How Does Believe Form and Persist?

Note: this is the "psychology" branch and it is a "discussion" format, not a "debate" format.

How did you come to believe? (In gods, ghosts, aliens, ...)
How did you keep your belief after shown evidence to the contrary?

Heyo said:

Note: this is the "psychology" branch and it is a "discussion" format, not a "debate" format.

How did you come to believe? (In gods, ghosts, aliens, ...)
How did you keep your belief after shown evidence to the contrary?

Click to expand...

experience.
I haven't found any to the contrary that holds water or has any real integrity, and the more I look, the more my confirmation bias may be kicking in, so I question my most important and cherished ideas the harshest and suspect them the most.

Heyo said:

Note: this is the "psychology" branch and it is a "discussion" format, not a "debate" format.

How did you come to believe? (In gods, ghosts, aliens, ...)
How did you keep your belief after shown evidence to the contrary?

Click to expand...

Mother believes in spirits of the deceased. She, her co-workers, father at times seen them. I haven't. Experienced them maybe but not strong enough to "religionize" it. I still do but it holds no primary importance compared to other things. I don't believe there's a creator and wasn't raised with that belief, so that's irrelevant.

Heyo said:

Note: this is the "psychology" branch and it is a "discussion" format, not a "debate" format.

How did you come to believe? (In gods, ghosts, aliens, ...)
How did you keep your belief after shown evidence to the contrary?

Click to expand...

I tend to think its over wanting something so bad it just becomes real.

I came to believe in the likelihood that aliens exist from two fairly close encounters with a UFO, close enough that I could have hit them with a baseball. They were flying, soundlessly, just above tree-top level at about ten mph. The other possible explanation, a secret military aircraft, was less credible than the alien explanation. The sightings happened in a Maryland suburb of Washington DC and there were hundreds of people reporting them.

My anecdotal evidence has no value for anyone else, but personal experiences are undeniable when they are ours.

Psychologically speaking upbringing inevitably influences your mind.
But I believe genetic predispositions play a significant role.
For example I am convinced that if you have had an atheist parent, or a rational parent...you might develop a progressive attitude towards atheism even if you have never met them.
Imho

Heyo said:

Note: this is the "psychology" branch and it is a "discussion" format, not a "debate" format.

How did you come to believe? (In gods, ghosts, aliens, ...)
How did you keep your belief after shown evidence to the contrary?

Click to expand...

The evidence of personal experience generally supports belief.

Consciously, from my understanding, we have no direct connection to the external world. What we experience is an interpretation of external data created by the subconscious mind.

What you see in an interpretation, all your senses really is an interpretation of external data. Usually, this all works efficiently enough. However, when you imagine something, like a red bouncing ball, your brain uses the same process to create the image of the bouncing ball as when there is an actual bouncing ball that you are looking at. The main difference is that you are conscious of creating the image. Some people can consciously create more vivid experiences than others.

So schizophrenia, I believe that schizophrenia is the brain, subconscious mind recreating vivid sights, sound, smells etc outside of conscious control.
Also when we dream, the brain creates autonomous people and environments to interact with. Seems obvious just how much of a conscious experience the brain can create.

The evidence of the believer is experiential. They can see ghosts, aliens, have conversations with God which are not consciously created.

Evidence to the contrary, I don't know if there is evidence to the contrary as much as there is evidence of alternate explanations. Evidence, whatever you bring to the table still requires that you invest belief into the evidence. So just because I now believe the brain is capable of creating a vivid religious/spiritual/ghost/alien experience doesn't that all such experiences are a product of the brain.

I don't know what is necessary to pull a believer across the threshold of belief into acceptance of a secular explanation. Not 100% sure of what pulled me across.

Estro Felino said:

Psychologically speaking upbringing inevitably influences your mind.
But I believe genetic predispositions play a significant role.
For example I am convinced that if you have had an atheist parent, or a rational parent...you might develop a progressive attitude towards atheism even if you have never met them.
Imho

Click to expand...

Michael Shermer has an interesting talk about "patternicity" and "agenticity" and how they evolved:
3:25 - 5:15 and 13:35 - 14:40

I might have ended up as lunch 3 million years ago in the savannah of Africa because I may have a mutation that turned my agenticity down.