There are quite a few irrational people who picked that answer, just as there are some number of people whole checked off the "100% human" option for poorly thought out reasons. Just about any debate on the net has quite a few people on both sides that have arguments with little thought and failed logic, and I just want to set them aside as I don't think they are representative of the actual arguments for/against something, nor need explaining/defending.
I don't agree with the beliefs, but I've talked to quite a few people with such spiritual beliefs before. To say they were based on no evidence is usually quite incorrect. Many of them developed their beliefs on their own, based on their own experiences, unlike what you sometimes see with other beliefs that just come from instruction. These are heavily based on evidence which can often be listed at length.
What is at issue is not lack of evidence, but validity of the evidence, often due to contradictions with other evidence. Without the latter evidence, they can easily have thought rationally, although possibly not optimally and possibly reaching a wrong conclusion. And that is a whole different discussion, with possibly different implications for the people being hastily labelled, than simply blanket statements about ethereal beliefs (which is similarly different than then discussing them as all being detached from physical, day-to-day reality).
And you still have the whole mixed bag part. For example, some don't even make any claims that the spirit has any physical impact on the world, that it is instead more of an abstract concept of identity, and not even supernatural (this is where it forms a continuum with the other category previous mentioned, those feeling less than 100% human in identify, not spiritually). I've heard parallels made to stating what a cloud looks like, and it is often nonsensical to bring talk of evidence into such a discussion, as say a survey of what it looks to most people may not have any bearing on why it looks that way to a specific person. In that sense it is in part about trying to convey abstracts and kind of poetic in nature.
So in other words, there is a lot of stuff lumped together and drawing single conclusions about such people can end up being quite superficial. Even if it looks like most of such a group is crap, that doesn't necessarily say much about the others, and could just be the result of Sturgeon's Law.
There are quite a few irrational people who picked that answer, just as there are some number of people whole checked off the "100% human" option for poorly thought out reasons. Just about any debate on the net has quite a few people on both sides that have arguments with little thought and failed logic, and I just want to set them aside as I don't think they are representative of the actual arguments for/against something, nor need explaining/defending.
I don't agree with the beliefs, but I've talked to quite a few people with such spiritual beliefs before. To say they were based on no evidence is usually quite incorrect. Many of them developed their beliefs on their own, based on their own experiences, unlike what you sometimes see with other beliefs that just come from instruction. These are heavily based on evidence which can often be listed at length.
What is at issue is not lack of evidence, but validity of the evidence, often due to contradictions with other evidence. Without the latter evidence, they can easily have thought rationally, although possibly not optimally and possibly reaching a wrong conclusion. And that is a whole different discussion, with possibly different implications for the people being hastily labelled, than simply blanket statements about ethereal beliefs (which is similarly different than then discussing them as all being detached from physical, day-to-day reality).
And you still have the whole mixed bag part. For example, some don't even make any claims that the spirit has any physical impact on the world, that it is instead more of an abstract concept of identity, and not even supernatural (this is where it forms a continuum with the other category previous mentioned, those feeling less than 100% human in identify, not spiritually). I've heard parallels made to stating what a cloud looks like, and it is often nonsensical to bring talk of evidence into such a discussion, as say a survey of what it looks to most people may not have any bearing on why it looks that way to a specific person. In that sense it is in part about trying to convey abstracts and kind of poetic in nature.
So in other words, there is a lot of stuff lumped together and drawing single conclusions about such people can end up being quite superficial. Even if it looks like most of such a group is crap, that doesn't necessarily say much about the others, and could just be the result of Sturgeon's Law.