Ali

“There were real people who died”
― Brittney Hartley, No Nonsense Spirituality: All the Tools No Belief Required

“Suppose Ms. Jones falls asleep on the couch on a warm weekend afternoon while watching television. On awakening, she steps outside and sees that (1) the driveway of her house is glistening with water and (2) the car in the driveway is also wet. She decides to investigate. From those two pieces of evidence, she might conclude using the above abductive syllogism (if it rains, the streets will get wet, etc.) that it rained while she was asleep. But based on the two facts at hand she might just as logically conclude that the automatic sprinklers came on or that someone washed her car. With only the data that the driveway and the car are wet, these explanations are equally plausible. But suppose our groggy investigator also sees that (3) the lawn and the street are perfectly dry and (4) there isn’t a cloud in the sky. Now what might she conclude? Although the sprinkler hypothesis and the rainstorm hypothesis are still possible, these explanations seem much less likely in the light of the additional evidence (facts 3 and 4). Now, finally, suppose she looks a little harder and sees (5) a bucket with soapy water and a sponge sitting behind the car. With the final piece of data, the best explanation for observations 1 through 5 becomes obvious: someone washed the car. This everyday scenario provides a good example of making an inference about a past cause based upon present observations using abductive reasoning enhanced with the method of inference to the best explanation.”
― Stephen C. Meyer, Return of the God Hypothesis: Breakthroughs in Physics, Cosmology, and Biology Seeking Evidence for the Existence of God

“To me”
― Brittney Hartley, No Nonsense Spirituality: All the Tools No Belief Required

“When taking the perpetrator’s perspective, he found that people who do things we see as evil, from spousal abuse all the way to genocide, rarely think they are doing anything wrong. They almost always see themselves as responding to attacks and provocations in ways that are justified.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom