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From: rlr@pyuxn.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: more on atheism
Message-ID: <901@pyuxn.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 21-Jul-84 18:38:45 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxn.901
Posted: Sat Jul 21 18:38:45 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Jul-84 03:42:22 EDT
References: <359@kpnoa.UUCP> <297@edison.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Communications Research, Piscataway N.J.
Lines: 31

> The thing to remember is that both psychic phenomena and religious experience
> are subjective, and therefore belief and disbelief make a definite difference.
> Since this type of thing doesn't fit very well with scientific provability,
> it is easy to ridicule, but it makes sense psychologically.  There is plenty
> of evidence with weight-lifting and other physical activity that if you don't
> believe that you can do something, you have less chance of doing it.  Why
> shouldn't this apply even more for something that is totally subjective?

And what this passage from John Owens indicates is that, as many have been
trying to say, the power of belief is very strong, and DOES have a positive
effect on the believer.  (Look at the "success" of the "believe-in-yourself"
school of books/therapies.)  On the contrary to his implication, it makes a
LOT of sense from a scientific standpoint:  believing in what you're doing does
apparently affect one's behavior and outlook, and thus it must have had a
positive effect on one's biochemistry as well (in order to cause those changes
in behavior).

The question arises as to whether what you choose to believe in is valid,
independent of whether it has an effect on you (if you believe strongly enough
in a positive way, it more than likely will).  As others have pointed out,
the brain remembers what it can, and fills in the rest (witness evidence
regarding the questionable validity of hypnotic recall).  Our brains seem to
have incredible patterning capabilities that "fill in the blanks", but the way
that those blanks get filled in is going to be based on what sets of
presumptive belief patterns are present in the person's brain.  If one believes
strongly that there is a deity affecting your life, recollection and
understanding of events are going to be filtered through that presumption.
-- 
WHAT IS YOUR NAME?			Rich Rosen
WHAT IS YOUR NET ADDRESS?		pyuxn!rlr
WHAT IS THE CAPITAL OF ASSYRIA?		I don't know that ...  ARGHHHHHHHH!