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Miserable Creatures

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Imagine if atheistic materialism was actually true and humans are nothing more than biological automatons – complexly programmed and reactive robots that behave and think in whatever manner happenstance chemical interactions dictates at any given time.  Let’s think about what would actually mean.

There would be no way for a biological automaton to determine whether or not any statement was in fact true or not since all conclusions are driven by chemistry and not metaphysical “truth” values; indeed, a biological automaton reaches conclusion X for exactly the same reason any other reaches conclusion Y; chemistry.  If chemistry dictates that 1+1=banana, that is what a “person” will conclude. If chemistry dictates they defend that view to the death and see themselves as a martyr for the computational banana cause, that is exactly what they will do.

All such a biological automaton has is whatever chemistry generates as what they see, hear, taste, smell, touch, feel, think, and do. If they eat some stale pizza and, through a chaotic cascade of happenstance physical cause and effect, accept Mohammed with great faith and zeal, then no determined atheist can resist – that is what will occur.  And they will think it was a logical conclusion, if chemistry says so.  They can only be whatever chemistry dictates.

Imagine the frustration of the atheist having to admit that they came to their views exactly the same way any religious fanatic came to theirs. Imagine the bleak realization that there is no way to prove it, or even provide any evidence, because such feats would require that one’s thoughtful capacity to consider such things be removed from, and in control of, the same chemical processes that generate all positions that disagree with theirs.

Imagine the misery of attempting to argue that some things are right, and others are wrong, when the same relentless, impersonal, uncaring chemistry produces both. One might as well call the shape of a fig leaf right and true, and call the shape of a maple leaf wrong and false.  How pitiful it is when atheists act as if their condition is somehow superior to some non-atheist condition, when all conditions are simply a products of happenstance chemistry and physics. It’s not like “they” had a hand in their own thoughts or ideas or conclusions; they have whatever thoughts blind mechanistic forces shoved in their brain.  “They” are nothing but a pitiful puppet doomed to think and act and feel whatever chemistry dictates while stupidly acting and arguing as if something else was the case.

Atheists insist that they live a life as capable of being good as any theist.  They are often proud of how “good” they are in comparison to theists they mock and ridicule. What are they proud of?  What are the mocking and ridiculing?  The inevitable effects of chemical interactions?  Any idea or thought or act that anyone has or does is nothing more than just another effect ultimately generated by mindless chemical interactions and effects.  You might as well be proud that grass is green or ridicule the color of the sky; the same mindless forces generated those things as your own thoughts, beliefs and actions.

How pitiful is it to rant and rave and argue against physics and chemistry?  If atheistic materialism is true, then atheists here are like Don Quixote, acting like windmills are great beasts, or like biological automatons are sentient creatures capable of doing something other than whatever chemistry dictates.  They might as well argue with a tree to get it to change the shape and color of its leaves, or with a stream to get it to change direction. They are tilting at windmills trying to convince the windmill to do something other than what windmills do.  They are madmen arguing with swirling dirt, animated by natural law and chance.

What a ruinous, ludicrous, miserable position to insist for yourself – arguing and debating against the onward, relentless march of happenstance interactions of matter ruled by chemistry and physics as if such arguments mattered, as if you and everyone else is something other than programmed biological automatons doing whatever chemistry dictates.  But then, pitifully, they really can’t do anything else except foolishly act out this absurd facade because they, too, are just the puppets of chemistry.

Comments
William J Murray,
… if atheistic materialism was actually true and humans are nothing more than biological automatons – complexly programmed and reactive robots that behave and think in whatever manner happenstance chemical interactions dictates at any given time.
I have to disagree with William on this point. He is being too charitable towards atheistic materialism. Humans are not “complexly programmed” robots. Given atheistic materialism, there is no designer. Humans are meat puppets produced and controlled by physical causes which don’t have humans in mind. At any moment, human thought and behavior is produced and controlled by physical causes which don’t have human thought and behavior in mind. Why do physical forces do all this? Why do physical forces produce this mind-bottling coherency on so my different levels? Sheer dumb luck. Without a designer there is no other explanation. Natural selection has never been an explanation; we all know that NS only explains what is not, not what is.
What Darwin called natural selection is actually a process of elimination. [Ernst Mayr, ‘What Evolution is’, (117)]
Surely, ‘elimination’ explains only why some things are not, not why some things are. If natural selection is a process of elimination, then existent organisms are the ones that got away. Instead of being created by ‘natural elimination’, exactly the opposite is true: they are “untouched” by ‘natural elimination’. Existent organisms are those organisms on which natural selection has precisely no bearing whatsoever. They are the undiluted products of chance.
Natural selection is a sieve. It creates nothing, as is so often assumed; it only sifts. It retains only what variability puts into the sieve. Whence the material comes that is put into it, should be kept separate from the theory of its selection. How the struggle for existence sifts is one question; how that which is sifted arose is another. [Hugo de Vries]
For clarity, there is neither will to exist nor to survive. Not a single part of a human body cares whether the human is alive or not; the structure just happens to be alive—and stay alive—by sheer dumb luck.Origenes
September 28, 2016
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William J Murray @172 +1000mike1962
September 19, 2016
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Seversky @175,
S: My position is that we live within a mental model of objective reality, a model which, in order to work as a means of navigating the world in which we find ourselves, has to include a representation of each of us as an individual in that world.
I hate to break it to you, but this has nothing to do with materialism. “We live in a mental model of objective reality”, get outta here! Or did you mean to say: “Chemistry resides in a chemical model of objective chemistry”? Either way, it makes little sense.
S: And if current computers can run increasingly complex and detailed VR simulations on devices made of plastics, glass, silicon and metals, why shouldn’t our conscious model run on an immensely complex biochemical substrate?
Our conscious model”? If ‘we’ have a ‘conscious model’, then who is “we”?
Seversky: No one is pretending that one clump of matter can be about another clump of matter.
Origenes: Right. So, everything that goes on in the brain is not about the external world. Now start acting like this is true.
Seversky: I didn’t say that either. What goes on in the brain is about the external world as well as the internal world.
Quite the opposite, you did say that also. I quoted you saying that no “clump of matter can be about another clump of matter”. This has logical entailments, as Rosenberg explains:
What we need to get off the regress is some set of neurons that is about some stuff outside the brain without being interpreted—by anyone or anything else (including any other part of the brain)—as being about that stuff outside the brain. What we need is a clump of matter, in this case the Paris neurons, that by the very arrangement of its synapses points at, indicates, singles out, picks out, identifies (and here we just start piling up more and more synonyms for “being about”) another clump of matter outside the brain. But there is no such physical stuff. Physics has ruled out the existence of clumps of matter of the required sort. There are just fermions and bosons and combinations of them. None of that stuff is just, all by itself, about any other stuff. There is nothing in the whole universe—including, of course, all the neurons in your brain—that just by its nature or composition can do this job of being about some other clump of matter. So, when consciousness assures us that we have thoughts about stuff, it has to be wrong. The brain nonconsciously stores information in thoughts. But the thoughts are not about stuff. Therefore, consciousness cannot retrieve thoughts about stuff. There are none to retrieve. So it can’t have thoughts about stuff either. Remember, the original problem was how the Paris neurons can be about the fact that Paris is the capital of France. We simplified the problem to how they can be about Paris. The answer to that question appears to be that the Paris neurons cannot be about Paris. ... In other words, the Paris neurons that carry the information that Paris is the capital of France can’t be about the fact that Paris is the capital of France. When we think that Paris is the capital of France, our thought can’t be about the fact that Paris is the capital of France. It can’t be about anything.
Origenes
September 19, 2016
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Seversky @160
If you are peddling a strawman version of A/M then any “logical entailments” are equally flawed. Certainly the usual ones trotted out here are. As for worldviews, it is such a nebulous concept, although it does embrace the fact that people of all persuasions often hold dissonant or contradictory views, that it is doubtful that it serves any useful purpose
The strawman being peddled here is your implicit claim that atheistic materialism is just whatever you make of it, or that whatever viewpoint you advocate on this subject must be consistent with atheistic materialism because you are an atheistic materialist who happens to also hold these particular viewpoints with respect to the mind. That you're able to simultaneously hold to logically inconsistent opinions does not mean that those opinions can operate coherently together.
You, like your other A/M comrades here, continue to speak about the world around you as though it is essentially what it seems to be even though your worldview provides absolutely zero justification for assuming that is the case, and you continue to talk about concepts, like thinking and believing and choosing, when your worldview leaves no room for the existence of such things.
No, we speak about the world as we observe it to be, using “observe” in its broadest sense. We are well aware that our senses only provide limited information about objective reality. The mental model of that reality that we build internally on the basis of that information is good enough to enable us to navigate that reality but we know it is far from being a complete and accurate account of that reality. Our science and instrumentation have allowed us to observe that which is beyond the reach of our physical senses and to understand it to some degree. It is how we know there are billions of neutrinos streaming through every square centimeter of our bodies every second. Our senses don’t detect them. Our “worldviews”, religious or otherwise didn’t predict them but materialistic science posited their existence as a “logical entailment” of discrepancies between theory and observation. Are our observations entirely reliable? Is the model we have of objective reality true in all respects? No, of course not. We are fallible, imperfect creatures. We know that. But what we have learned is good enough, at least to start with. Like it or not, it works. Better than anything else on offer.
And what you don't seem to get is that atheistic materialism provides you with no justification for thinking that anything you just wrote is true, or even means anything. If your thoughts are merely chemical reactions taking place in the matter of your brain and nothing more, then your thoughts cannot be either true or false or have "aboutness". chemical reactions do not have truth values. Furthermore, there is no basis on A/M for believing that the chemical reactions in your brain have anything to do with true propositions about a world external to themselves. It gives you no reason whatsoever for confidence that you're actually observing in any sense what your chemical reactions create the illusion of observing. It's not a matter of simply conceding that your observations might not be entirely reliable or might be limited. It's that you have no basis whatsoever for thinking that the chemical reactions in the matter of your brain come into contact with truths about any external reality at all. They could be fooling the illusion that is "you" into "thinking" you're observing things that exist nowhere other than in the products of the chemical reactions themselves, and on A/M that is far more probable than the likelihood that your chemical reactions, while not even being about anything, would just happen to have some correpondence to an external world.
You have made the error of failing to properly distinguish between the object of the experience and the experience itself. In and of itself, the Mona Lisa is only paint smeared on a bit of canvas, and that’s all that it is. Any meaning or value that it has beyond that exists entirely in the minds of subjective personal observers. The Mona Lisa is not, of itself, about some woman with a queer smile. It is only the unique character of our minds that give it that aboutness. That is because one clump of matter cannot be about another clump of matter. But if our minds and our thoughts are exhausted by the matter of our brains then our thoughts cannot actually be about things either
The problem of “aboutness” is simply another aspect of the acknowledged Hard Problem of Consciousness. No one is pretending that one clump of matter can be about another clump of matter. “Aboutness” is an attribute of conscious perception and the Hard Problem is hard because of the difficulty of explaining how consciousness can arise from the neurological activity of the brain. We understand that.
The problem of "aboutness" is not just about explaining how it could arise as part of conscious perception specifically from the neurological activity of the brain, but how it could arise from matter at all. You said, "No one is pretending that one clump of matter can be about another clump of matter", but if you are claiming that "aboutness" actually exists in reality and that our mind and our thoughts derive entirely from the physical matter of our brain (or even body as a whole), then you are necessarily claiming that one clump of matter can be about another clump of matter. You yourself are saying that physical matter is all you have to work with, so either "aboutness" is an illusion and doesn't exist and you don't actually have thoughts about anything (as Alex Rosenberg and other academic atheists readily admit is the logical entailment of atheistic materialism), or else one clump of matter can truly be about another clump of matter.
What we do observe, although immaterialists prefer to ignore it, is that changes to the chemistry of the brain or physical damage to it affects the conscious behavior of the person affected. Death of the physical brain is accompanied by the irreversible disappearance of consciousness. Consciousness is not observed to exist apart from the physical substrate of the brain. There is clearly a strong correlation, at the very least, between the phenomenon of consciousness and the brain.
Who has said otherwise, and who is ignoring it? Certainly not I. I addressed this issue in #126 of this thread when I said:
[T]he only sound basis for a continuous identity is some immaterial locus of identity that cannot be reduced or destroyed by merely physical changes, even if physical changes can drastically impede its causal efficacy with respect to the physical parts of you. I hasten to add, however, that I don’t believe in an immortal soul that consciously survives the death of the body, nor do I think this line of reasoning requires one. Rather, what it requires is some immaterial aspect of the mind that serves as the necessary condition for you, even if not a sufficient condition for you.
I'm not claiming that the physical brain is unnecessary to human consciousness. Indeed, I would readily admit that is a necessary condition of human consciousness (though we cannot discount the significant amount of evidence showing that full consciousness and normal personality can actually persist even in the face of massive brain trauma, including the loss or absence of the majority of the normal brain mass). What I'm saying is that the physical brain is not a sufficient condition for human consciousness. I'm saying that an immaterial aspect to the mind is also a necessary but not sufficient condition for human consciousness.
If you want to propose an alternative model of consciousness, you will need to do better than invoke dragon-in-the-garage entities like an incorporeal mind/soul/spirit.
First of all, what we're talking about here (and certainly what I'm talking about) is not so much an alternative model of consciousness, but an augmented model of consciousness. In other words, a model that is not hamstrung by philosophical materialism but is free to include a non-material aspect that is logically necessary to account for our observations, our subjective experience, the "aboutness" of our thoughts, and to ground the possibility of veridical contact with the world. Second, your invoking of Sagan's dragon is inapt on virtually every level. The main lessons to be learned from Sagan's dragon are 1) not to invoke completely superfluous explanatory entities (which is a lesson already encapsulated in Occam's Razor) and 2) not to misuse or equivocate on words to the point that they lose all meaning (a lesson that the atheistic materialists in this thread would do well to learn). WJM, has already ably responded regarding issue 1, so I'll jump to issue 2. The term "fire-breathing dragon" rightly invokes the image of a corresponding physical entity possessing certain features (e.g. large, scaly, breathing out something that matches the description of fire, etc). As Sagan runs through his little dialogue with the person proposing tests to detect the dragon and his responses to those proposals, he systematically eliminates every characteristic that defines a dragon and fire. Right here we can stop and ask ourselves what this tells us about his original claim that there is a "fire-breathing dragon" in his garage. The answer, very obviously, is that quite apart from the question of whether or not there's anything in his garage at all, we can at least be certain that he wasn't ever really talking about a fire-breathing dragon in the first place. (Sagan's methodology here is very much like the one used by Lewis Wolpert in this exchange with William Lane Craig on the cause of the universe, and the connection is probably not coincidental.) Sagan references a fantastical creature like a "fire-breathing dragon" mainly to score rhetorical points, but in the end we find that his initial terminology was either meaningless or a severe equivocation, and his claim was not that there was a fire-breathing dragon in his garage, but that there was some immaterial entity in his garage that, by his own telling, had no effect on anything and was not credited with being logically necessary to explain any observed or experienced phenomena or effects. As such, Sagan's dragon has no relevance at all to the postulates of either God or an immaterial aspect of the mind, both of which are identified as logically necessary entities to account for the existence of observed and experienced phenomena, which, in principle, cannot be explained without them. That you cannot physically test for immaterial realities with scientific instruments does not mean that they either don't exist or that they are not logically necessary so as to gain a logically coherent knowledge and understanding of the world. To claim otherwise would be to foolishly claim that the possibility of existence is constrained by the limits of our scientific instruments. As WJM has said, we test these ideas not by our ability to scientifically measure their quantities but by their logical necessity in accounting for the realities we do observe and perceive.HeKS
September 18, 2016
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Origenes @ 162
According to your position there is no person. And if there is no person, then there is no starting point for observation. Hence, given your position, you cannot speak of ‘observing’ in any meaningful way.
I did not say there is no "person". You are claiming that is what a materialist position necessarily entails. I don't agree.
According to your position there are no persons who are aware of anything.
Again, that is what you claim is my position, not what I have argued.
According to your position there is no “mental model”. Also there are no persons; let alone persons who build anything. Also, there is no such thing as information; there is simply nothing over and beyond chemistry.
My position is that we live within a mental model of objective reality, a model which, in order to work as a means of navigating the world in which we find ourselves, has to include a representation of each of us as an individual in that world. And if current computers can run increasingly complex and detailed VR simulations on devices made of plastics, glass, silicon and metals, why shouldn't our conscious model run on an immensely complex biochemical substrate?
Right. So, everything that goes on in the brain is not about the external world. Now start acting like this is true.
I didn't say that either. What goes on in the brain is about the external world as well as the internal world.Seversky
September 18, 2016
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Allen Shepherd: 1. AS@140 2. D@147 3. AS@153 4. D@170 5. D@173 As you saw in the references to Revelation (Apocalypse) the first death is physical (i.e. material), hence the souls don't die until the second death, after the judgment, which does not affect the souls that belong to Christ, because He already took the wrath of God for those who trust and follow Him. God gives the saving faith in Christ's redemptive blood at the cross and in His resurrection. That faith is the key to eternal life in the glorious presence of God. The new bodies are not going to conform to the physical laws of the current universe, which by then will be completely gone (Revelation 21:1). "And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him." [Hebrews 9:27-28 (ESV)]Dionisio
September 18, 2016
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Allen Shepherd: @171 HeKS nicely explained how you can quote text within an indented box. However, you may just use "...". The problem is not the look, it's the contents. It's what we write, not how we present it. @170 I commented on your post @153 which was your comment on my post @147 which was my comment on your post @140. 1. AS@140 2. D@147 3. AS@153 4. D@170 By indicating post numbers we make it easier to follow the given discussion apart from other discussions that are running parallel within the same thread. Now, here's an example of confusing text: @140 you wrote I Tim 6:17 to refer to God’s immortality. @153 you wrote I Tim 1:16 to refer to God’s immortality. Perhaps you meant 1 Timothy 6:16, right? Once we get our soul breathed into our bodes, we all suffer the first physical death, but those who by then are in Christ won't be affected by the second death that affects all souls, except the chosen ones to be in Christ's presence forever and ever. As you can see, the souls of those who belong to Christ are eternally alive. You may want to check this out: Revelation 2:11 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.’ Revelation 20:6 Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years. Revelation 20:14 Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. Revelation 21:8 But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” BTW, @153 the editor autocorrect feature mistakenly changed the word “immortality” to “immorality”. It helps to indicate any correction made to the text in subsequent posts. Did you indicate that the 1 Timothy reference @153 was a correction to the one @140? My reading comprehension is rather poor, hence I appreciate well structured text. However, perhaps mine are messy and difficult to understand? I'll appreciate any correction someone may suggest regarding the clarity of my comments. That will help me to acquire writing skills I lack.Dionisio
September 18, 2016
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Seversky said:
Sagan’s dragon story is clearly intended to illustrate the argument that any explanation so constructed as to be immune to any form of testing is useless as a tool for improving our understanding of the world. They are effectively vacuous. Hypothetical entities such as an immaterial mind/soul/spirit fall into the same category as Sagan’s dragon if they are so framed as to be untestable.
The debate is free will vs Sagan's garage dragon. I'm pointing out where Sagan's reasoning is flawed wrt that argument (or dragon vs god arguments). Logical arguments are not "immune to any form of testing", Seversky. They can be tested by logic. Unless the dragon is a logically necessary commodity that is required even before an argument about garage dragons can be tendered, then it is an entirely inappropriate analogy. Without the assumption of free will, Sagan can't even begin to make a meaningful argument about anything.
A computer makes choices based on the parameters set in its programming
No, it doesn't. This is a subversion of what the term "choice" means. You might as well say a rock rolling down a hill makes choices depending on the parameters set in the mountainside, the composition of the rock and physics.
The complaint is not so much that the bag-of-chems jibe is too simplistic but that it implicitly denies the possibility that great complexity can arise from simple beginnings.
You appear to be immune to the point that complexity is irrelevant. Libertarian free will is a logical necessity and a materialist world, regardless of how complex, cannot provide it. So what if some "great complexity" produces what appears to be "consciousness"? That doesn't deliver that "consciousness", and whatever it thinks and believes, from being an effect caused by mindlessly interacting matter. Waving the magic wand of complexity and chance still doesn't buy you free will, and that is the commodity you must have or else all else is lost.
If you are peddling a strawman version of A/M then any “logical entailments” are equally flawed.
And yet you have yet to provide even so much as a sketch of a view of materialism that can logically deliver it from what you claim are the logical entailments of a straw man version. Go ahead, seversky; explain to us how your materialism delivers you from the entailments described in this and other threads; all I've seen you do is complain that we're not considering the "great complexity" of interacting matter without telling us how complexity makes any difference at all. I'll even spot you consciousness. Now, tell me how consciousness, which would be an ongoing effect caused by the interactions of organic chemistry (under materialism), buys you libertarian free will? Because that's the point here, Seversky. Without an uncaused loci of willful intent, everything you say and think and believe in your "conscious" state is dictated by the organic chemistry (a shorthand term for all material forces involved). If you believe X; it has nothing to do with whether or not X is true or false - it only has to do with what your organic chemistry dictates. Whatever you say, under materialism, is produced entirely by organic chemistry - nothing more, nothing less. Organic chemistry doesn't care about truth or logic or whether or not an argument is valid. It may generate as an effect a "caring" about validity, or a "feeling" that something is factual or logical, but that is all those sensations would be in the materially-caused consciousness: sensations generated by organic chemistry whether or not any of it was actually true or valid. And that's the problem of materialism, and the analogy would be that if Sagans garage dragon didn't exist, then everything Sagan or anyone else said would be reduced to whatever strings of noises organic chemistry happened to produce. The logical test is whether or not Sagan can actually act and talk and think as if the dragon (free will) doesn't actually exist. If he cannot, then he is a hypocrite because he claims the dragon doesn't exist, but always acts and argues as if the dragon does exist. Your expectation that others here can freely understand your argument and adopt it on the merits of its assessed logical and evidential merits, overriding their current organic chemistries in favor of concepts that are warranted and true belies your insistence that free will doesn't exist. When you can walk the "no free will" walk, seversky, and write here as if you don't have free will and as if you don't expect us to behave as if we have free will, then you'll be something other than a de facto ongoing brazen hypocrite when it comes to this subject.William J Murray
September 18, 2016
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Allen Shepherd, You can create quote boxes by putting the quoted text in 'blockquote' tags, like this: <blockquote>Quoted text goes here</blockquote> Which will look like this:
Quoted text goes here
Hope that helps. HeKSHeKS
September 17, 2016
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Allen Shepherd @153: You commented on my post @147 which was my comment on your post @140. By indicating post numbers we make it easier to follow the discussion within other discussions. @140 you wrote I Tim 6:17 to refer to God's immortality. @153 you wrote I Tim 1:16 to refer to God's immortality. BTW, @153 the editor autocorrect mistakenly changed the word "immortality" to "immorality".Dionisio
September 17, 2016
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Whatever Allen. I just laid out the scientific facts. I'm not here to argue with a Theist who denies the reality and primacy of the soul. If I wanted to argue religious opinions, I would argue with Darwinists! :) At least they claim to follow the scientific evidence in their religion.bornagain77
September 17, 2016
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Now Lazarus from John 11 could have given such information, but did not, and could not, as Jesus said he was in the SLEEP of death.
Sleep of death eh?
John 11:11-15 (KJV) 11 These things said he: and after that he saith unto them, Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep. 12 Then said his disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well. 13 Howbeit Jesus spake of his death: but they thought that he had spoken of taking of rest in sleep. 14 Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. 15 And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless let us go unto him.
Vy
September 17, 2016
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BA77 @ 157 "As to the question of whether there is some transcendent component to our being, i.e. whether we have a ‘soul’, that can possibly survive death, the ‘scientific’ answer to that question is yes." You go on to speak of "near death" experiences. These are just that, near death, so not death altogether. They thus cannot be used to prove any actual facts about a hereafter. Now Lazarus from John 11 could have given such information, but did not, and could not, as Jesus said he was in the SLEEP of death. As far as quantum connections etc., again, we have not heard of any others coming back from such states to tell us, so it seems speculation. What we are is mysterious, the combination of flesh and spirit. That we do not even know or really understand in a sense our own nature again shows the limit of our ability to fathom reality.Allen Shepherd
September 17, 2016
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Your #158, BA77: 'Colossians 1:17 He is before all things, and by Him all things hold together.' Nice find/recollection, BA.Axel
September 17, 2016
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"Sagan’s dragon story is clearly intended to illustrate the argument that any explanation so constructed as to be immune to any form of testing is useless as a tool for improving our understanding of the world." Why should testability be the only tool to improve our understanding of the world? The rule of modus ponens, for example, is not "testable", but it is necessarily true.Autodidaktos
September 17, 2016
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Seversky @136
S: Sagan’s dragon story is clearly intended to illustrate the argument that any explanation so constructed as to be immune to any form of testing is useless as a tool for improving our understanding of the world. They are effectively vacuous. Hypothetical entities such as an immaterial mind/soul/spirit fall into the same category as Sagan’s dragon if they are so framed as to be untestable.
The person, the “I”, is the one doing the testing. “Testing” cannot exist without a person. If there is no person who intents to do a test, then there can be no test. In what way is a person who performs a test a “hypothetical entity” like Sagan’s dragon? And why is it that you assume that current testing equipment holds the key to all reality? ‘Cogito ergo sum’ cannot be denied. One cannot doubt one’s own existence. I dare you: “When I attempt to doubt my existence, I think. In order to think I have to exist. I think, therefor I am.”
S: And making a choice is usually a rational process which means that it is influenced – even determined – by pre-existing information and rules.
Gobbledygook. Your position cannot ground persons, freedom, rationality, information and rules.Origenes
September 17, 2016
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William J Murray @ 144
A dragon in Sagan’s garage is not a logically necessary postulate required to explain what is evident during conscious existence; a loci of uncaused intention (free will, soul) is. It is how we all behave every day of our lives, as if we all have an uncaused, invisible, immaterial ghost in the machine from which we can override happenstance chemical causes and states. It is what the whole concept of personal responsibility and meaningful argument logically requires.
Sagan's dragon story is clearly intended to illustrate the argument that any explanation so constructed as to be immune to any form of testing is useless as a tool for improving our understanding of the world. They are effectively vacuous. Hypothetical entities such as an immaterial mind/soul/spirit fall into the same category as Sagan's dragon if they are so framed as to be untestable.
Is a computer capable of making a free will choice? No, it is only capable of doing what it is programmed to do. Period. Regardless of how complex it is, regardless even if its programming includes random outputs and evolutionary algorithms that can write new code; the only thing a computer can do is whatever it is programmed to do at any particular moment, and it cannot do anything else.
A computer makes choices based on the parameters set in its programming. How is that different from what we do? When we make choices, they are influenced by our knowledge, experience, beliefs, etc, in other words, our "programming". Of course, we could decide things on the toss of a coin just as a computer could be programmed to make choices based on the output of an RNG but that would not be a rational process. And making a choice is usually a rational process which means that it is influenced - even determined - by pre-existing information and rules. So to what extent are we free given that we are contingent beings who cannot divorce ourselves from the causal chains that led up to us
In order for an entity to be able to do something other than that which it’s physical makeup dictates, it would have to have a non-physical commodity that is outside of the physical system of cause-and-effect.
The programs that run on a computer are constrained by the physical properties of the machine but the operations and outputs are not dictated by them.
In order for an entity to be able to do something other than that which it’s physical makeup dictates, it would have to have a non-physical commodity that is outside of the physical system of cause-and-effect. You complain that the bag-of-chems description is too simple; the term represents the point that if atheistic materialism is true, then all any of can do is whatever our particular physical state at the time causes, even if the output is random or unpredictable, whether or not that output happens to have truthful correspondence to facts or logic or not. Waving your hands and chanting “but it’s more complex than that” doesn’t change that essential point one iota.
The complaint is not so much that the bag-of-chems jibe is too simplistic but that it implicitly denies the possibility that great complexity can arise from simple beginnings. Think of the huge variety of snowflake forms that arise from the simple properties of hydrogen and oxygen in a certain phase. Look at the way genetic algorithms and neural networks are being used to solve problems in ways not anticipated by their programmers and even being applied to the arts. Is it really such a stretch to infer that our conscious experience could emerge from an organ of such staggering complexity as the human brain? Certainly, the evidence we have points much more strongly to that possibility than any other.Seversky
September 17, 2016
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Seversky @160
S: No, we speak about the world as we observe it to be, using “observe” in its broadest sense.
According to your position there is no person. And if there is no person, then there is no starting point for observation. Hence, given your position, you cannot speak of ‘observing’ in any meaningful way.
S: We are well aware that our senses only provide limited information about objective reality.
According to your position there are no persons who are aware of anything.
S: The mental model of that reality that we build internally on the basis of that information.
According to your position there is no “mental model”. Also there are no persons; let alone persons who build anything. Also, there is no such thing as information; there is simply nothing over and beyond chemistry. And so forth ….
S: No one is pretending that one clump of matter can be about another clump of matter.
Right. So, everything that goes on in the brain is not about the external world. Now start acting like this is true. Read again:
William J Murray: You ... claim to be an atheist and a materialist, yet you refuse to use terminology and sentence structures that reflect your supposed views.
Origenes
September 17, 2016
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So here are the facts: 1) We see that our minds have the property of intentionality. 2) We also see that damage to the brain greatly impedes cognition. Materialism cannot explain (1). Cartesian dualism cannot explain (2). Hylemorphic dualism can explain both (1) and (2), since on hylemorphism, the intellect, though immaterial, is dependent upon the brain to supply it with sensory data and memory, from which it abstracts universals. Therefore, hylemorphism is true.Autodidaktos
September 17, 2016
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HeKS @ 135
You have utterly missed the point of what is being discussed here. What we have been presenting here in relation to atheistic materialism is not about what A/M’s personally believe, but about the logical entailments of A/M. One of the primary points that we’ve been making is that, at least at the popular level, A/Ms are generally oblivious to the logical entailments of their worldview and often seem completely incapable of even grasping them once they’ve been laid out. Academic A/Ms, on the other hand, are far more aware of these entailments and agree that they are what we have been presenting.
If you are peddling a strawman version of A/M then any "logical entailments" are equally flawed. Certainly the usual ones trotted out here are. As for worldviews, it is such a nebulous concept, although it does embrace the fact that people of all persuasions often hold dissonant or contradictory views, that it is doubtful that it serves any useful purpose
You, like your other A/M comrades here, continue to speak about the world around you as though it is essentially what it seems to be even though your worldview provides absolutely zero justification for assuming that is the case, and you continue to talk about concepts, like thinking and believing and choosing, when your worldview leaves no room for the existence of such things.
No, we speak about the world as we observe it to be, using "observe" in its broadest sense. We are well aware that our senses only provide limited information about objective reality. The mental model of that reality that we build internally on the basis of that information is good enough to enable us to navigate that reality but we know it is far from being a complete and accurate account of that reality. Our science and instrumentation have allowed us to observe that which is beyond the reach of our physical senses and to understand it to some degree. It is how we know there are billions of neutrinos streaming through every square centimeter of our bodies every second. Our senses don't detect them. Our "worldviews", religious or otherwise didn't predict them but materialistic science posited their existence as a "logical entailment" of discrepancies between theory and observation. Are our observations entirely reliable? Is the model we have of objective reality true in all respects? No, of course not. We are fallible, imperfect creatures. We know that. But what we have learned is good enough, at least to start with. Like it or not, it works. Better than anything else on offer.
You have made the error of failing to properly distinguish between the object of the experience and the experience itself. In and of itself, the Mona Lisa is only paint smeared on a bit of canvas, and that’s all that it is. Any meaning or value that it has beyond that exists entirely in the minds of subjective personal observers. The Mona Lisa is not, of itself, about some woman with a queer smile. It is only the unique character of our minds that give it that aboutness. That is because one clump of matter cannot be about another clump of matter. But if our minds and our thoughts are exhausted by the matter of our brains then our thoughts cannot actually be about things either
The problem of "aboutness" is simply another aspect of the acknowledged Hard Problem of Consciousness. No one is pretending that one clump of matter can be about another clump of matter. "Aboutness" is an attribute of conscious perception and the Hard Problem is hard because of the difficulty of explaining how consciousness can arise from the neurological activity of the brain. We understand that. What we do observe, although immaterialists prefer to ignore it, is that changes to the chemistry of the brain or physical damage to it affects the conscious behavior of the person affected. Death of the physical brain is accompanied by the irreversible disappearance of consciousness. Consciousness is not observed to exist apart from the physical substrate of the brain. There is clearly a strong correlation, at the very least, between the phenomenon of consciousness and the brain. If you want to propose an alternative model of consciousness, you will need to do better than invoke dragon-in-the-garage entities like an incorporeal mind/soul/spirit.Seversky
September 17, 2016
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We have science on our side, you have wishful thinking and childish dreams.
Lovely projection. I see you guys haven't given up competing with Norse mythology in terms of fantasticality.
Am I mocking you and your utterly unprovable position? Certainly!
Don't flatter yourself.
And I don’t do this to be nasty, I do it to see how long it will be before you cease to tolerate this opposition. You see in most totalitarian states it’s not long.
Are you confusing us with Richard Dawkins/Jerry Coyne?Vy
September 17, 2016
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There are simply no plausible materialistic explanations available to atheists in order explain why quantum entanglement exists anywhere in the universe, much less how entanglement can possibly exist in our bodies on such a massive scale in every DNA and protein molecule:
Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012 Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” http://www.quantumlah.org/highlight/121029_hidden_influences.php Quantum correlations do not imply instant causation – August 12, 2016 Excerpt: A research team led by a Heriot-Watt scientist has shown that the universe is even weirder than had previously been thought. In 2015 the universe was officially proven to be weird. After many decades of research, a series of experiments showed that distant, entangled objects can seemingly interact with each other through what Albert Einstein famously dismissed as “Spooky action at a distance”. A new experiment by an international team led by Heriot-Watt’s Dr Alessandro Fedrizzi has now found that the universe is even weirder than that: entangled objects do not cause each other to behave the way they do. http://phys.org/news/2016-08-quantum-imply-instant-causation.html
In other words, since the preceding study proved that the particles are not causing each other to be entangled, then a beyond space and time cause must be supplied to explain why the particles are entangled. ,, And whereas the atheistic materialist is now at a complete loss to explain 'non-local' quantum correlations, The Christian Theist has always had a ready answer, Verse:
Colossians 1:17 He is before all things, and by Him all things hold together.
Supplemental notes:
Molecular Biology - 19th Century Materialism meets 21st Century Quantum Mechanics – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCs3WXHqOv8 The Unbearable Wholeness of Beings - Stephen L. Talbott - 2010 Excerpt: Virtually the same collection of molecules exists in the canine cells during the moments immediately before and after death. But after the fateful transition no one will any longer think of genes as being regulated, nor will anyone refer to normal or proper chromosome functioning. No molecules will be said to guide other molecules to specific targets, and no molecules will be carrying signals, which is just as well because there will be no structures recognizing signals. Code, information, and communication, in their biological sense, will have disappeared from the scientist’s vocabulary. ,,, the question, rather, is why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer? Despite the countless processes going on in the cell, and despite the fact that each process might be expected to “go its own way” according to the myriad factors impinging on it from all directions, the actual result is quite different. Rather than becoming progressively disordered in their mutual relations (as indeed happens after death, when the whole dissolves into separate fragments), the processes hold together in a larger unity. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-unbearable-wholeness-of-beings Scientific (physical) evidence that we do indeed have an eternal soul - video elaboration on Talbott's question "What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2P45Obl4lQ Special and General Relativity compared to Heavenly and Hellish Near Death Experiences - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbKELVHcvSI&list=PLtAP1KN7ahia8hmDlCYEKifQ8n65oNpQ5&index=1
Verses and Music:
Luke 23:42-43 And he said, Jesus, remember me when thou comest in thy kingdom. And he said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise. Matthew 16:26 What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? Allman Brothers Band - Soulshine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDIQ7Otf1mw
bornagain77
September 17, 2016
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As to the question of whether there is some transcendent component to our being, i.e. whether we have a 'soul', that can possibly survive death, the 'scientific' answer to that question is yes.
“Let’s say the heart stops beating. The blood stops flowing. The microtubules lose their quantum state. But the quantum information, which is in the microtubules, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed. It just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. If a patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says, “I had a near death experience. I saw a white light. I saw a tunnel. I saw my dead relatives.,,” Now if they’re not revived and the patient dies, then it's possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.” - Stuart Hameroff - Quantum Entangled Consciousness - Life After Death - video (5:00 minute mark) https://youtu.be/jjpEc98o_Oo?t=300
Stuart Hameroff is referring to the fact that, in quantum mechanics, it is information that is primarily conserved, not matter and energy that are primarily conserved.
Quantum no-hiding theorem experimentally confirmed for first time Excerpt: In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed. This concept stems from two fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics: the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem. A third and related theorem, called the no-hiding theorem, addresses information loss in the quantum world. According to the no-hiding theorem, if information is missing from one system (which may happen when the system interacts with the environment), then the information is simply residing somewhere else in the Universe; in other words, the missing information cannot be hidden in the correlations between a system and its environment. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-quantum-no-hiding-theorem-experimentally.html Quantum no-deleting theorem Excerpt: A stronger version of the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem provide permanence to quantum information. To create a copy one must import the information from some part of the universe and to delete a state one needs to export it to another part of the universe where it will continue to exist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_no-deleting_theorem#Consequence
Besides microtubules, which Hameroff mentioned, quantum information/entanglement is also now found in every DNA and protein molecule of our bodies:
Classical and Quantum Information Channels in Protein Chain - Dj. Koruga, A. Tomi?, Z. Ratkaj, L. Matija - 2006 Abstract: Investigation of the properties of peptide plane in protein chain from both classical and quantum approach is presented. We calculated interatomic force constants for peptide plane and hydrogen bonds between peptide planes in protein chain. On the basis of force constants, displacements of each atom in peptide plane, and time of action we found that the value of the peptide plane action is close to the Planck constant. This indicates that peptide plane from the energy viewpoint possesses synergetic classical/quantum properties. Consideration of peptide planes in protein chain from information viewpoint also shows that protein chain possesses classical and quantum properties. So, it appears that protein chain behaves as a triple dual system: (1) structural - amino acids and peptide planes, (2) energy - classical and quantum state, and (3) information - classical and quantum coding. Based on experimental facts of protein chain, we proposed from the structure-energy-information viewpoint its synergetic code system. http://www.scientific.net/MSF.518.491 "What happens is this classical information (of DNA) is embedded, sandwiched, into the quantum information (of DNA). And most likely this classical information is never accessed because it is inside all the quantum information. You can only access the quantum information or the electron clouds and the protons. So mathematically you can describe that as a quantum/classical state." Elisabeth Rieper – Classical and Quantum Information in DNA – video (Longitudinal Quantum Information resides along the entire length of DNA discussed at the 19:30 minute mark; at 24:00 minute mark Dr Rieper remarks that practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it) https://youtu.be/2nqHOnVTxJE?t=1176 Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules Excerpt: “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” they say. That’s a discovery that is as important as it is unexpected. “These findings suggest an entirely new and universal mechanism of conductance in biology very different from the one used in electrical circuits.” The permutations of possible energy levels of biomolecules is huge so the possibility of finding even one that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,, “what exactly is the advantage that criticality confers?” https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-origin-of-life-and-the-hidden-role-of-quantum-criticality-ca4707924552
bornagain77
September 17, 2016
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William, It would seem to me that you're speaking of causes in the sense of them being deterministic. But causation needn't be so. Insofar as the will is intrinsically oriented towards this or that entity seen as good in one way or the other, some entity or the other can move the will towards it, but this is indeterministic, i.e., it does not necessarily move the will towards it. We probably have a potentially infinite hierarchy of orders of willing (I can want X, yet I can desire not to want X, I can desire not to have the desire to not want X...) ad infinitum. This is why the will acts indeterministically.Autodidaktos
September 17, 2016
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BA77@146: "Mind must be postulated as the unobserved observer, the uncaused cause simply to avoid a self-negating, self-conflicting worldview." We are thus akin to the creator, himself. Our minds produce "uncaused causes". One has said we received such power from him, the power to think and to do. What a gift!Allen Shepherd
September 17, 2016
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WJM: Seversky asks why particular states of organic chemistry “should” cause a particular belief-effect, as if such physical effects are generated from reason and not whatever the prior physical state happens to be. C.S. Lewis does a pretty good job dealing with the difference between cause/effect and ground/consequent in his book Miracles, and explains why materialists are out in the weeds, so to speak, philosophically. Doesn't seem like most materialists are aware of the difference, something Lewis noticed and pointed out back in the late 1940s. (He revised the book in 1960.) Somehow, the ground/consequent reasoning that humans do "broke free" of the cause/effect of mere chemical action. Materialists have no gap-free explanation for this. They often don't realize that there is anything here that calls for an explanation.mike1962
September 17, 2016
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Autodidaktos, Yes, then angels are not immortal as well. That is, they are contingent. And, yes, if God ceased to exist, so would all beings. But angels have eternal life, yes, and may have been granted immortality, but I don't think it says so in scripture. Eternal life is different than immortality. The first is contingent on someone, the second is non-contingent. Adam and Eve had eternal life in the garden, dec;pendant on the tree of life. They were not immortal. (Gen 3:22) I Cor 15 states that we RECEIVE immortality at the resurrection. We therefore must not have it now, for why would we have to receive it. "While there are passages in the Bible which do seem to speak of total annihilation at death, neither the OT nor the NT have such a worldview." I would view the idea of sheol as an unconscious sleep, and scripture seems to indicate it is (John 11:11-14) Dionisio, I do not know how to use various tools to copy posts to mine. Sorry for not posting whom I was posting to. It was rv8 @138. I was looking at it as I was posting, but Born-again 77 got in a minute before I did, so his post separated mine from rv8. If God only has Immorality (I Tim 1:16), and we receive it at the resurrection, (1 Cor 15:51-53), how then can the soul be immortal, whatever it is? And Jesus also said that God could destroy the soul in hell. (Matt 10:28) Gen 2:7 God forms a body from the dust, adds the breath of life, and the result is a living soul. a person. When death happens, the breath (the principle of life, not a conscious thing) returns to God, the body to dust. The soul ceases to exist. If you could explain to me how you transfer quotes from others to your post in the little boxes like you do, it would be appreciated. Thanks.Allen Shepherd
September 17, 2016
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Atheist Sam "moral landscape" Harris now holds that consciousness is irreducible to brain states? Who says miracles can't happen! - video https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom/videos/10153879575418527/bornagain77
September 17, 2016
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Autodidaktos said:
Are you speaking of ’cause’ in the sense of ‘deterministic cause’? For the will’s motion does have causes, which do not, however, determine it towards some conclusion.
IMO, the will has no causes whatsoever. The term is misapplied. What surrounds and informs the will are reasons, influences and contextual information. None of these things cause the will to move one direction or the other, but rather provide a full landscape of values and information within which one's will is applied. Look at it this way: you are standing at a point in a landscape. You have a goal you are trying to achieve; you have a certain kind of weather you are experiencing, you have certain items in your backpack and you are experience a certain range of health. It's a certain time of day or night. Does all of that cause you to make whatever decision you make about what to do next? No. Those are not causes. You can change your goal on the fly or even ignore it; if you are tired you can choose to rest or push on; etc.William J Murray
September 17, 2016
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William J Murray: Are you speaking of 'cause' in the sense of 'deterministic cause'? For the will's motion does have causes, which do not, however, determine it towards some conclusion.Autodidaktos
September 17, 2016
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