You evidently think psychologists know a lot more than they do.
And you evidently do not accept that they know as much as they do.
While they can explain a lot, they are left with the problem of reporting.
Straw man alert.
What I am talking about if the phenomenon of confirmation bias and how recent brain imaging has told us what is actually going on in the human mind. According to SHermer, "Now a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study shows where in the brain the confirmation bias arises and how it is unconsciousand driven by emotions."
In a study involving political pundits, supporters of candidates were given unflattering information about the candidate they were supporting. What happened in their brains ws revealing. Reasoning didn't kick in at all:
" The neuroimaging results, however, revealed that the part of the brain most associated with reasoning--the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex--was quiescent. Most active were the orbital frontal cortex, which is involved in the
processing of emotions; the anterior cingulate, which is associated with
conflict resolution; the posterior cingulate, which is concerned with making judgments about
moral accountability; and--once subjects had arrived at a conclusion that made them emotionally comfortable--the ventral striatum, which is related to
reward and pleasure."
According to Westen:
""Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones,""
Essentially what this means is that when people already have their minds made up abut something (i.e. "I know the Church is true") they will perform all sorts of mental gymnastics to downplay disconfirmatory evidence, and ultimately they reward themselves with thoughts that make them feel better.
Your post is a perfect example of this; confirmation bias in action.
There is absolutely no hint of reasoning taking place in your brain. All you did was blow off my comments with self-soothing rhetoric.
When I point out that the CHurch actually tries to rush an investigator throug the baptism process, thereby denying them reasonable period to perform critical independent research, you responded with three different pieces of crap that serve only to sooth the conflict going on in your brain:
#1"All invetigators are encourage to read the Book of Mormon for themselves, pray for their own witness."
How does this resolve the problem? You merely assume that reading the Book of Mormon is all one needs to do to reach an informed conclusion about the truth claims of the Church. How absurd. But they do not encourage anyone to read the
entire Book of Mormon before committing to baptism because they do not expect them to make a decision based on information. They want a decision based on emotion.
#2 "Of course, since you have denied that there is such a witness then you can't progress any further in a civil discussion about this.
Ah, the old self-soothing canard about how your opponent must be uncivil and "embittered." Again excusing yourself from engaging in any kind of reasoning or self-critical analysis. Your presence here is all about soothing charity. You get off on writing up ridiculous responses like these because it makes you feel good. ANd here is your third piece of ignorance:
#3 "I suppose next time you go to a doctor and he tells you about a needed medical procedure, you are going to tell him you have to go to medical school before you can make an informed decision. Sure."
What the hell are you talking about? So now ignorant 19 year old kids serving LDS missions, with no advice other than "read and pray," are comparable to doctors with 10 years of advanced education?
I wish I could have seen the MRI when your brain hopped through so many mental obstacles to come up with this little tid-bit of stupidity. You are one of the wort apologists at FAIR because you don't even seem to realize how stupid yur comments are. Your reasoning department has completely shut down. This is all about conjuring up ways to make charity feel good in face of many problematic disconfirmatory evidences about her faith. So stop pretending you came here to debate anything. You don't debate. You never have. You hang around with pithy comments because it is mentally soothing to think you are somehow sticking it to those who present disconfirmatory evidences.
“All knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it...Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty as regards reality." - Albert Einstein