Why do people believe in these things. (Egypt, spirits)

[mikebnllnb]

Originally Posted by Hawkins

Can you scientifically prove that soul and afterlife don't exist? You can't. Which means it bears a chance that they exist as more than half of the human believe so.

Now randomly assume that they exist. Then your conclusion that "I don't believe..." becomes a nonsense. The point is, why do you have a such a conclusion which bears a chance to be wrong?

It is because when you say that "I don't believe <something bears a chance to be true>", it is out of your faith to claim so. Faith is subject to errors, so you can be wrong.

To put it another way,

Do soul and afterlife exist?

How do you answer this question?

If you answer is a "yes", obviously you are religious. If however your answer is "no", it is also a statement of faith showing that you are religious. A more objective answer is "I don't know". However, people can't uphold such a "I don't know" answer till they die. Most likely they already adapted the answer "no" by faith before they die, they don't have the self-awareness to realise so, that's it.

So the conclusion here is, you need to have faith here on earth, either to believe so or to believe that it is not so. The third option "I don't know" won't stand long. We are all people of faith, our faith differs though.

While I can't prove scientifically without doubt that the soul or life after death don't exist. I can however make the argument that with what we understand about the laws of the universe that the soul and life after death fall outside of those laws. And therefor are more likely not to exist than to exist.

Other things I can't prove don't exist: (but still don't)

Thor
Dracula
Zombies
Osiris
Spiderman

[Thomas R.]

Originally Posted by mikebnllnb

Things I don't believe in: (no creditable evidence or not logical) If you believe in any of the above why? Use logic and reason in your statement not faith in things unseen.

Unfortunately I'm going to have to start by telling you that the premises you are using are not really useful in describing why most people believe anything.

People, generally, do not base their beliefs solely in logic and empiricism. Most people can't really do that because most do not have perfect knowledge. Many atheists are apparently unique in having "perfect knowledge", somehow, but for the lumpen non-atheists of the world they/we need to have beliefs that are useful for our lives and provide satisfactory answers to our questions even if we can't prove them logically.

The source people get these beliefs vary. Some common sources are tradition, authority (by this I mean everything from the opinion of a respected person to an "authority figure"), personal experience, conformity to a peer group, and probably some I'm forgetting.

I'm actually going to deal with ones on your list I don't believe, or am agnostic about, as I think that might keep this from getting overly personal. I am however mostly not going to do this "what is their logic and evidence" deal because I think that's a poor way of trying to understand most people.

Originally Posted by mikebnllnb

Ghosts

First it depends on who we mean. In certain American Indian and Asian belief systems ghosts are accepted. So for them it might be a mix of tradition, authority, and conformity. I know how that sounds, but I am not a liberal or an atheist. I'm very much fine with beliefs being based in tradition and authority.

For others I think a strong motivator is a desire to remain in contact with loved ones who are dead. Western religious concepts of the afterlife might seem to make the dead too distant, for some anyway, and they may desire the notion that the dead are still with them in a close way. A common metaphor is the idea of one's loved one being "in the wind" or their ghost contacting you through some other natural phenomenon.

Relational to that the dead do often "linger" in our memory, even in the memory of atheists. A ghost is in some ways symbolic of that and of the feeling of being "haunted" by a dead person close to you. (I'm pretty sure I've known of atheists who speak of being "haunted" by a dead spouse or a murdered child. I'm not suggesting they secretly believe in ghosts, I'm suggesting that traumatic experience might relate to the feeling that would make others think there are ghosts)

And then for some I think it's a mix of peer group and personal experience. I think we're maybe hardwired to have a bit of vigilance at night as that's when nocturnal animals likely attacked our ancestors. So you take that and you add an unknown sound at night, presto you have a ghost. Also many people believe in ghosts so it reinforces it. Perhaps relational to "peer groups" ghosts, for the younger generation, have become a kind of non-judgmental form of spirituality. You don't need a religion and no one goes to Hell, they just live as a ghost until they're "at peace" enough to "cross over."

In my experience women seem to believe in ghosts somewhat more then men. Perhaps part of this is women are more often caretakers for the elderly and are more directly/intimately/physically effected by miscarriage. I knew of one woman who was basically irreligious, but believed maybe her dead child appeared to her as a ghost. I think it was a way to sort-out or deal with her experience.

If you want more thinking on what would legitimize it to them I think they might say that the alleged experiences of ghosts are sufficient evidence, that consciousness should not simply be "destroyed" (the information should go somewhere), and that the belief is valuable to their understanding.

Originally Posted by mikebnllnb

ESP of any kind

ESP, or the idea of it, gives the impression that at least someone has a certain power/control or that there are "special people." Also maybe that we can become something better as some who believe in it see it as something we're advancing toward as a species or that we can advance toward as individuals.

For some ESP was also a way to explain miracles without the supernatural. ESP was seen as some kind of sense perception and therefore natural if paranormal. So you didn't need God or anything. And some of them have studies they claim supports it.

Originally Posted by mikebnllnb

Monsters (Bigfoot, Yeti, Loch Ness monster...etc)

There are many species discovered even now. At one time people populated the unknown with more elaborate things. Also monsters may fill into the idea of "Man against Nature", although at times "monsters" are seen as more sympathetic. So in that case it represents more "the undiscovered" good or bad.

There's some desire to imagine that great things are still to be discovered and that we don't know everything. There being a Bigfoot or a Dinosaur over the hill provides that desire for a world outside us and our knowledge.

Originally Posted by mikebnllnb

Aliens visiting earth

Despite stereotypes from what I've read people who believe aliens visited tend to be of slightly above average intelligence who feel a bit alienated from religion and disappointed with where they ended up. They're not really losers in trailer parks or at least not as often as claimed.

An extraterrestrial visitation allows them something transcendent without requiring a God or religion. It also perhaps deals with loneliness and with disgust/alienation they may feel for people. This maybe doesn't work with "scary aliens" but even then alien-mythos often plays on the idea that average people are unaware of what's "really going on." Extraterrestrial beliefs therefore maybe give the believer that feeling of "specialness" they had as children, but lost when youthful giftedness (at whatever level they had it or that they imagined they had it) did not translate into adult achievement.

Although with some "scary alien" stories it sounds like maybe transference of childhood abuse onto some mysterious "other."

Extraterrestrial visitation beliefs are one of a few paranormal beliefs that seem to be more common with men than women. Men seem to be somewhat more likely to have tendencies toward socially awkwardness or having difficulty understanding people. So aliens might either fit into a worldview that says "I don't understand society, it's weird and complicated" (aliens being complicated with murky plans) or it might be an escape from a world of people with their complex emotional states.

Originally Posted by mikebnllnb

Voodoo or witchcraft

Voodoo is an actual religion so much of it might be personal experiences in that world, tradition, etc. However you are likely meaning hexes and magic.

I think this might relate to some ideas on ESP. If a person has, or is believed to have, magical powers they have control over seemingly random events. This idea that there are people who are, or can be, "in control" could be comforting or even weirdly "empowering" in a way.

Or it might just be an extension of the feeling some people generate in others. Some people can be intimidating with deep voices and cold stares.

And I didn't sleep well last night so I'm bluffing my way through some of this, but some sounds possible.

[Hueffenhardt]

Originally Posted by nimchimpsky

Could science not also be simply proving consistency and not accuracy?

Absolutely, and that is why we can never know for sure that we have learned anything about the reality underneath the consistency. If we truly are in the Matrix all science or our personally experiences can detect are consistencies in the way the computer program generates the perception of our world.

Originally Posted by nimchimpsky

Why choose to believe science as the ultimate definer of reality and not personal experience? I agree, science is an excellent tool. But I think personal experience is too.

Personal experiences (aka anecdotal evidence) are great for generating hypotheses but are never sufficient as reliable proof of anything. They are too faulty, prone to misperception and misinterpretation, subject to bias and prejudiced by one's beliefs, jumps to unwarranted conclusions like the child who assumes magicians can really turn cards into birds, subject to delusions and hallucinations, are at best a mental model of what happens in the world around them. It is well documented that our memories for personal experiences are crap. Loftus showed through scientific research that witnesses are horrible at describing what happened during a motor vehicle accident they were shown - their accounts contradicted each other and the tape. Memories can be manipulated and planted without a person's awareness.

I have seen too many psychological experiments that illustrate and exploit our brain's weaknesses to accurately understand what is going on and remember it correctly to ever trust accounts of personal experiences, even my own.

Most of this post is from the wiki post on anecdotal evidence :

"Anecdotal evidence is an informal account of evidence in the form of an anecdote or hearsay. The term is often used in contrast to scientific evidence, which are types of formal accounts. Anecdotal evidence is often unscientific because it cannot be investigated using the scientific method. Misuse of anecdotal evidence is a logical fallacy and is sometimes informally referred to as the "person who" fallacy ("I know a person who..."; "I know of a case where..." etc. Compare with hasty generalization). Anecdotal evidence is not necessarily typical; statistical evidence can more accurately determine how typical something is. Psychologists have found that people are more likely to remember notable examples than typical examples[1].

In all forms of anecdotal evidence, testing its reliability by objective independent assessment may be in doubt. This is a consequence of the informal way the information is gathered, documented, presented, or any combination of the three. The term is often used to describe evidence for which there is an absence of documentation. This leaves verification dependent on the credibility of the party presenting the evidence.

In science, anecdotal evidence has been defined as:

* "information that is not based on facts or careful study" [2]
* "non-scientific observations or studies, which do not provide proof but may assist research efforts" [3]
* "reports or observations of usually unscientific observers" [4]
* "casual observations or indications rather than rigorous or scientific analysis" [5]
* "information passed along by word-of-mouth but not documented scientifically"

Researchers may use anecdotal evidence for suggesting new hypotheses, but never as supporting evidence.

Anecdotal evidence is often unscientific or pseudoscientific because various forms of cognitive bias may affect the collection or presentation of evidence. For instance, someone who claims to have had an encounter with a supernatural being or alien may present a very vivid story, but this is not falsifiable. This phenomenon can also happen to large groups of people through subjective validation.



Anecdotal evidence is also frequently misinterpreted via the availability heuristic, which leads to an overestimation of prevalence. Where a cause can be easily linked to an effect, people overestimate the likelihood of the cause having that effect (availability). In particular, vivid, emotionally-charged anecdotes seem more plausible, and are given greater weight. A related issue is that it is usually impossible to assess for every piece of anecdotal evidence, the rate of people not reporting that anecdotal evidence in the population.



A common way anecdotal evidence becomes unscientific is through fallacious reasoning such as the post hocfallacy, the human tendency to assume that if one event happens after another, then the first must be the cause of the second. Another fallacy involves inductive reasoning. For instance, if an anecdote illustrates a desired conclusion rather than a logical conclusion, it is considered a faulty or hasty generalization. [9] For example, here is anecdotal evidence presented as proof of a desired conclusion:

"There's abundant proof that God exists and is still performing miracles today. Just last week I read about a girl who was dying of cancer. Her whole family went to church and prayed for her, and she was cured."

Anecdotes like this are very powerful persuaders, but they don't prove anything in a scientific or logical sense. [10] The child may have become better anyway and this could be an example also of the regressive fallacy. Anecdotal evidence cannot be distinguished from placebo effects. [11] Only double-blind randomized placebo-controlled clinical trials can confirm a hypothesis.



Sites devoted to rhetoric [12] often give explanations along these lines:

Anecdotal evidence, for example, is by definition less statistically reliable than other sorts of evidence, and explanations do not carry the weight of authority. But both anecdotal evidence and explanations may affect our understanding of a premise, and therefore influence our judgment. The relative strength of an explanation or an anecdote is usually a function of its clarity and applicability to the premise it is supporting. [1]

By contrast, in science and logic, the "relative strength of an explanation" is based upon its ability to be tested, proven to be due to the stated cause, and verified under neutral conditions in a manner that other researchers will agree has been performed competently, and can check for themselves."

There are so many problems with anecdotal evidence for the existence of god. It is easiest to show those problems with specific examples. So, provide some if you have them.

One of the biggest problems is non-falsifiability. In other words, God is covered no matter what the outcome is. If one asks god for something, and you get it, he gets the credit. If you don't get it, either it was not god's will or god does not respond to our requests like a circus act or we were unworthy, etc. If we don't ask for anything, and we get something good, well, god sometimes blesses us even when we don't believe in him or it was going to happen anyway. If we don't ask and we don't get it, well, that is just what happens or god is punishing you. There is no control condition. There is no condition in which if such and such outcome happens, we have shown the premise of god's existence is false. This makes a true experiment impossible, and without that you only have correlational data, and correlations cannot prove causation, for there are many factors that can explain correlations.

Furthermore, the supposed correlations may be only perceived correlations and not true correlations due to selective memory, confirmation bias, and the availability heuristic. We fall victim to these effects without even knowing it and even when we are trying very hard not to. Sincerity does not mean accurate reporting.

Conditions of the experiement must be written down before the experiement is run and one must be specific about what constitutes failure or success. An independent party needs to write down the outcome. Skeptics need to review the evidence to see if the outcome actually satisfies the conditions set out in the beginning. A close call counts as a miss.

You see people often say that they watch a video and it was just like the vision they had earlier that week. Was the vision written down before the video was watched? If not, how do we know that your mind is not merging your memories or giving you a false de javu? We don't. You are sure it is not, but that doesn't count for squat. If I had you here with me I could implant false memories very easily. Our minds are not tape recorders. Each time we retrieve a memory different pieces of it are reassembled anew. It is very easy to be certain and wrong at the same time.

And we tend to remember our hits and forget our misses. We forget about all the premonitions we have that never came true.

We also forget how we subconsciously pick up on certain clues and warnings from our environment.

For every miracle, there are many possible explanations. We will never know what the true explanation of a past event was, but we can design experiments that replicate the situation and rule out many of the possible explanations. So, since we can never know the true explanation for past events, we can never be justified in being certain that god is the explanation.

We sometimes marvel at the odds that somethings could happen without god's intervention. What we forget is that we may not have to explain as much as it first appears. The event may not have happened quite as the person is telling you. The probability of what really happened may not be that rare. And we mustn't forget the law of very large numbers, in that even very improbable events will happen if given enough trials. And we need to remember that we have a tendency to way underestimate the likelihood of some events occurring. And our inability to imagine alternative explanations says more about our ignorance than the true possibilities.

[Nozzferrahhtoo]

Originally Posted by mikebnllnb

If you believe in any of the above why? Use logic and reason in your statement not faith in things unseen.

Many of the things people believe in, some of which you listed, actually are caused by a very beautiful aspect of being Human.

The aspect I speak of is that of our tendency to personify aspects of our world, and events, emotions and attributes within it.

Such personification was historically necessary in our evolution. It allowed us to create internally representations of other people in order to run “test cases” on how we think they may act in a given situation… so we can plan in advance our response.

Every teen knows how this feels when, creeping home way past their assigned curfew, they go through in their minds all the things their parents are likely to say and do in retribution. Often the actions of our representations are worse than the reality too, and even more scary.

Many things send this part of our mind into over drive. We assign sentience to things that are not even alive. Many of us know the experience of actually reasoning with a car that is not starting for us. Promising it a full service and the best oil money can buy if only it would start this one more time.

The reason I call it beautiful however is that much of our literature, art and mythology come from this aspect of us. We personify aspects of the human condition… love, war, famine, disease… as real entities. Greek and other Mythology almost had a character for everything you could imagine from emotions (Goddess of Love) to weather (Thor god of Thunder).

Monotheism can be described as simply the personification of absolutely everything into one character.

The art, mythology and literature to come out of this is something I would not have us live without. They are great things.

However the dark side of this, and the cause of beliefs such as religion and the others you list… is that many people have a tendency to take those personified representations and actually to start believing they exist as real entities, real characters. From this some of the worst of humanity has stemmed and I find it painful to admit that one of the sources of most of what is beautiful in humanity is also a source of much of what is dark.

[KCfromNC]

Originally Posted by Hawkins

Can you scientifically prove that soul and afterlife don't exist? You can't. Which means it bears a chance that they exist as more than half of the human believe so.

Do you believe in everything which can't be conclusively disproved? If so, please send me the 10 million dollars you owe me. You can't prove with absolute certainty that you don't, so pay up.

Now randomly assume that they exist. Then your conclusion that "I don't believe..." becomes a nonsense.

Really? Simply assuming something is true makes it so? I guess you owe me another 10 million dollars, since I just "randomly assumed" that you do.

If however your answer is "no", it is also a statement of faith showing that you are religious.

No, it's a tentative conclusion based on it behaving exactly like a lot of other things which also don't exist. Nothing in life is certain; that doesn't mean that everything is just random guessing.

[Nozzferrahhtoo]

Originally Posted by Hawkins

Can you scientifically prove that soul and afterlife don't exist? You can't. Which means it bears a chance that they exist as more than half of the human believe so.

It does not matter if 1 person believes it or 10 billion. IT either is true... or it is not true. The number of people involved is irrelevant.

Of course there is a "chance" these things exist, but do not conflate there being a "chance" of something with it being in any way credible.

Are atheists open to the possibility that there might exist some god entity? Yes, many people are, myself included. However it is worth clarifying exactly what this means.

To help clarify I can mention that I am ALSO open to the possibility that as I type this a large pokka dot coloured VW Beetle will materialise 5 metres above my head, fall upon me and kill me instantly.

However clearly being open to the possibility is very different from holding any expectation that it will happen, possessing any argument, data, reasons or evidence to lend any credibility to the idea that it will happen, or operating in my life as if this event is likely to occur.

It is the same with being open to the possibility of god existing. I am JUST as open to this possibility at this time as I am about the VW beetle above. I also have JUST as much evidence, argument, data and reasons to lend credibility to the idea such an entity exists, or to operate in my life as if it does.

Many people, and I am not saying you are one of them though there is reason to think you are given what you wrote, falsely equate being open to a possibility as being the same as affording that possibility any credibility at the present time. They are not the same at all.

Many of us, myself included are MORE than open to the possibility. Regardless of how open we make ourselves to it (short of just accepting it for the sake of it or on your say so) there is no evidence, argument, data or reasons on offer to me that allows me to lend it even a modicum of credence at the present time.

I am however very willing to be open to the possibility and research it, as you will see I have done at length in experiments on "consecrated" crackers as described here. Were I not open to the possibility AT ALL, there would have been literally no reason for me to engage in spending so much of my time researching it.... before finding it devoid of basis.

[nimchimpsky]

Originally Posted by mikebnllnb

I am very happy for nimchimpsky. But I fail to see how this could be considered proof of god or the soul. What nim recounts sounds like what many Buddhist or highly trained martial art practitioners experience. I do believe with enough discipline and self awareness that people can do amazing things through sheer will alone. I however don't see the hand of god in those things.

And as for as you angry allen. If you think nimchimpsky's new found faith in a higher power should be enough proof for me. It sadly is not. Many people in time of hardship turn to things to help them make sense of their lives. Some turn to drugs and alcohol. Some turn to sex. Some turn to therapy. Some turn to god. I say whatever works. I have known several atheist that have become believers including my best friend. I except them as they are. I wish in some of those instances that acceptance was returned. Allen I'm not angry a you for your beliefs. Why the animosity at me for mine?

I chose not to take a leap of faith. I live a happy life without faith, other than faith in myself and those I love.

I agree that the power of healing doesn't necessarily always in and of itself prove God or the existence of souls. However I do think that it proves there is a deeper reality than our physical world. Healing like the kind I experienced highlights the shortcomings of medicine and the mainstream model we have of illness. It begs a new explanation.

Our physical world is merely a manifestation of a much deeper reality, what I call the spiritual world. However, the word "spiritual" is so stigmatized. I don't mean "supernatural". I just mean a part of the natural world that many people don't acknowledge. But the spirituality I'm talking about is just as real as the laws of Physics. In fact I think as Physics advances, it will begin to acknowledge and explain those deeper parts of reality. I just choose to use the words God and souls. But we should be careful not to get caught up in the words--what matters is the idea itself. People can choose to believe in it or not, but it makes little difference for me. It doesn't really matter what people believe. Everyone has a spiritual aspect to them. I feel people's energy and souls regardless of their personal or religious beliefs.

I think I should clarify what I mean by God. For me God simply means the infinite source of Love in our Universe. Feelings like gratitude, oneness, brotherhood, peace, and kindness make up God. The life and energy force behind everything--including thoughts, feelings, and the physical world--are all part of God. I don't believe in that because I can see and hear again. I believe in that because I perceive energy or chi directly. When I get acupuncture done, I FEEL my meridians opening up. I can trace all the meridians in acupuncture not because I've studied it, but just from direct perception. There is no aspect of faith there for me because I see and feel it. I see a glow of swirling colors around people, I feel other people's feelings and I feel their physical ailments when I'm near them. I feel when people are having negative thoughts too. I can feel the sucking quality and see the blackness of an aura that is overcome by emotions like jealousy, selfishness, depression, rage. When my ex-wife was abusing me, her aura was so big and so black it filled the whole room. There is no leap of faith because I am not believing in something I cannot see. It's as easy as believing in the red sweater I'm wearing right now, and the cup of apple cider I'm drinking.

My belief in a soul stems from the fact I have separated my consciousness from my body many times. My soul or energy field or whatever you want to call it has travelled places my physical body can't. That for me is physical evidence of a soul. Again there is no leap of faith because there's no other explanation for how I could be outside of my body, and not only that, but see perfectly when I was legally or totally blind. I could see things and places I couldn't physically see because I was blind. It couldn't just be a brain mechanism or the brain fooling me into believing I was elsewhere by using its knowledge of perspective because I was receiving information I've never received through my eyes. Blindness aside, my eyes were closed during most of these experiences.

However, my recent experiences have confirmed for me personally that there is a God (in the sense I described before) and there are spiritual beings like angels. The reason for this for me is that everything, literally everything I have prayed for to God and the Angels has come true. I prayed for my job back and I got it. I prayed that my ex-wife would begin her own journey of healing and she has. She has admitted to me things that she never would have admitted before! I prayed that the people I know IRL would be receptive to and understand my experience. Everyone I have told so far has been receptive and open to it--people that I was so sure would say "that's impossible!" just replied by saying "that's wonderful!" I prayed that my relationship with my parents would be mended and both my parents and I feel closer than ever before. I even pray for simple small things and they come true one after another. One might chalk it up to coincidence, but I've had a 100% success rate. Even my prayers for other people have been coming true for them--and they don't even know I've been praying for them!

My experience has also confirmed for me that the physical is a manifestation of the spiritual. Human beings are firmly planted in the spiritual as well as physical realms. Many individuals choose to deny or suppress their spiritual selves (and I find it has little correlation with religious belief or lack thereof--it has more to do with how they live their life). We all have a Higher Self or Guardian Angel or whatever you would like to call it that is the perfect iteration of ourselves on Earth. The Higher Self or Guardian Angel can see even if your physical eyes are blind, can hear even if your physical ears are deaf. That is the part of me that could see and hear when I was physically deaf-blind and I left my body. Recognizing this part of ourselves and being connected to is is what allows us to live at our highest potential. Processing and letting go of emotions, beliefs, and thoughts that "tie us down" to a certain reality is like pushing away the obstacles that were previously there so we can have a direct relationship with our inner God/soul/the part of us that is nothing but pure Love. I admit I still have a lot more learning to do, but this recent experience has allowed me to become much more in tune with my spiritual self.

This is a conclusion I have come to through personal meditation so I don't expect other people to necessarily agree or "get it." A lot of it has a very personal aspect and in the end we all have to come to understand what we truly believe. Religion has been made into more of a social public phenomenon, but I think religion in the truest sense is very personal. Take this how you like. Believe in it or don't. All I can do is recount my own experiences and explain why I believe in what I do. More than anything, I just hope my experience helps other people realize what is true for them and what enables them to live at their fullest potential. There's no one true answer. There is just the one true answer for you.

[tgnostic]

But the academic difference between idealism at artificial communication devices and the spiritualism of the factual or actually focused experience during one's internet session should be noticeable in the versed language on the posts. We most agree.

[Hueffenhardt]

It is well-known and established how the biological brain can direct hormones to be released that can stimulate the immune system to heal the body. The field of scientific research is called neuropsychoimmunology and you can even take a course on it at Georgetown University if you'd like: NSCI-510 Neuropsychoimmunology | 2010-2011 Course Catalog | Georgetown University

There is nothing mystical about this, nor is it beyond science. I don't understand why people jump to a supernatural explanation just because they themselves are ignorant of the scientific explanation.

From wiki:

Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) is the study of the interaction between psychological processes and the nervous and immune systems of the human body.[1] PNI takes an interdisciplinary approach, incorporating psychology, neuroscience, immunology, physiology, pharmacology, molecular biology, psychiatry, behavioral medicine, infectious diseases, endocrinology, and rheumatology.
The main interests of PNI are the interactions between the nervous and immune systems and the relationships between mental processes and health. PNI studies, among other things, the physiological functioning of the neuroimmune system in health and disease; disorders of the neuroimmune system (autoimmune diseases; hypersensitivities; immune deficiency); and the physical, chemical and physiological characteristics of the components of the neuroimmune system in vitro, in situ, and in vivo.

[nimchimpsky]

Originally Posted by Nozzferrahhtoo

It does not matter if 1 person believes it or 10 billion. IT either is true... or it is not true. The number of people involved is irrelevant.

From my experience, beliefs very much color reality. A lot of our reality is shaped by our beliefs. I think part of the reason angels and God exist is because so many people believe in them that they have come to exist. The higher parts of our reality are shaped by the mind. Reality is not a solid unmoving statue, with one absolute truth. Reality is inherently dependent upon observation. There's an interaction between the observer and the observed which creates reality.

This new way of seeing things has been largely confirmed in Quantum Mechanics and other fields of science. Even scientists are beginning to realize how much of a role the observer plays in reality, through experiments like the Double-Slit Experiment.

When shining light through a slit onto a wall, the light is solid and becomes diffuse at the edges. When shining light through two slits, rather than two areas of a lot of light that diffuse at the edges, you get a pattern of light and dark bars, with the brightest bars in the middle and more diffuse ones towards the edges. That's not too impressive. The light particles are interfering with each other--reinforcing each other in some areas and canceling each other out in other areas--which is what causes the interference pattern or bars. But what is noteworthy is that even this experiment is done on the quantum level, with electrons or protons, when you emit them one at a time, the interference pattern still shows up. In other words, they interfere with each other even when they aren't being emitted at the same time. How is that possible? It begs a new interpretation of what defines reality.

For anyone who is interested, here is the explanation in more detail:

For any particle small enough for quantum effects to be significant—electron, proton, etc.—, where it will arrive at the screen is highly determinate (in that quantum mechanics predicts accurately the probability that it will arrive at any point on the screen). However, in what sequence members of a series of singly emitted things (e.g., electrons) build up the final distribution pattern is completely unpredictable. The experimental facts are so highly reproducible that there is virtually no argument about them, but the appearance of there being an uncaused event (because of the unpredictability of the sequencing) has aroused a great deal of cognitive dissonance and attempts to account for the sequencing by reference to supposed "additional variables."
For example, when electrons are fired at the target screen in bursts, it is easy to account for the interference pattern that results by assuming that electrons that travel in pairs are interfering with each other because they arrive at the screen at the same time; but when a laboratory apparatus was developed that could reliably fire single electrons at the screen,[36] the emergence of an interference pattern suggested that each electron was interfering with itself, and therefore in some sense the electron had to be going through both slits.[37] For something envisaged as an unimaginably small particle to be able to interfere with itself would suggest that this single "sub-atomic particle" was in two places at once, but that idea contradicts our everyday experience of discrete objects. It was easier to conceptualize the electron as a wave than to accept another, more disturbing implication (from the viewpoint of our everyday notions of reality): that quantum objects are able to exist and behave in ways that defy classical interpretation.
However, when one small particle (electron, proton, photon, etc.) is fired at a time, it also becomes possible to detect the point on the screen at which it arrives—and another result was demonstrated that could not easily be squared with experience of the macro world, the world of everyday experience.
When electrons are fired singly through a double-slit apparatus they do not cluster around two single points directly on lines between the emitter and the two slits, but instead one by one they create an interference pattern. However, they do not arrive at the screen in any predictable order. In other words, knowing where all the previous electrons appeared on the screen and in what order tells us nothing about where any future electron will hit (although we can calculate the probability of it striking at any specified point).[38]
The particles (the same applies to photons) arrive at the screen in an unpredictable and inexplicable random sequence, and the appearance of a causeless selection event in a highly orderly and predictable formulation of the interference pattern has caused many people to try to find additional determinants in the system that, were they to become known, would account for why each impact with the target appears.[39]
Recent studies have found that interference patterns manifest even for such large (compared to protons, etc.) objects as molecular structures like fullerene (C60).[40]

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