion

Even taking the Jesus-on-toast example... it's not obviously wrong to say that the toast resembles Jesus' face. Do you agree?
Yes, thank you.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyboosh
Yes because what you're seeing is not a human face, it's the illusion of a face created with pigments on a two dimensional medium. The artist is relying on Pareidolia to take place.
There is nothing meaningful in our ability to recognize faces, in of itself, especially in light of this conversation. I'm sure you're familiar with face blindness (Prosopagnosia), where people are actually unable to recognize faces.

Seeing a portrait or a picture, and being able to recognize a face, is not pareidolia, that's our basic ability to detect a face. Not being able to do so would be face blindness.

There is nothing meaningful about recognizing a face, and not giving it any special meaning. I agree that seeing a piece of toast with what looks like the face of a deity on it, and not only seeing the face, but then running with it as a special sign, is more appropriate for this conversation, but simply seeing a face, or recognizing a face, is not.

Anyway, this is kind of a derail, I think a valid question is what you mean by:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyboosh
The only way to know for sure is to look much harder at what you actually experienced.
I know a lot of people are questioning your views right now, hopefully you don't feel like you're being ganged up on, if it helps, I think ultimately, you clarifying your view will bring the focus back to whether or not I am justified in holding religious beliefs, especially in light of your objections. I still think you need to elaborate a little more on the specifics, as it still seems like there is guesswork as to which experiences can be trusted and which cannot.
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-01-2014 , 05:35 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Naked_Rectitude
There is nothing meaningful in our ability to recognize faces, in of itself, especially in light of this conversation. I'm sure you're familiar with face blindness (Prosopagnosia), where people are actually unable to recognize faces.

Seeing a portrait or a picture, and being able to recognize a face, is not pareidolia, that's our basic ability to detect a face. Not being able to do so would be face blindness.
Yes, yes it is Pareidolia, that's what the word means, it's the name for that tendency.

Imagine I tried to say the same thing about Prosopagnosia in that sometimes it's the name for what's happening when people are blind to someone's face and sometimes they're just blind to everyone's faces for a different reason?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Naked_Rectitude

There is nothing meaningful about recognizing a face, and not giving it any special meaning. I agree that seeing a piece of toast with what looks like the face of a deity on it, and not only seeing the face, but then running with it as a special sign, is more appropriate for this conversation, but simply seeing a face, or recognizing a face, is not.
You're still not getting it. The face on Mars is a good example. There's nothing more to it than a hill with some depressions and the sun is at a certain angle putting them them in shadow and then suddenly we give that shadow some significance, it's not a shadow it looks like and eye.... the the other bump gains significance, it looks like a nose.... etc etc.

If people then add further personal significance to the face, that it was aliens that put it there, or god, or whatever, that's not Pareidolia, that bit has already happened.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Naked_Rectitude
I know a lot of people are questioning your views right now, hopefully you don't feel like you're being ganged up on, if it helps, I think ultimately, you clarifying your view will bring the focus back on if I am justified in holding religious beliefs, especially in light of your objections. I still think you need to elaborate a little more on the specifics, as it still seems like there is guesswork as to which experiences can be trusted and which cannot.
I've explained why I'm not sure if I want to do that, and why I don't think it's particularly necessary, what do you think? Wanna go there?
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-01-2014 , 05:52 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyboosh
I've explained why I'm not sure if I want to do that, and why I don't think it's particularly necessary, what do you think? Wanna go there?
Do I think it would be helpful to this conversation? Yes.

Do I want to go there? Not in the least, if you don't want to. I respect that.

Edit: As for pareidolia, you can't compare recognizing a face on mars, to recognizing a face in a portrait which was painted to be the exact representation of a face.

You also can't compare seeing what looks like a face on mars, but recognizing it's our human tendency, to seeing a face on mars, and making it out to be something profound.

Last edited by Naked_Rectitude; 12-01-2014 at 06:01 PM.
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-01-2014 , 06:39 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Naked_Rectitude
Edit: As for pareidolia, you can't compare recognizing a face on mars, to recognizing a face in a portrait which was painted to be the exact representation of a face.

You also can't compare seeing what looks like a face on mars, but recognizing it's our human tendency, to seeing a face on mars, and making it out to be something profound.
You still don't understand what Pareidolia is.

If I paint some different coloured splotches on a canvas, and you perceive a face, it's pareidolia. The fact that as an artist I know that this tendency exists which is why I can create the illusion of a face, but that doesn't change what's happening. I'm actually using that tendency, just like con men and magicians use our tendencies, our biases to trick us. The face on Mars is identical to the effect of the painting even though it's just windblown dust. Pareidolia again. You're seeing a face where there isn't actually a real face. It's your tendency to see if there's face in random data but it's working too hard.

You have given significance (the fact that you're calling it a face) to random data, vague, meaningless clutter.

If you then decide that the face is the face of Jesus, that's taking it to a new level that probably brings in several other biases like Confirmation bias or Apophenia, maybe both.
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-01-2014 , 06:49 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by zumby
How is it relevant? Useful as an example of what? Please spell it out as clearly as possible.

You brought it up (the second time?) in response to OrP's premise about reliable faculties:
We're talking about cognitive biases, it's a cognitive bias. I'm really not sure what else I need to say. OrPs premise is incorrect;

"An experience is reliable if it derives from faculties or processes that when working properly give us true beliefs."

This is not true because it doesn't take into account that correctly working faculties can also give us untrue beliefs. This is exactly what Cognitive biases are, a tendency to make a deviant judgement. You probably experience this personally multiple times a day. It may not matter in the context of whether or not there's really a cup of coffee on your desk, you're really quite unlikely to be wrong about something like that, but purely psychological phenomena are much more vulnerable to these effects. Once those experiences have been processed through our personal filters, you can't necessarily rely on what comes out the other side.


Quote:
Originally Posted by zumby
I'd specifically like to know if you are making an argument that our visual perception systems are unreliable (with pareidolia being used as an example), and also whether you are distinguishing between seeing pattern X and noticing a resemblance to object Y, and seeing pattern X as being object Y.
If by 'perception systems' you're referring to how our brain interprets visual signals as opposed to how our eyes receive them, then yes, I'm saying that it's not always reliable and Pareidolia is an example of that.

I think that you know this, can I ask where you're going with this?
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-01-2014 , 07:00 PM
pareidolia is a type of apophenia, is it not?

In any case, I think N_R's point is that pareidolia in the sense of the actual perceptual experience doesn't in and of itself constitute some kind of error or cognitive bias. It's at the point when you decide the perceptual experience means that Jesus' face is really present in that cloud that it becomes an error, and the error is explained by our tendency to see patterns in random data.

I'm not sure pareidolia is a great example of an error people make about religious experience, because a) most people are familiar with the phenomena and recognize that something looking like a face doesn't mean that much, and b) most religious experiences do not involve seeing faces in clouds or bits of toast or the like, afaik.

edit: There are certainly cases of people seeing patterns in random data and claiming religious significance for them, or misunderstanding the nature of coincidence and giving too much significance to what could very well be random chance. I guess it's just not the sort of thing I would have in mind
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-01-2014 , 07:03 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyboosh
This is exactly what Cognitive biases are, a tendency to make a deviant judgement.
Im pretty sure this is wrong.
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-01-2014 , 07:21 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyboosh
You have given significance (the fact that you're calling it a face) to random data, vague, meaningless clutter.
But if an artist is painting a face, the data is no longer "random" or "vague" or "meaningless." And this is where you're going wrong in your understanding.

What you have done is labeled the entire cognitive process of recognizing faces "pareidolia" and that's just not what it is.
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-01-2014 , 09:00 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyboosh
This is exactly what Cognitive biases are, a tendency to make a deviant judgement.
This seems like a narrow definition and probably not a very good one to use.

The "deviant" judgment is going to require a bit of unpacking. But even if you did that, I still don't see how this definition fits in with the seeing a picture of a face and being able to recognize the face-ness of that picture. What part of that judgment is "deviant"? What is your standard against which you're measuring deviance?
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-02-2014 , 04:18 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by well named
pareidolia is a type of apophenia, is it not?
Yes, but Apophenia is a more general tendency to see meaning and patterns where they don't actually exist, so Pareidolia (specificlaly seeing shapes and faces) could contribute to the more generalised effect of Apophenia, e.g. you see the face of Jesus in a toasted cheese sandwich and it happens just a week after the virgin mary was seen in a elaf and it's a sunday all of which supports your more general belief in the Christian god.

Quote:
Originally Posted by well named

In any case, I think N_R's point is that pareidolia in the sense of the actual perceptual experience doesn't in and of itself constitute some kind of error or cognitive bias.
Yes it does, he's wrong. It's your brain's hardwired tendency to try to recognise if something is a face but getting it wrong sometimes. It's irrelevant to it being identified as Pareidolia that you might think you actually recognise the face.

Quote:
Originally Posted by well named
It's at the point when you decide the perceptual experience means that Jesus' face is really present in that cloud that it becomes an error, and the error is explained by our tendency to see patterns in random data.
No, this is also wrong. The 'significance' involved with Pareidolia is not in assigning meaning the the face that you see, it's in assigning significance to the blotches and shadows so that they become more than they are, a nose, or an eye, for example.

Quote:
Originally Posted by well named
I'm not sure pareidolia is a great example of an error people make about religious experience, because a) most people are familiar with the phenomena and recognize that something looking like a face doesn't mean that much, and b) most religious experiences do not involve seeing faces in clouds or bits of toast or the like, afaik.
I wasn't looking for a religious example, I was only looking for an example that I thought would resonate. I wasn't expecting such widely held misunderstanding of what it is to muddy the waters.

Quote:
Originally Posted by well named
edit: There are certainly cases of people seeing patterns in random data and claiming religious significance for them, or misunderstanding the nature of coincidence and giving too much significance to what could very well be random chance. I guess it's just not the sort of thing I would have in mind
That would be more Apophenia than Pareidolia.
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-02-2014 , 05:15 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by neeeel
Im pretty sure this is wrong.
Well, this is why your contributions haven't been meaningful or useful and why you're asking the wrong questions.

In the first sentence on the Wiki page.....

Cognitive bias
Quote:
A cognitive bias is a pattern of deviation in judgment, whereby inferences about other people and situations may be drawn in an illogical fashion
A 'pattern', i.e. it's a predictable tendency.
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-02-2014 , 10:18 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyboosh
Well, this is why your contributions haven't been meaningful or useful and why you're asking the wrong questions.

In the first sentence on the Wiki page.....

Cognitive bias


A 'pattern', i.e. it's a predictable tendency.
I think this is one of those times that you should be a bit wary of citing wikipedia.
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-02-2014 , 10:31 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyboosh
Well, this is why your contributions haven't been meaningful or useful and why you're asking the wrong questions.

In the first sentence on the Wiki page.....

Cognitive bias


A 'pattern', i.e. it's a predictable tendency.
So cognitive biases only ever produce a deviant judgement?
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-02-2014 , 10:42 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyboosh
Well, this is why your contributions haven't been meaningful or useful and why you're asking the wrong questions.

In the first sentence on the Wiki page.....

Cognitive bias


A 'pattern', i.e. it's a predictable tendency.
Here is the reference for that first sentence:

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/comm/hase...ookevpsych.pdf

Having skimmed over it, I see no reason to think that this definition is directly supported by the article.
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-02-2014 , 11:10 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by neeeel
So cognitive biases only ever produce a deviant judgement?
Yes.

That doesn't mean though that the results they produce aren't in some way productive or useful, or as the Wiki page puts it 'more effective'. For example, they often help us make fast decisions.

Imagine two hominids drinking from a stream, our ancient ancestors, they hear a rustle in the bushes. One immediately comes to the conclusion that it is a tiger and runs away (he's not being cautious just in case it's a tiger in this scenario, he's convinced enough that it's a tiger that he acts instantly), the other stays to gather more information to assist with a decision about what to do. Is it a falling leaf? A bird? A small rodent? He's paralysed by indecision and while he's thinking about it, he gets killed by the tiger that was in the bushes.

The one who ran could easily have been wrong, but his incorrect conclusion saved his life and he survives to pass on this tendency. Over time, many biases have evolved that offer survival benefits, like being able to recognise faces, but sometimes they short circuit and lead to wrong conclusions that we are no less convinced of than when we're actually right. Not everyone is subject to all of them or in the same way or even consistently, but they exist and can't be discounted.
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-02-2014 , 11:13 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyboosh
Yes.
I think you are wrong.



Quote:
Imagine two hominids drinking from a stream, our ancient ancestors, they hear a rustle in the bushes. One immediately comes to the conclusion that it is a tiger and runs away (he's not being cautious just in case it's a tiger in this scenario, he's convinced enough that it's a tiger that he acts instantly), the other stays to gather more information to assist with a decision about what to do. Is it a falling leaf? A bird? A small rodent? He's paralysed by indecision and while he's thinking about it, he gets killed by the tiger that was in the bushes.

The one who ran could easily have been wrong, but his incorrect conclusion saved his life and he survives to pass on this tendency. Over time, many biases have evolved that offer survival benefits, like being able to recognise faces, but sometimes they short circuit and lead to wrong conclusions that we are no less convinced of than when we're actually right. Not everyone is subject to all of them or in the same way or even consistently, but they exist and can't be discounted.
His conclusion wasnt incorrect, there WAS a tiger in the bushes, hence why his friend died. So You are wrong to say it only ever produces deviant judgement.
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-02-2014 , 11:15 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyboosh
Yes.

That doesn't mean though that the results they produce aren't in some way productive or useful, or as the Wiki page puts it 'more effective'. For example, they often help us make fast decisions.

Imagine two hominids drinking from a stream, our ancient ancestors, they hear a rustle in the bushes. One immediately comes to the conclusion that it is a tiger and runs away (he's not being cautious just in case it's a tiger in this scenario, he's convinced enough that it's a tiger that he acts instantly), the other stays to gather more information to assist with a decision about what to do. Is it a falling leaf? A bird? A small rodent? He's paralysed by indecision and while he's thinking about it, he gets killed by the tiger that was in the bushes.

The one who ran could easily have been wrong, but his incorrect conclusion saved his life and he survives to pass on this tendency. Over time, many biases have evolved that offer survival benefits, like being able to recognise faces, but sometimes they short circuit and lead to wrong conclusions.
What wrong conclusions? If I look at a painting of a face and see a face, what is the error? And what should this example lead me to conclude about the reliability of my visual systems?
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-02-2014 , 11:16 AM
Do you agree with the following statement:

Human visual perception systems provide mostly true beliefs about the objects of perception.
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-02-2014 , 11:29 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyboosh
Yes it does, he's wrong. It's your brain's hardwired tendency to try to recognise if something is a face but getting it wrong sometimes. It's irrelevant to it being identified as Pareidolia that you might think you actually recognise the face.
I think we're misunderstanding each other. When I said I didn't think the perception of a face constituted an "error", I meant an erroneous belief, and I meant provided that you separate the act of perception from the act of believing, so that I can look at a tree trunk and perceive a "face", but I do not believe it is a face, I understand that it is just tree bark, and I'm aware that the facial characteristics my brain picks out are a quirk of the way my brain and eyes work. Thus I've not made an error in that sense. You can call that quirk an error or defect in the way sight works and that's fine.

The reason I want to distinguish between perception and belief is because I think it would be relevant to the previous conversation about religious experience, i.e the difference between an experience itself, the memory of the experience, and the interpretation and beliefs formed about it. When we're talking about rational evidence and justification we're talking about justification of the beliefs.
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote
12-02-2014 , 11:59 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by zumby
What wrong conclusions? If I look at a painting of a face and see a face, what is the error?
The error is that it's not a face, it's an illusion of a face, a collection various coloured pigments arranged just so. Your eyes don't know what a face is, they just report signals to the brain and the brain interprets them right? The brain can be fooled and that's what the artist relies on, that Pareidolia will do the rest of the work. Cats don't recognise a photo of another cat's face, it's not a cat's face to them. AFAIK, humans and some primates are the only animals that demonstrate Cognitive biases.

Quote:
Originally Posted by zumby
And what should this example lead me to conclude about the reliability of my visual systems?
Your visual systems are working as they should, unless you mean by 'visual systems' the bit where the brain is interpreting those signals fed to it by the eyes, then you might consider that the program that it runs that helps you recognise faces, that sometimes causes you to get false positives (even if you understand that the face in the painting isn't a 'real' face) is an unreliability.

Have you never 'seen' something that wasn't there, or turned out to be something completely different? It's not news that our minds play tricks on us and I would imagine it's the reason for the expression 'the camera never lies', because our minds do..
What kind of evidence do atheists need to believe in god? Quote

      
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