Why Do the Religious Reject Science While Embracing the Impossible?

[BigMike]

Oh Alexis… this is priceless.

To be quite truthful I have a strong Yiddish streak and everything EVERYTHING costs.

I will accept the chef’s kiss in lieu of monetary payment just this once!

Ah, Alexis… bravo. This is how you retreat with jazz hands.

After pages of trying to sound like a mystical sage, you’ve now reduced yourself to a sitcom punchline. You didn’t respond to a single point. Not one. Instead, you sidestepped with a half-hearted joke about payment and “Yiddish streaks”—as if that somehow glosses over the fact that you completely tapped out of the argument.

Not even a whimper of defense for the “divine spirit.” Not a breath of clarification on what “spirit” even means. No comeback to the challenge of defining your own claims. You’ve dropped your sword, slipped on your robe, and made your way to the nearest comedy lounge to bomb on open mic night.

Let’s be honest: this isn’t wit—it’s white-flag waffling. And I get it. When the best you can do is “mystery” and the worst I can do is ask for definitions, the writing’s on the wall.

So let’s call it officially:
This is a full and complete surrender.
No shame in it. Well—some. But at least now you can go back to your “mystical transportations” without anyone bothering you for facts, clarity, or logic.

Peace be upon your spirit. Whatever that means.

[Alexis Jacobi]

And then—chef’s kiss—you flail into full-on theatrical retreat. “Away, away irritating fly!” You couldn’t be more of a caricature of a dodging mystic if you were sitting on a mountaintop in a bathrobe waving a stick at the clouds.

Not sure if you or any of my disciples here were already treated to this story (?)

Long, long ago, in another incarnation and when I was just starting on the path of Sad-Guru, I sat on a Himalayan peak with 4 of my most adept students deep in meditation and careening through astral galaxies of supernal bliss.

Then, from over the cliff’s edge an impetuous seeker who I had refused as a student because of his undeveloped state (hint hint) crawled up and prostrated himself. “Master! I have proven myself! Take me as a disciple! If you don’t I will … I’ll jump off this cliff!”

“Jump then”, I said with detachment as icy as the howling Himalayan winds. “You are unfit for higher teaching in your present undeveloped state!”

Well, what do you know — he jumped!

My disciples were aghast. “Master! You killed him!”

I chuckled at their oh-so-human reaction.

“Follow me”.

We descended the mountain and found his dead, mangled corpse. I recited mantras I learned from my guru’s guru’s guru, then waved my hands over him and — shazzam! — a resplendent light healed and restored him.

I said: “Little did you know that by following my command you showed yourself subservient to the will of a Higher Power. Now you are ready to be my disciple!”

I embraced him and he with his grateful tears bathed my feet …

Mike, you have a strong Euclidian mind and can follow things A to B and then to C and even beyond.

Surely you can extract the lesson for you here?

[BigMike]

And then—chef’s kiss—you flail into full-on theatrical retreat. “Away, away irritating fly!” You couldn’t be more of a caricature of a dodging mystic if you were sitting on a mountaintop in a bathrobe waving a stick at the clouds.

Not sure if you or any of my disciples here were already treated to this story (?)

Long, long ago, in another incarnation and when I was just starting on the path of Sad-Guru, I sat on a Himalayan peak with 4 of my most adept students deep in meditation and careening through astral galaxies of supernal bliss.

Then, from over the cliff’s edge an impetuous seeker who I had refused as a student because of his undeveloped state (hint hint) crawled up and prostrated himself. “Master! I have proven myself! Take me as a disciple! If you don’t I will … I’ll jump off this cliff!”

“Jump then”, I said with detachment as icy as the howling Himalayan winds. “You are unfit for higher teaching in your present undeveloped state!”

Well, what do you know — he jumped!

My disciples were aghast. “Master! You killed him!”

I chuckled at their oh-so-human reaction.

“Follow me”.

We descended the mountain and found his dead, mangled corpse. I recited mantras I learned from my guru’s guru’s guru, then waved my hands over him and — shazzam! — a resplendent light healed and restored him.

I said: “Little did you know that by following my command you showed yourself subservient to the will of a Higher Power. Now you are ready to be my disciple!”

I embraced him and he with his grateful tears bathed my feet …

Mike, you have a strong Euclidian mind and can follow things A to B and then to C and even beyond.

Surely you can extract the lesson for you here?

No, Alexis. I can’t extract the lesson here.

You spun a fairy tale—complete with cliffs, mantras, astral galaxies, and tear-soaked feet—and then dropped a vague rhetorical pat on the head like that’s supposed to pass for insight. It doesn’t. If there’s a lesson buried in that long-winded mystic cosplay, then spell it out.

What’s the actual point?
That blind obedience is the path to enlightenment? That death is a test? That you’re the reincarnation of some cosmic gatekeeper handing out wisdom in riddles? That the “undeveloped” mind must first self-annihilate before being admitted to your sacred WhatsApp group?

Don’t ask me to play fortune cookie detective. You wrote it—so own it.

So if there’s something you want to say to me—say it. No more fables, no more incense-clouded metaphors, no more guru theater. Just give me the clear, unvarnished point.

Unless, of course, you’ve got nothing. Again. In which case, go ahead—climb back to your Himalayan perch and write parables for the wind. But don’t pretend that ducking the question in robes and incense is some kind of spiritual flex. It’s just more dodging in costume.

[Dubious]

Long, long ago, in another incarnation and when I was just starting on the path of Sad-Guru, I sat on a Himalayan peak with 4 of my most adept students deep in meditation and careening through astral galaxies of supernal bliss.

Then, from over the cliff’s edge an impetuous seeker who I had refused as a student because of his undeveloped state (hint hint) crawled up and prostrated himself. “Master! I have proven myself! Take me as a disciple! If you don’t I will … I’ll jump off this cliff!”

“Jump then”, I said with detachment as icy as the howling Himalayan winds. “You are unfit for higher teaching in your present undeveloped state!”

Well, what do you know — he jumped!

My disciples were aghast. “Master! You killed him!”

I chuckled at their oh-so-human reaction.

“Follow me”.

We descended the mountain and found his dead, mangled corpse. I recited mantras I learned from my guru’s guru’s guru, then waved my hands over him and — shazzam! — a resplendent light healed and restored him.

I said: “Little did you know that by following my command you showed yourself subservient to the will of a Higher Power. Now you are ready to be my disciple!”

Also Sprach Jacobi! But what's the lesson here? In Zarathustra, Nietzsche at least provided actual thought nuggets with each sermon. What is it here? How your borrowed mantras are able to resurrect the spiritually dead thereafter to follow its wisdom god to ever greater transcendence!?

Wisdom is equivalent to knowledge or that which seeks it, rinsing whatever its mystical dregs as an unnecessary by-product to affirm its true functioning, which is invariably physical. It's the latter, which due to its strangeness often appears mystical, travelling far beyond what your imagination is capable of endorsing. Imagining is easy; discovering is the hard part but once known, it's imagination which strives to catch up.

What's most ironic is that it's the physical brain which is the sole cause of all your shazzam revelations and all the mysticisms ever invented by the human race by expressing its superiority to that which is merely physical.

[accelafine]

I'm here to feast on the delicious and well-deserved insults the Big Mike brings to the table

[Alexis Jacobi]

He’s only hurting himself.

[Alexiev]

You say there’s a divine spirit in the world. Okay—define it. What exactly do you mean by “spirit”? Is it a force? A substance? A vibration? An invisible friend? Something that affects physical reality without being physical? If so, how? Show me one single mechanism. One measurable interaction. You can’t. Because you’re using a word—spirit—that has no grounded definition. It’s a ghost-word. A placeholder for what you feel but don’t actually know.

It is what you find impossible to conceive. And therefore inexplicable.

How is your “right hemisphere” today?

Ah, there it is. The last refuge of the intellectually cornered: “It’s inexplicable.”

Alexis, that’s not wisdom. That’s a white flag.

You’re basically admitting you can’t explain what you just claimed exists. You invoke a “divine spirit,” but when asked what that even means, you say it’s beyond conception—even yours. So let’s be clear: you just described something you yourself can’t describe, and then passed that off as profound. That’s not depth. That’s dodging.

You want to sound like you’re operating on some enlightened plane, but what you’re actually doing is hiding behind the fog of vague mysticism. If your “divine spirit” can’t be defined, can’t be tested, can’t be distinguished from pure fantasy, then what’s the difference between your worldview and a child’s imaginary friend? Seriously. If it’s “inexplicable,” then it’s indistinguishable from made up.

And let’s not pretend that referencing the “right hemisphere” is some kind of mic drop. That’s just tossing neurobabble at a probi.e. em you’ve already abandoned explaining. If your only defense is that something is so deep it can’t be understood, then what the hell is the point of saying it at all? You may as well replace your whole argument with “magic,” because that’s what this is: vague, hand-wavy, poetic magic.

You’re not engaging with ideas—you’re retreating into language that no one, not even you, is meant to understand. And you’re doing it with a smug little emoji. That's not just cowardice—it's arrogant cowardice.

So here's your choice: define what you mean, or admit you’ve got nothing but fluff. If you’re going to keep babbling about the inexplicable, then maybe it’s time to step off the stage and let the grown-ups talk.

Hello, Mike. I have no idea whether Alexis can explain himself -- but I can explain in simple, easily understood terms the existence of the "supernatural" (i.e. a reality that exists beyond physics). Culture (for which, I think, "God" is often a metaphor) is supernatural (i.e. "metaphysical") Let's look at one cultural essential: Language. Of course we process language through our brains; of course we invented language using the physics inherent in our brains (and that in our tongues and larynxes). But if all humans disappeared from the earth, language would continue to exist. There would still be books, and recordings. If some extra-terrestrial, intelligent creature discovered the world, they could find this thing -- a very important thing -- that exists outside of the human brain. They could discover its meaning, its grammar and its literature. Meaning, ideas, and knowledge would "exist" independent of human thought.

Whether we could go so far as to say that language exists in and of itself -- without books or recordings or human speech -- is problematic. Maybe it does -- as a concept. But even if we don't grant that, we must surely agree that language exists on its own, independent of any individual brain. And if we grant that for language, perhaps we can also grant it for God, or religion, or other human inventions that, once invented, take on a life of their own outside of the physical world. Mathematics would be another example.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I’ve decided — and this is a first, folks! — to offer personalized shamanic inner-voyage drumming trance-sessions that I guarantee you will cure both run-of-the-mill mental illness and the more advanced cases we find running loose on PN!

[Alexis Jacobi]

And if we grant that for language, perhaps we can also grant it for God, or religion, or other human inventions that, once invented, take on a life of their own outside of the physical world. Mathematics would be another example.

I see where you are going with this. I.e. that this thing called “language” must have (?) an existence both prior to some being which enunciates, and after any being is no longer there.

The part I don’t get though is why you must say “invented”? Shouldn’t you be more generous and say “discovered”?

Can divinity “speak” to man? Can man receive into his material structure, into his conceptualizing mind riddled with language, some knowledge that was not there prior?

That is, can he be communicated to? And if so please describe the mechanism in such a way that BigMike does not flip the fuck out!

Be cool Mike!

[Alexis Jacobi]

So if there’s something you want to say to me—say it. No more fables, no more incense-clouded metaphors, no more guru theater. Just give me the clear, unvarnished point.

.

[Alexis Jacobi]

You’re close, Mike! You’re almost there!

[BigMike]

It is what you find impossible to conceive. And therefore inexplicable.

How is your “right hemisphere” today?

Ah, there it is. The last refuge of the intellectually cornered: “It’s inexplicable.”

Alexis, that’s not wisdom. That’s a white flag.

You’re basically admitting you can’t explain what you just claimed exists. You invoke a “divine spirit,” but when asked what that even means, you say it’s beyond conception—even yours. So let’s be clear: you just described something you yourself can’t describe, and then passed that off as profound. That’s not depth. That’s dodging.

You want to sound like you’re operating on some enlightened plane, but what you’re actually doing is hiding behind the fog of vague mysticism. If your “divine spirit” can’t be defined, can’t be tested, can’t be distinguished from pure fantasy, then what’s the difference between your worldview and a child’s imaginary friend? Seriously. If it’s “inexplicable,” then it’s indistinguishable from made up.

And let’s not pretend that referencing the “right hemisphere” is some kind of mic drop. That’s just tossing neurobabble at a probi.e. em you’ve already abandoned explaining. If your only defense is that something is so deep it can’t be understood, then what the hell is the point of saying it at all? You may as well replace your whole argument with “magic,” because that’s what this is: vague, hand-wavy, poetic magic.

You’re not engaging with ideas—you’re retreating into language that no one, not even you, is meant to understand. And you’re doing it with a smug little emoji. That's not just cowardice—it's arrogant cowardice.

So here's your choice: define what you mean, or admit you’ve got nothing but fluff. If you’re going to keep babbling about the inexplicable, then maybe it’s time to step off the stage and let the grown-ups talk.

Hello, Mike. I have no idea whether Alexis can explain himself -- but I can explain in simple, easily understood terms the existence of the "supernatural" (i.e. a reality that exists beyond physics). Culture (for which, I think, "God" is often a metaphor) is supernatural (i.e. "metaphysical") Let's look at one cultural essential: Language. Of course we process language through our brains; of course we invented language using the physics inherent in our brains (and that in our tongues and larynxes). But if all humans disappeared from the earth, language would continue to exist. There would still be books, and recordings. If some extra-terrestrial, intelligent creature discovered the world, they could find this thing -- a very important thing -- that exists outside of the human brain. They could discover its meaning, its grammar and its literature. Meaning, ideas, and knowledge would "exist" independent of human thought.

Whether we could go so far as to say that language exists in and of itself -- without books or recordings or human speech -- is problematic. Maybe it does -- as a concept. But even if we don't grant that, we must surely agree that language exists on its own, independent of any individual brain. And if we grant that for language, perhaps we can also grant it for God, or religion, or other human inventions that, once invented, take on a life of their own outside of the physical world. Mathematics would be another example.

Hey Alexiev, thanks for the thoughtful response—but let’s clear something up right away: what you’ve described isn’t “supernatural” or “beyond physics” at all. It’s just a mix-up between representations and real things. Between syntax and semantics. Between the medium and the meaning. That confusion doesn’t take us into deep metaphysics—it just muddies the water.

Let’s take your language example.

Yes, if all humans vanished tomorrow, there might still be books and recordings scattered around. But language wouldn’t “exist” in any functional way. There would be symbols—ink marks, pits on a disc, magnetic patterns—but without a brain to interpret them, they’re just meaningless arrangements of matter. Language isn’t some free-floating essence. It’s a code, and codes only mean something to code-readers. If an alien species found our books and had no concept of semantics, those books wouldn’t “contain” language—they’d just be puzzles.

You said, “they could discover its meaning, its grammar…” But that means they would bring meaning to it. It’s not that language exists outside brains—it’s that new brains can reconstruct it through pattern recognition, inference, and a lot of trial and error. The capacity for language is always instantiated physically—in brains, in airwaves, in paper and ink. It's never floating around in some invisible platonic space.

Same goes for math. You can write "2+2=4" in sand, on a wall, or in a neuron firing pattern. But that equation doesn’t exist outside of a physical system interpreting it. It’s not “out there” in a supernatural realm. It's a descriptive system, invented and refined by human brains to model patterns we observe. That it’s useful doesn’t make it metaphysical. It just means it works.

And as for “culture” or “God” being metaphysical because they have staying power or collective belief behind them—that’s a category error. Culture exists in behaviors, artifacts, shared ideas—all physical, all emergent from social brains. And once again, God isn’t a metaphysical entity just because people talk about Him as if He is. Unicorns aren’t real just because someone drew one and gave it a name.

So no—culture, language, and math aren’t examples of the supernatural. They’re just complex products of physical systems that we sometimes romanticize into abstractions. But if you can’t instantiate it in reality, or define a mechanism by which it operates or influences the physical world, then it’s not real in any meaningful or useful sense. It’s just a story. An echo. A symbolic residue of physical processes that once generated it.

So let’s keep our feet on the ground. There’s enough wonder in the natural world. We don’t need to dress up confusion as transcendence.

[BigMike]

And if we grant that for language, perhaps we can also grant it for God, or religion, or other human inventions that, once invented, take on a life of their own outside of the physical world. Mathematics would be another example.

I see where you are going with this. I.e. that this thing called “language” must have (?) an existence both prior to some being which enunciates, and after any being is no longer there.

The part I don’t get though is why you must say “invented”? Shouldn’t you be more generous and say “discovered”?

Can divinity “speak” to man? Can man receive into his material structure, into his conceptualizing mind riddled with language, some knowledge that was not there prior?

That is, can he be communicated to? And if so please describe the mechanism in such a way that BigMike does not flip the fuck out!

Be cool Mike!

Alright Alexis, here’s the deal. If you're going to float the idea that “divinity” can somehow communicate with human beings—cool. But then say what you mean. You can’t just toss that out and then nudge Alexiev to describe the mechanism for you while you sip tea in the background acting like the vibes alone are doing the heavy lifting.

So let’s break it down. You ask: "Can man receive into his material structure... some knowledge that was not there prior?"

Sure. That’s called learning. Happens every day. New sensory data hits your nervous system, your brain rewires, and voilà—you’ve acquired knowledge. That’s a physical process, not a divine mystery.

But if you mean knowledge delivered by something called “divinity,” then let’s hear it:

What is this “divinity”?
Where is it located?
What medium does it use to “speak” to us?
And how does the message travel from whatever this “divinity” is into the wet meat inside your skull?

Because unless you can point to a physical mechanism, a testable process, a repeatable signal—then you’re not talking about communication. You’re talking about hallucination, intuition, or just plain old imagination. None of those need a god—they only need a brain, some serotonin, and maybe a bit of unresolved childhood trauma.

And as for your playful little nudge—“describe the mechanism in such a way that BigMike doesn’t flip the fuck out”—come on. You already know what’ll keep me from “flipping out”: A claim that makes sense, backed by evidence, with terms clearly defined and no poetic smokescreens. That’s it. Simple bar.

So let’s stop hiding behind rhetorical incense. If divinity “speaks,” then describe the channel. Describe the decoder. Describe the transmission protocol. If you can’t, then just admit it’s personal projection and move on.

Otherwise, what you’re doing is standing in front of a blank canvas, claiming it’s a masterpiece, and then daring everyone else to “see” it. That’s not metaphysics. That’s theater.

Cool enough for you?

[Atla]

Isn't a "mechanism" inherently deterministic? Wouldn't a mechanism for a supernatural non-deterministic influence need to be deterministic and non-deterministic at the same time? Which is a contradiction, so asking for it makes no sense?

That's not how you dismiss the supernatural, lol.

[Atla]

If some extra-terrestrial, intelligent creature discovered the world, they could find this thing -- a very important thing -- that exists outside of the human brain. They could discover its meaning, its grammar and its literature. Meaning, ideas, and knowledge would "exist" independent of human thought.

Only if the aliens will have roughly the same brains and cultures as we humans did. Otherwise they would derive different meanings from it, or no such thing at all as what we humans call "meaning".