Reply #16: I'm disagreeing with 2 of his premises. [View All]

Specifically, I disagree with:

The answer has two parts, ... (I'm rejecting this premise as being "the answer has exactly 2 parts".)

The problem is that we did not evolve a baloney-detection device in our brains to discriminate between true and false patterns.

He offers nothing in support of either premise - I'm discounting his superficial claim, and false evidence, that natural selection favors those animals that assume all patterns are real. My expectation is that the real cause (of attributing agency) is more complex than his simplistic explanation. My expectation is that there will a combination of more than 2 parts to the answer. Does dreaming enter into this? Does the death of loved ones enter into it? I don't know. But based on this article, Shermer doesn't know either.

I would probably lend benefit of the doubt to his claim if he stated it as speculative and, most likely, a partial explanation. I would lend support to an effort to study whether humans ever reject potential patterns - actually, I would lend more support to a study of what percentage of patterns, what types of patterns, do people generally reject? My personal experience tells me we reject some.