You see, I respect you for challenging my beliefs (which are young and constantly changing and hardly firmly held, militant.) I suppose my thoughts concerning this topic are more theories which appeal to me, than 'beliefs' (if that word is to be the source of much of this debating.)
I disagree with you though:
'What has more of a chance of being true'- okay, QUOTE me the odds on this one. You are so sure of yourself, and so convicted that your opinion has 'more of a chance of being true'- back this up please.
The celestial teapot thing is not as relevant an argument as you make it out to be, but I agree that I could not disprove your belief- and (more importantly) NOR WOULD I TRY TO! However, seeming as you're a man who claims to be such a 'fact-based' character, can you honestly liken the belief in an orbiting tea-pot, held by ONE hypothetical individual, to the firmly held, time-enduring faiths and philosophies, in the existence of SOMETHING, ANYTHING more than psychological and biological processes being the soul causes of our life on this planet?
You seem to be convinced that we (well, I don't know how many people share the exact same views as me, which I've not really detailed completely here anyway, so I'll use 'I' for arguments sake) I am the one with some detailed concept of something totally unrealistic as part of my explanation of our existence. This is actually not true! I totally reject the idea of a soul, based on logic , as I have mentioned; yet I vaguely believe in spirits, without having any idea of the actual specifics or form a spirit might take. All I know is that there have been an awful lot of cases, wherein strange occurences have happened, seemingly down to spirits; spiritual forces; and spiritual energy (some, admittedly hoaxes and fantasies, yet others, less likely so) and you have effectively nothing to disprove that!! I am not denying the existence of psychological and biological processes, they can be proved, and are, I am sure, a major part of our living! Yet their existence and influence is not totally incompatable with the existence of a spirit: the whole point of a spirit, is that it is not as easily seen or understood as the body or mind.
Ok we're just retreading old ground here. To me, as I've said, all of this and anything paranormal has as much validity as the tooth fairy to me. As long as nobody can provide evidence for it. (it's irrelevant that it cannot be disproved as I've established because neither can the tooth fairy or the celestial tea pot etc etc). That's my position from a logical point of view and it's infallible.
Things in the past have been believed to be paranormal have been proven to be actually real entities and processes but they were almost always not the fanciful, bizarre explanations that we're cooked up before a proper scientific explanation was given (personally, I ALWAYS find the real scientific explanations given a lot more fanciful and beautiful but that's just my opinion).
So, in essence, what I'm saying is. I'm not denying that there is an effect here. Like say a predisposed belief in something more that flesh and blood through the ages but what that means is is your kind of explanation for it is the tooth fairy here, rather than the actual effect. Personal belief in a soul is not an explanation in and of itself, but it's definitely something that is happening in the real world and in my opinion this is just another thing that will be easily swept aside by science and be completely explained. Whether it be through a symptom of our minds to believe in something more (irrelevant of what it is specifically) or a symptom of the world we grow up in.
If we didn't know where or what the brain was, would you deny the existence of thoughts as well?
No because if we didn't know what or where the brain was, we wouldn't know that our thoughts came from it in the first place. We'd know that we were thinking, obviously but not that that had any connection to a brain of any kind.
The real question that you're trying to ask here here is simply this "If we didn't know where or what the *X* was, would you deny the existence of *Y* as well?
You could replace X with an egg and Y with a chicken, X with where our thoughts came from and Y with our thoughts or X with any cause and Y with any effect.
You're left with a logic puzzle and the answer is this:
As long as X exists Y will always exist. What is in question, is what actually is X (providing you didn't know what an egg was)? That's what you need evidence for. So from a logical point of view Y exists. You're happy with their being a Y and so am I, I want to know what X is through evidence. Although I'm not denying the existence of X (a cause).
Similarly, you believe and many do in a soul or a spirit or whatever. The belief in a soul or spirit (Y) is what needs an explanation, and that may be that there is something more than flesh and blood to us but it could mean that our belief is simply a symptom of something else.
