Скачать или смотреть Naturalism or Mysticism? (ENG)

How do you explain what you don't understand?

For millennia, humanity has responded to the unknown with mysticism. Thunder was the wrath of a god. An illness, a punishment. A vision, a message from the beyond. It's intuitive, human... but is it accurate?

Radical naturalism proposes a different answer. There's no magic. Those "mystical" experiences are the result of the interaction of natural factors throughout your history:

Your biology: a brain that, under certain conditions, generates responses of ecstasy or fear.

Your culture: the language you learned gives you the repertoire to name and make sense of those sensations. You learned to call it "God" or "energy" because that was its function in your community.

Your tribe: group belonging behaviorally reinforces you to maintain those explanations. "Faith" is a functional behavior for gaining acceptance and reducing uncertainty.

And this is why magical thinking is so common: it's easy. It's the natural slope of our learned repertoire. Naturalism, on the other hand, is the uphill climb. It requires a different historical learning process, one where doubt and analysis are reinforced.

But the pragmatic reward is worth it. Let's look at three examples:

Example 1: A "miracle." Mysticism sees the hand of God. Naturalism sees the interactive function of the immune system and the placebo effect: a relationship between your history of beliefs and your physiology. A natural mechanism, not a supernatural one.

Example 2: A "sign." Mysticism believes the universe is sending you a message. Naturalism sees pareidolia: the function of a brain that, by evolutionary history, emits pattern-detection responses. It's biology, not destiny.

Example 3: The "bad energy" of a place. Mysticism feels presences. Naturalism finds infrasound or toxins like mold, which interact directly with your nervous system, triggering learned avoidance responses.

Choosing naturalism isn't taking the mystery out of life. It's swapping it for real wonder. It's understanding that everything, even us, is a product of natural interactions throughout history.

Prefer explanations that work, not just ones that sound good. Reality, understood this way, is fascinating enough.