I feel like there's a lot of these, where someone says "how do you explain [extremely basic, everyday thing] without [religion]?", it's kinda weird. Like being a certain level of religious makes you immune to all common sense.
In my experience of these zealot types, it's that they don't want to know the answer, and won't accept any answer that isn't literally bulletproof all the way back to the beginning of time - no matter what you tell them, God did it.
It's like playing a pigeon at chess. It'll shit on the board and then strut around like it won.
These are emotional people with absolutely no care or enjoyment for reason or logic or learning how the world works. I believe strongly that the way our brains develop as we grow, be it influences from environment or genes or upbringing, just can go in radically different directions. Kind of like how some people have no internal monologue, or some people can't visualize images in their mind, I think some people can't comprehend the world outside of a very "mystical" interpretation, even when taught how physics and evolution work, they still will see those forces as expressions of a mystical universe with a personal, subjective God who is trying to communicate with them.
You absolutely cannot reason with this kind of perspective because it's not one of reason. The MOST you can hope for is getting them to feel something, and in this I have only ever found common ground in things like expressions of love for the universe or the beauty of nature, but that's like one person going to the baseball game to watch the game, and the other to eat the food.
I believe strongly that the way our brains develop as we grow, be it influences from environment or genes or upbringing, just can go in radically different directions.
won't accept any answer that isn't literally bulletproof
Quite fitting, then, that the Venn diagram of people who would literally shoot bullets at a question and people who are religious is pretty much a circle 😉
Well that's a fairly consistent pov. "God of the Gaps" is what it's called. Ostensibly, that sort of person accepts new evidence for things, so it's probably not one of the worst ways to think
But that's not what I'm talking about, nor are those the types of people I'm talking about - people willing to take in new ideas are a much friendlier bunch.
The zealot types, the self-proclaimed "sceptics" don't just avoid learning about science, they actively oppose it. They ask questions like those @Ibaudia@lemmy.world said not because they want to know the answer, but because they're trying to sow seeds of doubt into those who see them.
Those questions aren't made for you or I to answer - and if you do try, they'll shout you down or sandbag you until you give up.
I think what they are trying to say is that the emotional experience they have when they look at a sunset is similar to the emotional experience that gives them conviction that there is a God. It's not a statement of objective fact about the universe and its processes; it's a statement about their mental and emotional life and how they want to feel inside their own head.
Although, maybe they are saying that no one knows how sunsets work and so therefore a wizard did it. I would hope it is that first thing though.
I feel like it has to be the second thing, but not everyone has those religious experiences, and even the religious don't always correlate these things to God. It just requires so many layers of weird assumption that I really don't know what to think.
There, you're starting to get it! That's exactly what the religious do. Get confused, start using "god did it" as a gap filler in their knowledge, and soon, they "know" less than nothing.