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Comment by nulld3v | Hacker News Reader

Well that's the thing right? First hand accounts alone are not worth much in my mind, especially since there are so many other first hand accounts of different religions. Who am I to believe?

Generally, I follow the "don't trust, verify" approach for first hand accounts. I don't believe something is true, even if 1000 people tell me the same thing. I think this is a reasonable approach, especially in today's age of misinformation. 1000 people can repeat the same false rumor as long as the rumor seems reasonable.

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> not worth much

Interesting change of tone. Now it's already worth something, just not much. But previously you wrote:

> there is just no evidence (or at least I haven't seen any) ... personal experience is also valid evidence, and I have seen none of that either.

You went from total denial to already assigning worth.

This isn't "today's age of misinformation" stuff, by the way. These are literally thousands of years old historical records of eyewitness accounts. It is in fact "the human mind is just a meat computer" that is the modern day misinformation. It's leading you further away from the soul. So that demons can take over.

Yeah, sorry for the inconsistency there. I didn't consider that personal anecdotes and hearsay are technically evidence as evidence is literally anything that supports a conclusion.

It is however, a good indicator for how little I value those two forms of evidence however.

My point with "today's age of misinformation" is not really that there is more misinformation these days. That may be true, but it could also just be that we have access to a higher volume of information. It's more that we are more aware of misinformation, and can develop habits + tools to deal with misinformation.

Any evidence here would be unsound if you try to apply natural science’s requirements to it.

Scientific method is about making observable predictions; i.e., it ultimately hinges on the experience of the observer and existence of observer’s mind. When you try to apply it to the theory of mind itself, you short-circuit that logic. There is pretty much no useful (falsifiable or provable) claim or conclusion to be made, and all evidence is immediately tainted as it gets deconstructed into arbitrary categories in vogue today, goes through the meatgrinder of lossy verbal descriptions, and ultimately gets subjectively interpreted by your own mind.

In other words, it is not the problem of the evidence—this is among the best evidence you can get—it is the problem of the framework you are interpreting it in.

In many scenarios, the observer is a machine or tool, not a human mind. And of course there's that whole aspect of replication along with that "scientific method" thing. If science was simply the act of humans making observable predictions and telling them to others, then there would be no difference between "science" and "personal anecdote".

I also don't understand why the mind is relevant. We are trying to prove something that exists outside the mind right? However, even if this phenomena was something that only humans could observe, it would still be testable with science. Science makes observations about human behavior all the time.

Ok, all that said, almost none of this is relevant because my proof standards are not as rigorous as scientific standards. I just want to see some videos of the beings, I'm not asking someone to perform a study here.

> In many scenarios, the observer is a machine or tool, not a human mind.

An unconscious, non-experiencing mechanism is not an observer in the way the term “empirical”[0] is meant—to observe is to experience.

> I also don't understand why the mind is relevant.

See above.

(I do not think I really understood the rest of your comment.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical_evidence

You can observe the state of a machine that is expected to derive it's state from an event or state of another object. For example, a video camera derives it's state from the light rays entering the lenses.

I'm asking for some video evidence of religion. So really I am asking for an opportunity to observe a state of a machine, albeit a very specific state. I suppose you could argue this is just a very roundabout way to indirectly experience religion.

> You can observe the state of a machine

Yes, but you still observe it, right? That’s how evidence is created.

Religion operates at a level closer to philosophy. You can interrogate theories of mind logically, but when you try to apply scientific method it breaks down—there’s no hard evidence you can obtain to prove or disprove your hypothesis. Similar is true of the claims made by a religion, though its obvious weak point is it’s more axiomatic and less logically rigorous (which is why I am not a proponent).

But why is religion special in this regard? Why does religion necessarily operate at a level closer to philosophy but other things don't?

What other things do you mean, and why do you think it’s special?

“At this level” in context of this discussion simply means matters outside of the scope of natural sciences. Both philosophy (e.g., of mind) and religion make claims that are non-provable and non-falsifiable using scientific method. They are orthogonal to it.

> that whole aspect of replication along with that "scientific method" thing

So uh, religion has been replicated quite a lot. We have historical records of it. We've seen an unprecedented revolution from religion, including science. And we've seen our pinnacle of civilization beginning to collapse since most people abandoned God. How much more proof/evidence/anecdata you need? We still track time in years since Jesus was born. That was 2024 years ago.

> even if this phenomena was something that only humans could observe, it would still be testable with science.

This is a belief. The belief that there exists nothing in the universe that cannot be tested by science. But science is filled with untestable things. Mind-numbingly humongous leaps of pure speculation about something that makes no sense and cannot be measured. Like dark matter, spacetime singularities, or "the big bang".

Science can't even measure consciousness! Or do you take IQ tests as gospel?

I have not heard of this replication before so I would be glad to see some examples of this! I mean I'm fairly convinced Jesus did exist, I'm just not convinced that they had any of their spiritual powers.

I have definitely not seen our civilization start to collapse though. I'm not even sure what that would look like (maybe a transition to a low-trust society or something)?

Of course, I do not believe everything can be tested by science, but my belief that religion specifically can be tested is because religion describes the most powerful forces in the universe. And not only that, humans can interact with these forces! So we should be able to detect these forces by observing how humans behave when they interact with these forces.

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