If you believe that the leaves were rustled by a predator and you're wrong, you only waste some energy.
If you believe that the leaves were rustled by something inanimate and you're wrong, you get eaten by the predator.
There's an evolutionary advantage in expecting agency where there is none. Whether it's rustling leaves, the weather, celestial bodies or life itself.
To put it another way: if you see Jesus in your soup doesn't mean there's some divine truth in soup, it's just an artifact of your brain having evolved to recognise faces in a way that encourages false positives over false negatives.
Understand the fallibility of every aspect of yourself and a lot of supernaturalist arguments go out of the window.
If you believe that the leaves were rustled by something inanimate and you're wrong, you get eaten by the predator.
There's an evolutionary advantage in expecting agency where there is none. Whether it's rustling leaves, the weather, celestial bodies or life itself.
To put it another way: if you see Jesus in your soup doesn't mean there's some divine truth in soup, it's just an artifact of your brain having evolved to recognise faces in a way that encourages false positives over false negatives.
Understand the fallibility of every aspect of yourself and a lot of supernaturalist arguments go out of the window.