• GardenVarietyAnxiety@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      The Placebo Effect is, in my opinion, -is- the power of belief. (And I think it can do more than that, but that would mean going into my woowoo closet. We’ll just leave it shut for now.)

      I know spirituality doesn’t put people on the moon and it doesn’t do much for the economy. (Worship on the other hand…oof.)

      Anyway. My point is the pendulum swung hard because religion as we know it fucking sucks, and there is more material value in science. But that doesn’t mean spirituality is worthless.

      I think we’re capable of more than what science alone can teach us.

      • flerp@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        The brain is a material organ that has some amount of control over the rest of your body. If that organ believes a certain thing, it is not supernatural or spiritual for that to have a material effect on your body.

          • I asked you to define the term to highlight that what you’re referring to is untestable and as you pointed out unmeasurable.

            I think very few reasonable people will say, “God absolutely doesn’t exist.” Because that’s an untestable claim, but I do think most atheists feel strongly that there’s insufficient evidence that a god should exist.

            • GardenVarietyAnxiety@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              I asked you to define the term to highlight that what you’re referring to is untestable and as you pointed out unmeasurable.

              I’m not suggesting you apply the scientific method to spirituality, though. I’m suggesting that Cause can be unmeasurable. If we can do that, it opens up possibilities for new understanding.

              I think the material world can only be half explained by modern physics. (I have a few reasons for coming to this conclusion, which I’ll share if you care to hear them. It’s hard for me to type out, I can explain myself better in speech, if that makes sense.)

              And that’s fair. But it’s always going to have that margin of error until it doesn’t, it has been my actual, lived experience online that you can bet on an Atheist to be a complete dick to anyone even hinting to a supernatural belief. (Look at these comments.) You (generally speaking) don’t get to go around being a giant dick to the “other team” like that with any margin of error.

              I genuinely feel that we aren’t going to science ourselves into the Star Trek future. Corruptibility is Humanities Achilles Heel, and I don’t see how we science our way out of that.