asbestosman wrote:The topic in sacrament meeting was obediance. One speaker recounted a story of a man who was with the coast guard in WWII. The ship went in to port and all the sailors got drunk except for him. When going back out to sea, a battleship hailed them and demanded that they identify themselves or else they would be fired upon. Unfortunately everyone was drunk except the Mormon boy. He didn't know what to do, but then his borhter appeared to him and told him how to respond to the other ship. He did so and they were safe. Later he found out that his brother had been killed.
Analysis? Why is this not seen as evidence of the supernatural?
Because it has no statistical significance. It is an isolated event and probably not even true.
Knowledge was apparently obtained through this that he would not otherwise have been able to obtain.
What knowledge? If I decide to say home from a movie and the rest of the family gets in a car crash on the way to the movie, did I gain knowledge or did I just not want to see the movie?
when believers want to give their claims more weight, they dress these claims up in scientific terms. When believers want to belittle atheism or secular humanism, they call it a "religion". -Beastie
yesterday's Mormon doctrine is today's Mormon folklore.-Buffalo
Scottie wrote:Is there a name for this phenomenon, which I see constantly in LDS meetings, where stories that confirm ones belief are accepted without requiring the slightest shred of evidence, but anything that goes against the belief must be accompanied by meticulous and irrefutable facts to support it, otherwise it is rejected outright?
In other words, "There is TONS of evidence coming out of South America which proves the Book of Mormon true!" is believed without question, but Joseph Smith not only married multiple women, but other men's wives requires rock solid proof before it will be believed.
I think this is called 'confirmation bias', isn't it?
Much of the whole social, institutional and intellectual edifice of science has been painfully and slowly built up just because some people have realised how hard it is to avoid confirmation bias, but seen how wonderful is the access to reliable knowledge that opens up if only we can find a way of not falling into this trap.
And of course it is because confirmation bias is at the basis of much religious thought that some religionists hate real science so much and try to undermine it.