Here:
New research from the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota reveals that rats show regret, a cognitive behavior once thought to be uniquely and fundamentally human.
Really.
In a world where we need serious neuroscience research?
How about this: The cat feels regret too. But for slightly different reasons.
So, you have no problem spending research dollars to highlight how humans are different than other animals, but have a problem with research that shows we are similar.
It’s very easy to mistakenly observe regret in a rat. All they have to do is utter the plural of their species name, and it sounds like regret. 🙂
Acartia,
We already know people are special. It’s obvious. Any research that leads to an otherwise suggestion, well, that’s just bunk.
[/POE]
Lar, yes, we have abilities that other animals have. And they have abilities that we don’t have. That doesn’t make us special.
Man is obviously above & beyond the critters of the Natural World, A_bogart. Man is ONLY critter that can Intelligently Design. Created in image of God. Not “appearance of design”, Man can do the real thing.
Acartia_bogart,
Does a hydrogen atom regret not being a helium atom? Or do hydrogen atoms do good while uranium atoms do evil? You see Acartia_bogart, as the absurdity inherent in those questions illustrate, the insurmountable problem for atheistic materialists such as yourself, much like consciousness, is to explain how does objective morality arise from a materialistic basis? As a Christian Theist, since I hold God made both rats and humans (and everything else), and since I hold God to be the source of objective morality, then of course I would expect some correlations for morality to be apparent between species. The problem for you is much more severe in that you have show how material particles can have morality ’emerge’ from them in the first place. Moreover, showing correlation of morality to brain wave patterns, as the present study does, is to ‘forget the question being asked’:
You see bogart, the question, ‘from whence does objective morality (or consciousness) come?’ is NEVER addressed in these studies. It is simply assumed that correlation equates to causation. i.e. It ‘forgets the question being asked’. But when we focus on the question, ‘from whence does objective morality arise?” we find that every attempt by materialists to coherently explain how our sense of objective morality arises from a material basis ends in absurdity. In fact Dr. Craig calls it a ‘knock down’ argument against atheism:
Many more resources are available on this topic of objective morality and the failure of materialism to give an account of it if you want them. I listed just a few references to get the point across. But to go deeper into the specific question of ‘from whence does objective morality arise?’, Since, as a Christian Theist, I hold that God continuously sustains the universe in the infinite power of His being, and since I also hold that God created our ‘inmost being’, i.e. our souls, then I also hold that morality is a real, objective, tangible, part of reality that we should be able to ‘scientifically’ detect in some way. I think this quote from Martin Luther King is very fitting as to elucidating what the Theist’s starting presupposition should be for finding objective morality to be a ‘real, tangible, objective’ part of reality:
And, contrary to what the materialist/atheist would want to presuppose about morality (that we can ‘make up’ our own morality as we go along!), we find much evidence to back up Dr. King’s assertion that “there are moral laws of the universe just as abiding as the physical laws”. For instance, we find that ‘Moral evaluations of harm are instant and emotional’:
And although split second reactions to hateful actions are pretty good, non-locality of morals (i.e. morals that arise outside of space and time and are grounded within the perfect nature of God’s being) demand a more ‘spooky action at a distance’ proof. In other words, a ‘quantum’ proof. And due to advances in science we now have evidence to even this ‘spooky’ beyond space and time level:
As well, the following experiment, from Princeton University no less, is very interesting in that it was found that ‘perturbed randomness’ precedes a worldwide ‘moral crisis’:
Thus we actually have very good, consistent, empirical evidence supporting Dr. King’s observation that ‘that there are moral laws of the universe just as abiding as the physical laws’. In fact, since the emotional reactions happen before the violent images are even viewed, or before the worldwide tragedies even occurred, then one would be well justified in believing that morality abides at a much deeper level of reality than the ‘mere’ physical laws of the universe do (just as a Theist would presuppose that morals should do prior to investigation). Moreover, the atheistic materialist is left without any clue as to how to explain how such ‘prescient morality’ is even possible for reality.
And while the preceding is all perfectly good, repeatable, empirical science that shows morality is not reducible to a material basis, there is also, if one is willing to accept the testimony of millions of Near Death Experiencers, evidence for a ‘moral’ life review. A life review where every action, no matter how small, of a person’s life here on this earth is examined in the light of God’s perfect standard of love.,, At the 17:45 minute mark of the following Near Death Experience documentary, the Life Review portion of the Near Death Experience is highlighted, with several testimonies relating how every word, deed, and action, of a person’s life (all the ‘information’ of a person’s life) is gone over in the presence of God Almighty:
Then of course, there is that little matter of God raising Jesus from the dead so that our moral transgressions might be atoned for in light of his moral perfection and justice:
Music:
Supplemental note:
this following video refines the Ontological argument into a proof that, because of the characteristic of ‘maximally great love’, God must exist in more than one person:
i.e. without this distinction we are stuck with the logical contradiction of maximally great love being grounded in ones own self which is the very antithesis of maximally great love.
Ppolish, the human brain is more “developed” than other animals with regard to abstract thinking. Other brains are better developed for other abilities (eg, echolocation). Yes, we can design things, we have a complex language, we can appreciate art, any many other things that we consider to be unique to humans. But all of these “unique” abilities are the bi-products of one ability, abstract thinking. Having one unique ability doesn’t make us special. But it certainly makes us arrogant.
Anytime somebody starts exhorting you to stop being arrogant or to be humble, you can be certain you’re dealing with a preacher who’s on a mission to preach some kind of stupid religion.
Acartia_bogart, would you care, instead of just claiming that the brain arose by unguided processes, demonstrating the feasibility of it? You see, in science, if someone claims that unguided processes can produce a brain that has more switches than all the computers and routers and Internet connections on Earth, then usually the person making the claim will have some pretty impressive evidence backing up such a outlandish claim:
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The following video is very impressive in its experimental evidence for the mind:
The Mind Is Not The Brain – Scientific Evidence – Rupert Sheldrake – (Referenced Notes) – video
http://vimeo.com/33479544
What is interesting in the preceding video is that, at the 25:00 minute mark of the video, Sheldrake speaks of a well known skeptic that he invited to replicate his experiment for dogs. The results of the skeptic’s experiments revealed the same pattern of ‘extended mind’ for dogs that Sheldrake had consistently witnessed for dogs, but the well known skeptic refused to accept the possibility that mind had anything to do with the results.
Arcatia_bogart, only Man can go beyond Nature. Create man-made alloys and man-made organisms that Nature did not / could not make.
Darwin was very impressed with artificial selection. Inferred Natural Selection from artificial selection. What would Darwin infer from modern designed genes? You guessed it – Natural Design.
Did anyone read the description?
It was apparently a very subtle experiment. I’m not even sure whether a rat’s disappointment sometimes accompanies a rat’s regret.
Maybe the rats were hungry. Or impatient! How can you distinguish between disappointment, regret, and impatience in a rat? Did the rats fail to leave a tip?
I guess you had to be there.
-Q
Reminds me of the time in junior high school science when a girl in the class proved that female rats were smarter than male rats by running them through a maze with a food reward at the end. The female rats always won.
I suggested repeating the experiment except putting a female rat at the other end. The male rats broke all the records. 😉
-Q
bornagain@11,
Wow, that sure blows out the typical materialist rationalization.
Thanks for sharing the video!
-Q
Querius at 14,, 🙂
“I suggested repeating the experiment except putting a female rat at the other end. The male rats broke all the records”
LOL
@Ppolish: “Arcatia_bogart, only Man can go beyond Nature. Create man-made alloys and man-made organisms that Nature did not / could not make.”
Oxygen in the atmosphere, limestone, coral reefs, etc. are all things that required life to develop, and not human life.
Your examples are all still the result of being to think abstractly. One trait. No more special that the ability to echolocate, or detect electrical signals. Just different. The photosynthetic organisms had, and continue to have, a far greater impact on the world that humans will ever have (unless we blow it up). If we are defining “special” as earth changing, than algae have got us beat hands-down.
Unlike ex-wives… (Sorry, lol…)
Arcatia_bogart, I said nothing of “Earth changing”. Algae what?
Man made echolocation transcends Nature. One of countless examples of Man’s unique transcendence. Man’s unique control. Man’s unique dominion. Algae what? Lab rat regrets not being the guy in the white coat holding the cheese btw. Regret right there. Did study separate out that regret?
Ppolish, again, your example is the bi-product of one ability, abstract thinking. Admittedly, abstract thinking allows us to do countless things that other animals can’t . But, again, they are all the bi-product of a single ability. Listing them all separately is analogous to listing all of the different ways that a bird can maneuver in flight and concluding that they are all evidence of different ways that birds are special. But it still comes down to the fact that birds can fly and humans can think abstractly. Both are special in their own way, but claiming that our ability is more special is just being anthropocentric.
Is Man made echolocation (sonar) Nattural, Arcatia_bogart?
Birds/Bats/Algae etc etc etc yes they are all really neat creatures. But only Man has that “single trait” (as you say) that enables Intelligent Design on the critter level.
Intelligent Design emerging from Nature?
Lab rats, lab bunnies, lab flys, lab etc “regret” Man transcending Nature.
“Tree of Life” is Man Design. Dawkins showing Auntie & Chimp on same level will be even more hilarious 150 years from now:)
Man can grow their own tree. Already have synthetic organisms that have been created by Man. Man creations. Intelligently Designed.
Man created to transcend Nature. Not created to abuse Nature.
Acartia_bogart you state:
And can you tell us the how most basic element of abstract thinking, consciousness, ’emerges’ from a material basis as is held in your Darwinian worldview? So as to, at least, make your atheistic position remotely feasible? Nagel, an atheist who has spent a lifetime studying consciousness states that consciousness will never be explained in materialistic terms.
Nagel is hardly alone in his disbelief that consciousness will ever be explained in materialistic terms,,
As well these atheists should be perplexed by their inability to solve the hard problem of consciousness, for it is clearly shown that the mind is not the same thing as the brain simply by using the law of identity (Egnor, Plantinga).
Moreover, whereas materialists, in spite of having no empirical support, and in spite of the sheer counter-intuitiveness of their proposition, hold that consciousness ’emerges’ from a material basis, whereas Theists, due to advances in the experimental techniques in quantum mechanics, have much empirical support for their contention that consciousness precedes material reality.
Moreover bogart, you denigrate human thinking as being merely ‘abstract’, but the ability of man to think ‘symbolically’ and use information to communicate to each other is nothing short of miraculous,,
Part of the reason it is miraculous that man can think symbolically and use information to communicate information to other humans is that material processes have never been observed to generate information (David Abel, William Dembski). The other reason why it is miraculous that humans can think symbolically and use information to communicate information to other humans is that the universe is found to be information theoretic in its basis. i.e. the universe is not materialistic in its basis. (Wheeler, Zeilinger, Quantum Teleportation).
And as ppolish pointed out, the fact that man, through abstract thinking, would be able invent virtually countless contrivances and tools for his convenience and pleasure is also nothing short of miraculous. In fact to find molecular machines and other contrivances in life, that are similar but much more elegantly designed than our machines, is powerful testimony that life is the handiwork of a creator and that we are indeed made in his image:
supplemental notes
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