Does intuition favor God's existence?

[Calavera]

I found this study interesting:

http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2011/09/thinking-god.aspx

Intuition does seem to favor the existence of some God.

I can think of several problems with the study. One is that the cultural background is skewed--the subjects are all American and a larger part is women. The researchers themselves show bias in their approach--note, for example, the capitalisation of the word "god" or how they choose to explain their study. The small number of subjects is not enough to draw any real conclusions.

Etc.

If you want an independent study, find a group of *neutral* subjects.

Fine. I do think they should keep verifying this through repetitive methods and in other countries.

The capitalisation of God argument is a poor one in my opinion, though. Because even atheists are used to referring to the concept of the Creator as God (capital G).

[odeon]

I found this study interesting:

http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2011/09/thinking-god.aspx

Intuition does seem to favor the existence of some God.

I can think of several problems with the study. One is that the cultural background is skewed--the subjects are all American and a larger part is women. The researchers themselves show bias in their approach--note, for example, the capitalisation of the word "god" or how they choose to explain their study. The small number of subjects is not enough to draw any real conclusions.

Etc.

If you want an independent study, find a group of *neutral* subjects.

Fine. I do think they should keep verifying this through repetitive methods and in other countries.

The capitalisation of God argument is a poor one in my opinion, though. Because even atheists are used to referring to the concept of the Creator as God (capital G).

They are less likely to do so, but my main point is that if you choose to do that in a study related to god, it either shows bias or ignorance. Both undermine the study itself.

[Osensitive1]

How is one an agnostic diest?

With great difficulty.

It was a good explaination. Would think of it as a soft deism myself, but the use of the terms together is acceptable when put that way.

[Calavera]

I found this study interesting:

http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2011/09/thinking-god.aspx

Intuition does seem to favor the existence of some God.

I can think of several problems with the study. One is that the cultural background is skewed--the subjects are all American and a larger part is women. The researchers themselves show bias in their approach--note, for example, the capitalisation of the word "god" or how they choose to explain their study. The small number of subjects is not enough to draw any real conclusions.

Etc.

If you want an independent study, find a group of *neutral* subjects.

Fine. I do think they should keep verifying this through repetitive methods and in other countries.

The capitalisation of God argument is a poor one in my opinion, though. Because even atheists are used to referring to the concept of the Creator as God (capital G).

They are less likely to do so, but my main point is that if you choose to do that in a study related to god, it either shows bias or ignorance. Both undermine the study itself.

Sounds like false dichotomy to me.

If it's related to the concept of the hypothesized Creator of all, then I don't see why it shouldn't be God with a capital G even in a professional psychology study. It's really a universally arbitrary thing at the end: God for the Creator and/or the Supreme Being and god(s) for the minor ones (irrelevant to this topic).

Your conditions are just your own anyway.

Now whether the conclusion of that study is valid or not will have to be verified with further experiments with different samples under different circumstances and in different environments. But I don't believe one second there's bias going on there. Especially that it explains why so many people who don't follow any religion still believe in God.

If it's not simply intuition (as it has been in my case), then what is it? Ignorance and fear (as MLA suggested)? Nah, that's shallow closed-minded thinking.

[midlifeaspie]

I found this study interesting:

http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2011/09/thinking-god.aspx

Intuition does seem to favor the existence of some God.

Someone did a "study" on "intuition" and "god"?   :lolwat:

[midlifeaspie]

Intuitive thinking means going with one’s first instinct and reaching decisions quickly based on automatic cognitive processes. Reflective thinking involves the questioning of first instinct and consideration of other possibilities, thus allowing for counterintuitive decisions.

How is this saying anything other than "people who don't tend to think things through have a higher tendency to believe in a god"?

[Calavera]

I found this study interesting:

http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2011/09/thinking-god.aspx

Intuition does seem to favor the existence of some God.

Someone did a "study" on "intuition" and "god"?   :lolwat:

Well, you have Harvard Uni researchers, a study published in one of the top psychology journals, a pretty interesting and significant subject for the study of the human mind with relation to the concept of God.

Not sure why you would want to make fun of such a study. That's what psychology studies are basically all about. Studying the human mind.

[Calavera]

Intuitive thinking means going with one’s first instinct and reaching decisions quickly based on automatic cognitive processes. Reflective thinking involves the questioning of first instinct and consideration of other possibilities, thus allowing for counterintuitive decisions.

How is this saying anything other than "people who don't tend to think things through have a higher tendency to believe in a god"?

You can express this in such a politically incorrect manner as your view and opinion. No one's stopping you.

But I would not agree with you that people who rely on intuition for anything isn't thinking things through. He's just approaching things from a different angle than how someone relying on reflection would.

Without going into the middle ground stuff, and generally speaking, the believer believes in God because he thought it through with his intuition. The unbeliever discards his intuition and concludes that he doesn't have any reason to believe God exists and so he thought it through by using reflection.

Obviously, reflection gives more valid answers than intuition as science has shown, but this does not change one bit what intuition favors.

[midlifeaspie]

Obviously, reflection gives more valid answers than intuition as science has shown, but this does not change one bit what intuition favors.

True, but when I was drawn into this conversation that wasn't what the question was.  You changed the title of your post 3 pages in, and in doing so tried to change the direction of the discussion.

[Calavera]

Obviously, reflection gives more valid answers than intuition as science has shown, but this does not change one bit what intuition favors.

True, but when I was drawn into this conversation that wasn't what the question was.  You changed the title of your post 3 pages in, and in doing so tried to change the direction of the discussion.

Actually, I didn't try. It just happened. So I changed the title to fit the actual discussion. You reversed both the cause and effect.

[midlifeaspie]

Obviously, reflection gives more valid answers than intuition as science has shown, but this does not change one bit what intuition favors.

True, but when I was drawn into this conversation that wasn't what the question was.  You changed the title of your post 3 pages in, and in doing so tried to change the direction of the discussion.

Actually, I didn't try. It just happened. So I changed the title to fit the actual discussion. You reversed both the cause and effect.

['Butterflies']

Without going into the middle ground stuff, and generally speaking, the believer believes in God because he thought it through with his intuition. The unbeliever discards his intuition and concludes that he doesn't have any reason to believe God exists and so he thought it through by using reflection.

My intuition does not tell me that there is a god.

While the idea of the whole universe being created from one super dense particle seems hard to believe, to me it seems so much more likely than a super-being mysteriously coming into existence and choosing to create everything.

[eris]

Because I thought that's how the mind usually works ... attributing the seemingly order and beauty of this universe to a supernatural entity with unlimited powers. That's why humans from days past used to worship gods and goddesses and such, and that's why many people today believe in God (regardless of what god exactly).

No.  That was ignorance combined with fear.

Never understood why people use the fact that an idea has been around for a really long time to try and prove its accuracy when in actuality the longer something has been believed the less truth it tends to contain.

They have believed in Jesus for 2000 years so he must be real.
They have believed in Ra for 8000 years so he must be even more real?  No, wait, that isn't it either.

I don't think god fills a need for order and balance, I think god fills a need to keep one from acknowledging that bad things happen, and everybody dies.

I think that the simplest explanation is that there is no god, or a deux ex machina type wind-up-toy explanation.

The reasons that MLA gave, to me, explain why people ATTRIBUTE meaning to meaningless events, to comfort themselves. No one wants to feel alone and that nothing matters.

So the simplest thing to explain the fear of being alone might be to invent religion, but not to "prove" gods existence

[Phallacy]

Is Cavalera a Christian?

[eris]

I think he is an Ex Christian. I might be wrong.