Can Pat Robertson Keep God’s Secret?

According to televangelist Pat Robertson, God has told him who will be the next President. The problem is that God told Pat not to tell anyone. So, what will happen after the election? Well, Robertson can say, "I knew it all along."

This is a very good example of the hindsight bias. We all get hunches (but we might call them "premonitions" or "psychic predictions"), and then those hunches may come to pass. But, we didn't really predict anything. The problem is that we may hold contradictory hunches ("I think Obama will get re-elected," but later think "Obama will lose"), but when the event happens, we remember only the one that actually came to pass ("I knew it!").

So, Pat Robertson is both prone to the hindsight bias, and he's using it to try to prove his connection to God. In this case, he is claiming that God has made a prediction, but because he won't tell us what it is, he can always say, "I/He knew it all along."

Here is some more on faulty thinking relating to religious experiences.

Follow me on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/#!/ronriggio