Women are more right brain oriented. I think occult/psychic powers are linked to the emotions and the right side of the brain.
Left brain “attempts” to be more rational and men must deal with the social pressure from other men.
I was on an elevator once and two people mentioned something about ghosts. I told them I had talked to seven people who had had experiences with ghosts. All the men on the elevator started giving me that, “Who is this wierdo.” look. Of course, I didn’t give a shit.
The ghosts hang out in SHEOL between incarnations. LOL
You aren’t the first person to make this claim in this thread, but does anyone actually have a cite? I’m going to need some evidence that 1) emotions are centered in the right side of the brain and 2) that women are more right-brain oriented.
It’s mostly a misconception. In most people, the right side of the brain is associated with global processing and “negative” emotional states, while the left side is associated with detail-oriented processing and “positive” emotional states.
This is less true in women, who tend to distribute tasks more evenly between the hemispheres than men.
Of course spiritual and supernatural “knowledge” are inherently inferior to logic and reasoning. I exclude from the “supernatural” set intuitive thinking, which is an informal and abbreviated form of the reasoning process, probably more prone to error but nothing whatsoever supernatural about it.
Part of the problem with your argument is that no such thing as “spiritual or supernatural knowledge” has ever been demonstrated to exist, and there have been formal inquiries into the field for over 150 years. You can’t reasonably make reference to personal, arbitrary, and unsupported beliefs while trying to belittle systems and models that have been shown to work consistently reasonably well.
A “subtext”?? Where do you get the idea it’s a subtext? It’s not a subtext, it’s the mission not just of this site, but also of Cecil himsef: fighting ignorance. I can’t be absolutely sure that a reduction in ignorance will benefit the human race but I strongly suspect that it will, though I mention that only because you bring it up.
I challenge you to put forward a coherent argument rather than vague and confused claims that fallaciously conflate base superstition with demonstrable knowledge. We don’t have to believe in science for the obvious reason that belief has absolutely no bearing on whether scientific models work (indeed, a staple of good science is the “double-blind” test, in which neither experimenters nor subjects are aware of the status of variables they handle – this prevents human bias from potentially influencing results).
You may want to catch up on past threads regarding the investigation of the supernatural and the suggestion of science as a religion. In fact, a primer on what science and reason really are may be in order.
Similarly, most informed people really couldn’t “give a shit” what you think of ghosts. If talking to seven people who had experiences with alleged ghosts is enough evidence for you to start believing in such phenomena, you may have a credulity problem, or at least a lack of critical thinking skills. Did it ever occur to you that those seven people who assured you of the existence of ghosts might be lying, or might be remembering events in ways other than they really happened, or might have jumped to conclusions a tad early, etc.? “Ghosts” are known to be caused by indigestion at bedtime, hypnogogic and hypnopompic states, startling unexpected noises, temperature differences across structures, the wind, pets and other animals, fever, imagination, fear of the dark, dreaming, and so forth.
But, so far, they have never been shown to exist as ghosts in the supernatural sense of the word, only as constructs of our imagination and confused senses. Moreover, alleged claims of ghosts that have been formally investigated have been shown to be frauds or errors in perception whenever any information turned up at all. Yet you have no problem believing in these supernatural phenomena because you heard all of seven anectodes about them? If you heard thousands of anecdotes (as I have, regrettably) you still wouldn’t have good cause to believe in ghosts, much less to trumpet your belief here without any valid supporting arguments.
So, you are basically saying that God built men to be more likely to go to hell? He built us first, talked mostly to us all through the Bible, but it was all a setup to get more women into heaven.
Yes, this is an oh-too-frequent occurence in fiction – it is a device used by an author to avoid having to admit that they have written their characters into a narrative cul de sac from which there is no coherent, rational resolution.
In terms of triteness this device (asking the viewer to suspend their disbelief) is second only to “and they woke up and it had all been one long bad dream. The End.”
Double pffft, Abe; thanks for taking a fun subjective/anecdotal discussion and using it to insult my intelligence :rolleyes:.
The thing that I wonder about you “logic-only” people is how you interact with the physical world. It’s not like we’re just floating intellects, we do exist temporarily in a specific space and time. Given those limitations I don’t know how we could presume an infinite knowledge in any dimension. And once knowledge is finite it’s flawed - it’s cut off somewhere, while someone else might have chosen or just had the good luck to go further. How can you claim to “know it all”? I think you’ve just drawn a boundary that makes you comfortable. Which is fine, but annoying when you assert superiority over people who’ve made different choices. People need and everyone uses faith - Abe, you’ve simply put all of yours in logic. You think that’s an “out” that makes you better? Maybe it just means you haven’t challenged yourself with anything that wasn’t easily explained.
Part of fighting ignorance is demonstrating that life is not a simple black-and-white affair; that we should have respect and appreciation for the multidimensional nature of human reality.
And superstition is a powerful crutch that every human culture uses. Only a fool would deny the utility and necessity of crutches. I just happened to read this last night, from The Girlfriends’ Guide to Surviving the First Year of Mothering:
“…our maternal superstition takes over and we become certain that something unspeakable will happen to our baby if we are not grateful and appreciative enough. Never forget the power of superstition over mothers; it is MOTHERS who knock on wood, spit on the ground and whisper ‘godblessem’ when a child’s name is mentioned.”
So because some people reject the idea of a supernatural world due to lack of evidence or logical grounding, then they must believe we know everything? Oookaay!
I wonder, is there a poll out there that shows evidence of women falling prey to fallacies of logic more often than men?
Okay, apparently I have to spell this out more specifically.
Abe is asserting that logical knowledge is always superior to spiritual. That is what he said. So there must be nothing that can be known spiritually that logic cannot explain - meaning that logic must be a way of “knowing everything”.
Abe, I believe the same as you, but it is a belief. There’s no objective evidence that the universe even exists outside your own brain. Even if you accept the current state of physics, you can’t prove that ghosts (to take one example) don’t exist–maybe they just hate experiments and stay away when logical-thinking types are investigating.
There’s a strong tendency amongst those who revere logic to discard anything that can’t be proved–which is just as ignorant as believing in astrology. It makes me itch when my–intelligent, creative and usually somewhat rational–friends suggest that a particular reaction is “probably something from a past life” but I can’t really refute it. The “informal and abbreviated form of the reasoning process” that we call intuition can produce results when scientific research/reasoning cannot. If this process results in a conclusion that you find unacceptable, you can’t argue it away–we’ve already gone past logic.
You say
And also…
So you’ve got a bunch of “formal investigations” (of no specific number) that YOU believe, but you don’t believe the “anecdotes.” I’m with you, I don’t believe them either, but you don’t have proof–you have a bunch of evidence that you believe (there’s that word again) is more convincing than someone else’s evidence.
Attempting to get the atmosphere away from the too-serious tone it has taken, he quotes Robert Palmer:
Ain’t me, it’s the people that say
The men are leading the women astray
But I say, it’s the women today
Are smarter than the man in every way
That’s right, the women are smarter
That’s right, the women are smarter
And, dang it, I did NOT stutter on the Submit button!
We don’t have to believe in science for the obvious reason that belief has absolutely no bearing on whether scientific models work (indeed, a staple of good science is the “double-blind” test, in which neither experimenters nor subjects are aware of the status of variables they handle – this prevents human bias from potentially influencing results).
Horsehockey and horsefeathers. Scientists do science “wrong” all the time. They believe they have the results they were looking for and it turns out they don’t. Or they come up with a perfectly logical, empirically sound explanation that turns out to be bzzzzt…thank you for playing because of erroneous assumptions. Cold fusion, anyone? Or how about the original explanation for the metamorphosis from meat to flies, which seemed reasonable at the time but didn’t notice larvae.
AND
One of the things I learned in “Psychological Experiments and Methods” is how frequently the act of studying something - human behaviors in particular - interferes with its occurrence. There are some things that simply cannot be studied scientifically because there’s no way of isolating the variables adequately. The other thing we learned is that scientists often forget to consider all of the possible variables in the studies they design, leading to erroneous conclusions. One of our assignments was to re-do published work, only fix the experimental design.
Plus, just for the record, I happen to be married to…A SCIENTIST!!! An Environmental Microbiologist who has a Ph.D. in molecular biology and a BS in biochemistry. So I’m all too aware of the limitations of that field. You should see some of the papers he’s been asked to review.
Oh, and another interesting corollary about the practice of science in this day and age - are you aware that researchers who are working in third-world countries (after receiving an excellent education here in the U.S.) often have difficulty getting their papers published in peer-review journals, while prominent U.S. researchers can often publish outright crap? There’s a saying that once your reputation is made you could publish your grocery list if you wanted. That’s because papers aren’t reviewed on a double-blind system - they’re reviewed subjectively. Egos are at stake.
So let go of that pedestal. Human beings happen to populate the field and they do so imperfectly.
Your example of the cold-fusion debacle disproves your very point. Some scientists claimed to have created cold-fusion, others tried to reproduce it and failed, a consensus Iin the wider community) was quickly reached that experimental error had led to the initial misleading results.
Your example of flies metamorphosing from meat would have come from a time that predated The Scientific Method which is a rather poncey name for sound methodology: double-blind experiments; control; reproducibility; etc.
You claim elsewhere that scientists claim that science is the only way to know anything, well if you disagree name an example of something that is known and not scientifically demonstrable.
Oh look, cold fusion brought into the conversation. Funny how science gets accused of being close minded, and in the next breath accused of considering things that later turn out to be hokey.
I don’t think anybody would say science is perfect. It is the best method we have. I don’t see your magic, ghosts, reincarnation and other amazing possiblities doing ANYTHING for the betterment of mankind. Except for an ego boost, since you are no doubt in the “know.”
No doubt your “Intuition”, were it allowed to be put to the test would no doubt have no more of a degree of sucess than chance. No doubt you have no interest in testing it, since you seem to hate science so much. Funny that you post your Luddite dribble here on the forefront of technology and science, the internet.
I’ll to ask Hubby for a good non-scientific knowledge example. BTW, he’s the one who thinks cold fusion & similar debacles give scientists a bad name. I don’t hate science at all - in fact, I was brought up by my philosophy major father to appreciate and understand logic and reason. It’s just that it’s not enough, that’s all, and I get tired of you guys waving it around as the example of perfect thought and action. It’s not. It’s about dead ends and blind alleys and mistaken hypotheses. It’s not closed-minded, it’s just often wrong, that’s all. So why be limited to it?
I acknowledge with gratitude that it’s only because of technology and reason and logic that we can have this conversation. After all, the Internet did give us more than just “porn…and stock quotes”.
Dang, it’s getting ugly again–I was hoping we could avoid that.
The original post asked why there is a significant difference between men and women when it comes to beliving in: God, survival of the soul after death, miracles, heaven, the resurrection of Christ, the Virgin birth, hell, the devil, ghosts, astrology, reincarnation.
Are you, fessie, saying that
a) science is bunk because it’s badly done?
b) because of a) women believe in ghosts, miracles, etc.?
c) women believe in (you name it)…and men don’t because men believe in science which is bunk?
I’m just trying to sort out opinions about the original question, and it’s getting difficult.
I have only myself to blame for this corner I’m in. For some reason I keep leaping into these discussions without the kind of empirical, logical, analytical information that is considered legitimate knowledge within this venue. And I can’t entirely blame you for your skepticism - if you haven’t known anything but binary thinking, it probably does sound like I’m arguing for pink elephants in the bathroom.
It seems the best course is to withdraw from this debate and do some thoughtful research using the source materials that have led me to my conclusions. It’s like I’m trying to show you a blanket but you can’t see it unless you can see how it was constructed, thread by thread, which is information I’ve long since forgotten. I’m the one who needs to explain this better.
To tie up one loose end in re: science, when I say it’s often badly done, I’m not talking about a failed experiment in a laboratory, which is of course to be expected all the time. I’m talking about work that is published and accepted into the public domain and then later disproved. I’m talking about paid scientists in University research labs whose papers are full of malarkey because their ability to use scientific methodology is less than perfect. I guess you might argue that in a vacuum there’s no way that could be true, but in the real world it is. You want to argue that eventually people will all become equally logical, exactly the same in their use and interpretation of empirical data? I’ll get out my pffft again.
I’m not saying science is total bunk, of course it isn’t, of course we’d all be lost without it - it’s just that science and empiricism and logic aren’t all there is. Although the OP later amended his statements, in his first post he linked an increased belief in the spiritual and supernatural to a decreased education level - so that people who “aren’t as smart” are relegated to lesser means of knowledge. And I don’t think that’s true, I think there’s plenty to be admired about spiritual and intuitive knowledge (I’m queasy on the supernatural myself, particularly when someone’s making money off of it).
And I’d love to know your credentials, since I’ve already given you mine - are you guys, in fact, scientists yourselves? Or are you just worshipping it from afar? If you work in computers, or the law, do you imagine that those fields function perfectly? Or that they ever will?
And, No Cool, I think the reason why women don’t use logic as extensively as men is very simple - it doesn’t work as well for us as it does for you. You’re better at it, and we have a lot of other needs that you don’t share.
There is nothing “wrong” with work that is accepted, then shown to be untrue. That describes the majority of scientific knowledge so far. What’s “wrong” with Newtonian mechanics?
There is such a thing as improperly-done science. Why do you object to it, but not “spiritual” research that is flawed on a much more profound level?
