“supernatural-lite.”

[Zinjanthropos]

I was just using language you provided

Doc, I'm the wrong guy to talk to. I don't drink supernatural-lite, a word which I'm sorry to say seems like a synonym for Kool-Aid. I'm a natural born skeptic so I wonder what a supernatural skeptic has doubts about. Good luck with your book.

[Anu]

I'm a natural born skeptic so I wonder what a supernatural skeptic has doubts about.

Now, now ... nothing to be ashamed of.

[Secular Sanity]

Not just space aliens, necessarily. Of more general category, they'd be deities of natural origin like pseudo-scientific Doctor Manhattan of the Watchmen.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/hwg73ICPOnY

Now, that’s the secret to a happy marriage; male intellectual humility. 

Seeing Purpose Behind Life Events

I do that, too, though. Even when I know I’m doing it; I can’t stop doing it.

…Logically, you might scoff at this belief, especially if you are an atheist. After all, if you don’t believe in any supernatural powers, who, exactly, is arranging these events for your benefit? Who is guiding evolution? However, as we know from other lines of research, implicit beliefs are not controlled by our explicit thought processes, especially when we’re under pressure or time constraints. Research on implicit biases shows that we cannot simply turn off these cognitive heuristics even if our explicit beliefs conflict with them.

…Along the lines of this research, I wanted to examine whether atheists were subject to an implicit bias to view their own lives teleologically. There seemed to be some support for the idea that you can’t override the implicit bias to view the world teleologically, both in the scientific literature and anecdotally.

…As might be expected, religious people were much more likely to endorse teleological explanations for life events. However, atheists also did so to some extent, and more than one would expect based upon their explicit beliefs.

[C C]

Not just space aliens, necessarily. Of more general category, they'd be deities of natural origin like pseudo-scientific Doctor Manhattan of the Watchmen.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/hwg73ICPOnY

Now, that’s the secret to a happy marriage; male intellectual humility. 

My first glimpse of the 2009 movie, I guess. That scene took place on Mars in the 1985 graphic novel series, whereas this looked like the Moon or something. I read that 12 issues long comic online recently due to the HBO sequel version piquing my interest as to the prior history of these wild characters and stuff I was seeing (like rainfalls of squid, with drivers stopping along roadways to casually sweep off the sticky nuisance).

Darned if I can still figure out why the Calvary slash Cyclops bunch were using masks like Rorschach's (obviously I missed something important in the conversations early on). Rorschach was nutty in a conspiracy paranoia sense, and supposedly homophobic and misogynistic -- but I don't remember anything in the comic book series where he stood out as overtly racist. Adrian Veidt didn't like or trust him because Rorschach had a black and white sense of right and wrong, and met his fate in the end due to being the only one standing up to principle or the horror of what Adrian Veidt had done. (I have no idea how faithful the movie was to that supposedly "unadaptable" 1985 graphic novel.)

Seeing Purpose Behind Life Events

I do that, too, though. Even when I know I’m doing it; I can’t stop doing it.

…Logically, you might scoff at this belief, especially if you are an atheist. After all, if you don’t believe in any supernatural powers, who, exactly, is arranging these events for your benefit? Who is guiding evolution? However, as we know from other lines of research, implicit beliefs are not controlled by our explicit thought processes, especially when we’re under pressure or time constraints. Research on implicit biases shows that we cannot simply turn off these cognitive heuristics even if our explicit beliefs conflict with them.

…Along the lines of this research, I wanted to examine whether atheists were subject to an implicit bias to view their own lives teleologically. There seemed to be some support for the idea that you can’t override the implicit bias to view the world teleologically, both in the scientific literature and anecdotally.

…As might be expected, religious people were much more likely to endorse teleological explanations for life events. However, atheists also did so to some extent, and more than one would expect based upon their explicit beliefs.

The view of time that I most often entertain (where it is not a process outputting ephemeral world changes which replace each other) kind of negates the possibility of anything guiding or regulating our lives and everything else in a moment-by-moment fashion. Apart from that governance being the built-in patterns of the co-existing different states (vaguely like a railroad track following a geometrical design, or the leg of a tall chair being carved with decorative curves along its length).

By coincidence, the way Doctor Manhattan experiences time is the way I conceive it. Though in the course of that he violates or transcends the usual relational limitation of a brain state or chunk-sequence of them only being conscious of itself and/or what its memory contains (not the whole of one's lifetime from beginning to end being manifested as immediately real).

[Magical Realist]

If it happens, it's not supernatural. Supernatural is nothing more than a belief, like any other.

That sounds like your own personal belief.

If God is a product of some unknown event in some mysterious unseeable realm that existed since the beginning of time and if he is the creator then we/universe might be the closest thing to supernatural there is. Depends how he did it. 

Will someone show me something supernatural?

Why? Isn't it the skeptic's premise that if anything can be faked, then it has to be fake?

[Secular Sanity]

The view of time that I most often entertain (where it is not a process outputting ephemeral world changes which replace each other) kind of negates the possibility of anything guiding or regulating our lives and everything else in a moment-by-moment fashion. Apart from that governance being the built-in patterns of the co-existing different states (vaguely like a railroad track following a geometrical design, or the leg of a tall chair being carved with decorative curves along its length).

By coincidence, the way Doctor Manhattan experiences time is the way I conceive it. Though in the course of that he violates or transcends the usual relational limitation of a brain state or chunk-sequence of them only being conscious of itself and/or what its memory contains (not the whole of one's lifetime from beginning to end being manifested as immediately real).

Refresh my memory, C C. Was your conception of time Eternalism?

[Zinjanthropos]

Why? Isn't it the skeptic's premise that if anything can be faked, then it has to be fake?

Just show me it isn't.

[Magical Realist]

Why? Isn't it the skeptic's premise that if anything can be faked, then it has to be fake?

Just show me it isn't.

How can a photo or video show it isn't fake?

[C C]

The view of time that I most often entertain (where it is not a process outputting ephemeral world changes which replace each other) kind of negates the possibility of anything guiding or regulating our lives and everything else in a moment-by-moment fashion. Apart from that governance being the built-in patterns of the co-existing different states (vaguely like a railroad track following a geometrical design, or the leg of a tall chair being carved with decorative curves along its length).

By coincidence, the way Doctor Manhattan experiences time is the way I conceive it. Though in the course of that he violates or transcends the usual relational limitation of a brain state or chunk-sequence of them only being conscious of itself and/or what its memory contains (not the whole of one's lifetime from beginning to end being manifested as immediately real).

Refresh my memory, C C. Was your conception of time Eternalism?

That's arguably it, although I don't restrict it to simple conceptions like block-universes or that such is even deterministic. If those become necessary features of it then I'd have to reject the classification. Alternatively, I consider it the equivalent of existence actually being substantive rather than existence being no more than the fleeting episodes of a quasi-dreamlike yet highly regulated process (presentism). Presentism has a magical or conjuring aspect to it. I put the latter mildly out of respect for the view's popularity.

The so-called "growing block-universe" (or possibilism) I consider to reduce to eternalism. Since the past is preserved, and once death is reached ALL the different states of one's entire life would co-exist. Either that edge of new creation taking place in it (corresponding to presentism's "now") is a superfluous addition from the perspective of eternalism, or the preservation of the past is a superfluous add-on from the perspective of presentism.

[Zinjanthropos]

Why? Isn't it the skeptic's premise that if anything can be faked, then it has to be fake?

Just show me it isn't. I don’t think I’m the target audience here, you are.

How can a photo or video show it isn't fake?

Not my problem.

I think the good doctor here is spinning woo. Why? He suggests that I might be one of several religious non-believers (nice way of saying atheist) that takes some sort of leap of faith to replace non-beliefs with things related to LGM and life on other worlds, etc. That is Kool-Aid no matter how you pour it (supernatural-lite). I thought of Erik Von Daniken when I read that.

I don’t think I’m the target audience here, you are.