Aw, Facebook, quit blaming AI for your goofs and shady practices

To go further in Weinberg's rejection of the instrumentalist approach because "humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level", and because, "the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else."

"In the instrumentalist approach,,, humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level. According to Eugene Wigner, a pioneer of quantum mechanics, “it was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.”11 Thus the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else. It is not that we object to thinking about humans. Rather, we want to understand the relation of humans to nature, not just assuming the character of this relation by incorporating it in what we suppose are nature’s fundamental laws, but rather by deduction from laws that make no explicit reference to humans. We may in the end have to give up this goal,,," - Weinberg

The reason why it is so interesting that Weinberg rejected the instrumentalist approach because it turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin of humans being described as being purely the result of the laws of nature is that no one, and I mean NO ONE, has ever been able to discover these so called "impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else." There simply are no ‘laws of evolution’ within the known physical universe "that control human behavior along with everything else."

Laws of science 1 Conservation laws 1.1 Conservation and symmetry 1.2 Continuity and transfer 2 Laws of classical mechanics 2.1 Principle of least action 3 Laws of gravitation and relativity 3.1 Modern laws 3.2 Classical laws 4 Thermodynamics 5 Electromagnetism 6 Photonics 7 Laws of quantum mechanics 8 Radiation laws 9 Laws of chemistry 10 Geophysical laws per wikipedia

As Ernst Mayr himself conceded, “In biology, as several other people have shown, and I totally agree with them, there are no natural laws in biology corresponding to the natural laws of the physical sciences.”

The Evolution of Ernst: Interview with Ernst Mayr – 2004 (page 2 of 14) Excerpt: biology (Darwinian Evolution) differs from the physical sciences in that in the physical sciences, all theories, I don’t know exceptions so I think it’s probably a safe statement, all theories are based somehow or other on natural laws. In biology, as several other people have shown, and I totally agree with them, there are no natural laws in biology corresponding to the natural laws of the physical sciences. ,,, And so that’s what I do in this book. I show that the theoretical basis, you might call it, or I prefer to call it the philosophy of biology, has a totally different basis than the theories of physics. https://www.scientificamerican.com/media/pdf/0004D8E1-178C-10EB-978C83414B7F012C.pdf

In the following article, Roger Highfield makes much the same observation as Ernst Mayr and states, ,,, Whatever the case, those universal truths—’laws’—that physicists and chemists all rely upon appear relatively absent from biology.

WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? Evolution is True – Roger Highfield – January 2014 Excerpt: If evolutionary biologists are really Seekers of the Truth, they need to focus more on finding the mathematical regularities of biology, following in the giant footsteps of Sewall Wright, JBS Haldane, Ronald Fisher and so on. ,,, Whatever the case, those universal truths—’laws’—that physicists and chemists all rely upon appear relatively absent from biology. Little seems to have changed from a decade ago when the late and great John Maynard Smith wrote a chapter on evolutionary game theory for a book on the most powerful equations of science: his contribution did not include a single equation. http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25468

Professor Murray Eden of MIT, in a paper entitled “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory” stated that “the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws—physical, physico-chemical, and biological.”

“It is our contention that if ‘random’ is given a serious and crucial interpretation from a probabilistic point of view, the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws—physical, physico-chemical, and biological.” Murray Eden, “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory,” Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, editors Paul S. Moorhead and Martin M. Kaplan, June 1967, p. 109. https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~christos/evol/compevol_files/Wistar-Eden-1.pdf

In fact, not only is there no ‘law of evolution’ within the known physical universe for Darwinists to build a realistic mathematical model upon, the second law of thermodynamics, entropy, a law with great mathematical explanatory power in science, almost directly contradicts the primary Darwinian claim that greater and greater levels of functional complexity can easily be had and/or ‘naturally selected’ for over long periods of time. Indeed, entropy’s main claim is that, over long periods of time, everything in the universe will decay into simpler and simpler states until what is termed thermodynamic equilibrium is finally reached. Moreover, since Weinberg was wrong in his belief that Darwinian evolution was built on some type of physical law, "that control human behavior along with everything else", then Weinberg should not have rejected the instrumentalist approach!bornagain77

April 18, 2018

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As to jdk's claim for "decoherence" i.e. his claim that "it is not actually consciousness that “touches the world”, so to speak, but rather some piece of measuring apparatus, be it a single photon or some macroscopic object" Well Weinberg also rejects jdk's position of decoherence for very pragmatic reasons:

The Trouble with Quantum Mechanics - Steven Weinberg - January 19, 2017 The trouble is that in quantum mechanics the way that wave functions change with time is governed by an equation, the Schrödinger equation, that does not involve probabilities. It is just as deterministic as Newton’s equations of motion and gravitation. That is, given the wave function at any moment, the Schrödinger equation will tell you precisely what the wave function will be at any future time. There is not even the possibility of chaos, the extreme sensitivity to initial conditions that is possible in Newtonian mechanics. So if we regard the whole process of measurement as being governed by the equations of quantum mechanics, and these equations are perfectly deterministic, how do probabilities get into quantum mechanics? One common answer is that, in a measurement, the spin (or whatever else is measured) is put in an interaction with a macroscopic environment that jitters in an unpredictable way. For example, the environment might be the shower of photons in a beam of light that is used to observe the system, as unpredictable in practice as a shower of raindrops. Such an environment causes the superposition of different states in the wave function to break down, leading to an unpredictable result of the measurement. (This is called decoherence.) It is as if a noisy background somehow unpredictably left only one of the notes of a chord audible. But this begs the question. If the deterministic Schrödinger equation governs the changes through time not only of the spin but also of the measuring apparatus and the physicist using it, then the results of measurement should not in principle be unpredictable. So we still have to ask, how do probabilities get into quantum mechanics?,,, Today there are two widely followed approaches to quantum mechanics, the “realist” and “instrumentalist” approaches, which view the origin of probability in measurement in two very different ways.9 For reasons I will explain, neither approach seems to me quite satisfactory.10 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/01/19/trouble-with-quantum-mechanics/

Weinberg also rejects the “realist” approach for very pragmatic reasons (basically it is an insane approach if I recall correctly :) ). ,,, Weinberg basically gives up altogether on ever understanding quantum mechanics with any approach. But the reason he rejects the instrumentalist approach in particular in interesting, Weinberg rejects the instrumentalist approach not for any pragmatic reason but for a philosophical reason. He does so precisely because he does not want humans to be brought into the laws of nature at their most fundamental level. Basically he cites Darwinian evolution as the reason why he rejects the instrumentalist approach. And if anything should send up a red flag for readers of UD, it is someone citing Darwinian evolution as their reason for rejecting a certain point of view! :) Moreover, because of Weinberg's rejection of the instrumentalist approach, that is precisely the reason I further cited the experimental work of Anton Zeilinger.

“The Kochen-Speckter Theorem talks about properties of one system only. So we know that we cannot assume – to put it precisely, we know that it is wrong to assume that the features of a system, which we observe in a measurement exist prior to measurement. Not always. I mean in a certain cases. So in a sense, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.” – Anton Zeilinger –

And I can go much further in this vein citing experimental work that supports the validity of free will in quantum mechanics,,, But anyways,,, in the meantime,,, Here are a few more notes that falsify jdk's appeal to decoherence:

The Mental Universe - Richard Conn Henry - Professor of Physics John Hopkins University Excerpt: The only reality is mind and observations, but observations are not of things. To see the Universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things.,,, Physicists shy away from the truth because the truth is so alien to everyday physics. A common way to evade the mental universe is to invoke "decoherence" - the notion that "the physical environment" is sufficient to create reality, independent of the human mind. Yet the idea that any irreversible act of amplification is necessary to collapse the wave function is known to be wrong: in "Renninger-type" experiments, the wave function is collapsed simply by your human mind seeing nothing. The universe is entirely mental,,,, The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy. http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/The.mental.universe.pdf The Renninger Negative Result Experiment - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3uzSlh_CV0 An Interaction-Free Quantum Experiment (Zeilinger Bomb Tester experiment, and in the double slit experiment, the Detector can be placed at one slit during the double slit experiment and yet the photon or electron still collapses in the unobserved slit) - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOv8zYla1wY Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester Excerpt: In 1994, Anton Zeilinger, Paul Kwiat, Harald Weinfurter, and Thomas Herzog actually performed an equivalent of the above experiment, proving interaction-free measurements are indeed possible.[2] In 1996, Kwiat et al. devised a method, using a sequence of polarising devices, that efficiently increases the yield rate to a level arbitrarily close to one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitzur%E2%80%93Vaidman_bomb-testing_problem#Experiments

At the 16:34 minute mark of the following video the reason why detector interference does not explain quantum wave collapse is explained (i.e. observation changes the nature of what we are observing not just the activity of what we are observing):

Double Slit, Quantum-Electrodynamics, and Christian Theism - video - video – (3:05 minute mark) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK9kGpIxMRM

The following video also explains why decoherence does not solve the measurement problem:

The Measurement Problem in quantum mechanics - (Inspiring Philosophy) - 2014 video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB7d5V71vUE

bornagain77

April 18, 2018

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In 68, ba quotes Steven Weinberg from a very interesting article from nybooks.com concerning the instrumentalist approach to QM and the implication that consciousness is essential to a QM description of reality. However, Weinberg started the section that ba quotes by writing,

Today there are two widely followed approaches to quantum mechanics, the “realist” and “instrumentalist” approaches, which view the origin of probability in measurement in two very different ways.9 For reasons I will explain, neither approach seems to me quite satisfactory.10

That is, FTR, Weinberg is explaining what some think, but not a position that Weinberg himself endorses. Later in the article, Weinberg writes,

What then must be done about the shortcomings of quantum mechanics? One reasonable response is contained in the legendary advice to inquiring students: “Shut up and calculate!” There is no argument about how to use quantum mechanics, only how to describe what it means, so perhaps the problem is merely one of words. On the other hand, the problems of understanding measurement in the present form of quantum mechanics may be warning us that the theory needs modification. Quantum mechanics works so well for atoms that any new theory would have to be nearly indistinguishable from quantum mechanics when applied to such small things. But a new theory might be designed so that the superpositions of states of large things like physicists and their apparatus even in isolation suffer an actual rapid spontaneous collapse, in which probabilities evolve to give the results expected in quantum mechanics.

A point I want to make in response to this is that it is not actually consciousness that "touches the world", so to speak, but rather some piece of measuring apparatus, be it a single photon or some macroscopic object, and furthermore, physicists themselves are macroscopic physical objects. So even though we, as a conscious being, have to be present in order to experience the effects of measurement, it is not actually consciousness itself which impacts the measured particle, but rather some other entity in the physical world.jdk

April 18, 2018

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By the way Origenes, excellent find at 64. I'm borrowing it. :)bornagain77

April 18, 2018

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Of related note to the the claim that only a few atheistic materialists claim to be 'neuronal illusions'. In their (false) claim that methodological naturalism is the supposed 'ground rule' for practicing science, (Judge Jones; Dover), atheists have basically ruled agent causality (and/or immaterial minds) out of bounds before any scientific investigation has even begun, As Paul Nelson states in the following article,

Do You Like SETI? Fine, Then Let's Dump Methodological Naturalism - Paul Nelson - September 24, 2014 Excerpt: "Epistemology -- how we know -- and ontology -- what exists -- are both affected by methodological naturalism (MN). If we say, "We cannot know that a mind caused x," laying down an epistemological boundary defined by MN, then our ontology comprising real causes for x won't include minds. MN entails an ontology in which minds are the consequence of physics, and thus, can only be placeholders for a more detailed causal account in which physics is the only (ultimate) actor. You didn't write your email to me. Physics did, and informed (the illusion of) you of that event after the fact. "That's crazy," you reply, "I certainly did write my email." Okay, then -- to what does the pronoun "I" in that sentence refer? Your personal agency; your mind. Are you supernatural?,,, You are certainly an intelligent cause, however, and your intelligence does not collapse into physics. (If it does collapse -- i.e., can be reduced without explanatory loss -- we haven't the faintest idea how, which amounts to the same thing.) To explain the effects you bring about in the world -- such as your email, a real pattern -- we must refer to you as a unique agent.,,, some feature of "intelligence" must be irreducible to physics, because otherwise we're back to physics versus physics, and there's nothing for SETI to look for.",,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/09/do_you_like_set090071.html

Thus atheists, whether wittingly or not, have basically tried to codify their materialistic belief that agent causality (i.e. immaterial minds) must be 'neuronal illusions' into science with their appeal to methodological naturalism. Yet this denial of agent causality, as imposed by the artificial imposition of Methodological Naturalism onto science, is completely unwarranted. If anything, we understand our own agent causality (our own immaterial mind) much better than we understand mechanical causality. As Professor J. Budziszewski states,,,

A Professor's Journey out of Nihilism: Why I am not an Atheist - University of Wyoming - J. Budziszewski Excerpt page12: "There were two great holes in the argument about the irrelevance of God. The first is that in order to attack free will, I supposed that I understood cause and effect; I supposed causation to be less mysterious than volition. If anything, it is the other way around. I can perceive a logical connection between premises and valid conclusions. I can perceive at least a rational connection between my willing to do something and my doing it. But between the apple and the earth, I can perceive no connection at all. Why does the apple fall? We don't know. "But there is gravity," you say. No, "gravity" is merely the name of the phenomenon, not its explanation. "But there are laws of gravity," you say. No, the "laws" are not its explanation either; they are merely a more precise description of the thing to be explained, which remains as mysterious as before. For just this reason, philosophers of science are shy of the term "laws"; they prefer "lawlike regularities." To call the equations of gravity "laws" and speak of the apple as "obeying" them is to speak as though, like the traffic laws, the "laws" of gravity are addressed to rational agents capable of conforming their wills to the command. This is cheating, because it makes mechanical causality (the more opaque of the two phenomena) seem like volition (the less). In my own way of thinking the cheating was even graver, because I attacked the less opaque in the name of the more. The other hole in my reasoning was cruder. If my imprisonment in a blind causality made my reasoning so unreliable that I couldn't trust my beliefs, then by the same token I shouldn't have trusted my beliefs about imprisonment in a blind causality. But in that case I had no business denying free will in the first place." http://www.undergroundthomist.org/sites/default/files/WhyIAmNotAnAtheist.pdf

Moreover, besides the catastrophic epistemological failure that is inherent to the atheist's worldview which excludes immaterial minds from the outset before any scientific investigation has even begun, as the following video makes clear, advances in quantum mechanics have now shown us that the mental attribute of 'free will' and also the mental attribute of what is termed 'the experience of the now' are both integral parts of Quantum Mechanics. That is to say that key and defining attributes of the immaterial mind are now found to be central to our best scientific understanding of reality in Quantum Mechanics:

Albert Einstein vs. Quantum Mechanics and His Own Mind – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxFFtZ301j4 The Mind and Materialist Superstition – Michael Egnor - 2008 Six “conditions of mind” that are irreconcilable with materialism: - Excerpt: Intentionality,,, Qualia,,, Persistence of Self-Identity,,, Restricted Access,,, Incorrigibility,,, Free Will,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/11/the_mind_and_materialist_super013961.html

In fact, as the following article by Steven Weinberg shows, in quantum mechanics humans are brought into the laws of physics at the most fundamental level instead of humans being the result of the laws of physics as Darwinists had falsely imagined us to be.

The Trouble with Quantum Mechanics - Steven Weinberg - January 19, 2017 Excerpt: The instrumentalist approach,, (the) wave function,, is merely an instrument that provides predictions of the probabilities of various outcomes when measurements are made.,, In the instrumentalist approach,,, humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level. According to Eugene Wigner, a pioneer of quantum mechanics, “it was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.”11 Thus the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else. It is not that we object to thinking about humans. Rather, we want to understand the relation of humans to nature, not just assuming the character of this relation by incorporating it in what we suppose are nature’s fundamental laws, but rather by deduction from laws that make no explicit reference to humans. We may in the end have to give up this goal,,, Some physicists who adopt an instrumentalist approach argue that the probabilities we infer from the wave function are objective probabilities, independent of whether humans are making a measurement. I don’t find this tenable. In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure, such as the spin in one or another direction. Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/01/19/trouble-with-quantum-mechanics/

And as Anton Zeilinger states at the 7:00 minute mark of the following video, "what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”

“The Kochen-Speckter Theorem talks about properties of one system only. So we know that we cannot assume – to put it precisely, we know that it is wrong to assume that the features of a system, which we observe in a measurement exist prior to measurement. Not always. I mean in a certain cases. So in a sense, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.” - Anton Zeilinger - Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism - video (7:57 minute mark) https://youtu.be/4C5pq7W5yRM?t=500

Thus, contrary to the claim by atheists that immaterial minds are unscientific (and are even "neuronal illusions"), and their claim that only mechanical causality can be allowed in science, it is now found that Agent causality is very much integral to quantum mechanics itself, which is currently our best scientific description of reality. Moreover, when we rightly let the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into the picture of modern physics, as the Christian founders of modern science had originally envisioned, (Sir Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Michael Faraday, and Max Planck, to name a few), as these following quotes make clear,,,

“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.” - Isaac Newton, The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy "At the same time I think that each individual man should do all he can to impress his own mind with the extent, the order, and the unity of the universe, and should carry these ideas with him as he reads such passages as the 1st Chap. of the Ep.(Epistle) to Colossians (see Lightfoot on Colossians, p.182), just as enlarged conceptions of the extent and unity of the world of life may be of service to us in reading Psalm viii, Heb ii 6, etc.,,," - James Clerk Maxwell "for the book of nature, which we have to read is written by the finger of God." - Michael Faraday “As a physicist, that is, a man who had devoted his whole life to a wholly prosaic science, the exploration of matter, no one would surely suspect me of being a fantast. And so, having studied the atom, I am telling you that there is no matter as such! All matter arises and persists only due to a force that causes the atomic particles to vibrate, holding them together in the tiniest of solar systems, the atom. Yet in the whole of the universe there is no force that is either intelligent or eternal, and we must therefore assume that behind this force there is a conscious, intelligent Mind or Spirit. This is the very origin of all matter.” - Max Planck, as cited in Eggenstein 1984, Part I; see “Materialistic Science on the Wrong Track”.

,,, if we rightly let the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into the picture of modern physics, then an empirically backed reconciliation between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, i.e. the ‘Theory of Everything’, readily pops out for us in Christ’s resurrection from the dead.

Copernican Principle, Agent Causality, and Jesus Christ as the “Theory of Everything” - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NziDraiPiOw

bornagain77

April 18, 2018

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BS77,

Nope AK, just leading atheistic materialists claim, in all seriousness, to be ‘neuronal illusions’.

Atheists do not have leadership. We leave that to religion.Allan Keith

April 18, 2018

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Just FTR, in 63 I said the self was an illusion (i.e. the personhood ba is talking about), not consciousness. Buddhists and Hindus consider consciousness as primary.jdk

April 18, 2018

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AI is quickly becoming, not an object, not a state of being or threshold of functionality, but a set of techniques. Anything using neural net style code structure or recursive self parameterization is now AI. Which, if you're carrying the expectations from the legacy usage of the word into the conversation, is about like conflating a blob of lab grown neurons with a fully operational brain. Clever marketing, though. In bad faith, as marketing is commonly done; but clever.LocalMinimum

April 18, 2018

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But here comes Danny [Daniel Dennett] the Sophist who asserts that consciousness is an illusion. Well, that is just nonsense sired by his otherwise laudable desire to explain things coupled with an uncritical and not-so-laudable conceit that everything can be explained. If consciousness is an illusion, then it is an illusion for consciousness. But then our sophist has moved in a circle, reinstating the very thing he was trying to get rid of. Or else he is embarked upon a vicious infinite regress. Calling Dennett a sophist is not very nice, even though I have very good reason to impugn his intellectual integrity, as you will discover if you read my entries in the Dennett category. So let me try to be charitable. Our man is a naturalist and an explanatory rationalist: he is out to explain everything. But not everything can be explained. Consciousness is not only presupposed by the distinction between reality and illusion, it is also presupposed by the quest for explanation. For where would explanations reside if not in the minds of conscious beings? So I say consciousness cannot be an illusion. One cannot explain it the way Dennett wants to explain it, which involves explaining it away. For details, see Can Consciousness be Explained? Dennett Debunked . But if consciousness, per impossibile, were an illusion, why wouldn't truth also be an illusion? Consciousness is an illusion because naturalism has no place for it. Whatever is real is reducible to the physical; consciousness is not reducible to the physical; ergo, consciousness does not exist in reality: it is an illusion. By the same reasoning, truth ought also to be an illusion since there is no place for it in the natural world. Note also that Dennett obviously thinks that truth is objectively valuable and pursuit-worthy. Where locate values in a naturalist scheme?

... more Bill Vallicella ...Origenes

April 18, 2018

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Buddhists and Hindus believe the self is an illusion and that recognizing that is a key to enlightenment.jdk

April 18, 2018

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Nope AK, just leading atheistic materialists claim, in all seriousness, to be 'neuronal illusions'.bornagain77

April 18, 2018

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By BS77's rationale, the following are not persons: Hindus Buddhists Sikhs North, central and south indiginous peoples Australian indigenous peoples Polynesians Atheists African indigenous peoples Japanese Chinese And, when you classify people as non-persons, you justify not affording them respect, freedom and, in the worst case, life. Just ask the slaves, American and Australian indigenous peoples, Jews in Nazi Germany. It is obvious that BS77's ploy of calling atheists non-persons is just a rhetorical tactic to demean the people that he disagrees with and not have to address their questions. It says more about his morality than it does about atheists.Allan Keith

April 18, 2018

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Your mom calls me that, too.

As opposed to Mr. Brain, I guess. Andrewasauber

April 18, 2018

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Mr. Meat

Your mom calls me that, too.LarTanner

April 18, 2018

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Your problem is not worldview, but attitude and imagination.

LarTanner, It's all pops and whistles and squishes, Mr. Meat. Andrewasauber

April 18, 2018

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asauber--

So we are back to me trying to talk to a bag of meat that makes noises.

Your problem is not worldview, but attitude and imagination. Aren't you people supposed to have "joy in your heart"?LarTanner

April 18, 2018

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No, it is not the case that personhood is the basis for two people having a conversation.

LarTanner, So we are back to me trying to talk to a bag of meat that makes noises. Pointless. Andrewasauber

April 18, 2018

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Bob, herein lies your confusion, (and maybe I have not been clear enough is the source of your confusion), I have (tried to) consistently maintain that your very own worldview denies you the status of personhood, and that the premises inherent to your very own Atheistic Materialism lead directly to the conclusion that 'you' are your brain. Which is to say, the entire concept of "you" as a real person is merely a 'neuronal illusion' generated by your brain. There is no 'you', only the random jostling of the atoms in your brain is to be considered real under Atheistic Materialism. "You" adamantly disagree with this direct implication of your own worldview and claim that atheistic materialism can somehow rationally ground the concept of "you" as being a real person. Yet, as pointed out in post 32, the entire concept of personhood is now rigorously shown, experimentally and logically, to forever be beyond the scope of reductive materialistic explanations.

See post 32 https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/aw-faceboook-quit-blaming-ai-for-your-goofs-and-shady-practices/#comment-656536

You further claim that I am being inconsistent in my Christian worldview in holding you accountable to the implications of your own insane worldview, when the fact of the matter is that you are the one who is. blatantly, not living consistently within your own worldview. You want, as Nancy Pearcey noted in her book 'Finding Truth", to 'free ride' on the Christian worldview without paying the price of actually believing in Christianity Moreover, even if you wanted to live consistently within your worldview, it is, in fact, impossible for you to live consistently within your worldview as if it were actually true: As bb already referenced:

The Heretic - Who is Thomas Nagel and why are so many of his fellow academics condemning him? - March 25, 2013 Excerpt:,,,Fortunately, materialism is never translated into life as it’s lived. As colleagues and friends, husbands and mothers, wives and fathers, sons and daughters, materialists never put their money where their mouth is. Nobody thinks his daughter is just molecules in motion and nothing but; nobody thinks the Holocaust was evil, but only in a relative, provisional sense. A materialist who lived his life according to his professed convictions—understanding himself to have no moral agency at all, seeing his friends and enemies and family as genetically determined robots—wouldn’t just be a materialist: He’d be a psychopath. http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/heretic_707692.html?page=3

And in the following article, Nancy Pearcey quotes many leading atheists who readily admit it is impossible for them to live as if their worldview were actually true:

Darwin's Robots: When Evolutionary Materialists Admit that Their Own Worldview Fails - Nancy Pearcey - April 23, 2015 Excerpt: Even materialists often admit that, in practice, it is impossible for humans to live any other way. One philosopher jokes that if people deny free will, then when ordering at a restaurant they should say, "Just bring me whatever the laws of nature have determined I will get." An especially clear example is Galen Strawson, a philosopher who states with great bravado, "The impossibility of free will ... can be proved with complete certainty." Yet in an interview, Strawson admits that, in practice, no one accepts his deterministic view. "To be honest, I can't really accept it myself," he says. "I can't really live with this fact from day to day. Can you, really?",,, In What Science Offers the Humanities, Edward Slingerland, identifies himself as an unabashed materialist and reductionist. Slingerland argues that Darwinian materialism leads logically to the conclusion that humans are robots -- that our sense of having a will or self or consciousness is an illusion. Yet, he admits, it is an illusion we find impossible to shake. No one "can help acting like and at some level really feeling that he or she is free." We are "constitutionally incapable of experiencing ourselves and other conspecifics [humans] as robots." One section in his book is even titled "We Are Robots Designed Not to Believe That We Are Robots.",,, When I teach these concepts in the classroom, an example my students find especially poignant is Flesh and Machines by Rodney Brooks, professor emeritus at MIT. Brooks writes that a human being is nothing but a machine -- a "big bag of skin full of biomolecules" interacting by the laws of physics and chemistry. In ordinary life, of course, it is difficult to actually see people that way. But, he says, "When I look at my children, I can, when I force myself, ... see that they are machines." Is that how he treats them, though? Of course not: "That is not how I treat them.... I interact with them on an entirely different level. They have my unconditional love, the furthest one might be able to get from rational analysis." Certainly if what counts as "rational" is a materialist worldview in which humans are machines, then loving your children is irrational. It has no basis within Brooks's worldview. It sticks out of his box. How does he reconcile such a heart-wrenching cognitive dissonance? He doesn't. Brooks ends by saying, "I maintain two sets of inconsistent beliefs." He has given up on any attempt to reconcile his theory with his experience. He has abandoned all hope for a unified, logically consistent worldview. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/04/when_evolutiona095451.html

And in the following article, even Dawkins himself admited that it would be 'intolerable' for him to live as if his atheistic worldview were actually true:

Who wrote Richard Dawkins's new book? - October 28, 2006 Excerpt: Dawkins: What I do know is that what it feels like to me, and I think to all of us, we don't feel determined. We feel like blaming people for what they do or giving people the credit for what they do. We feel like admiring people for what they do.,,, Manzari: But do you personally see that as an inconsistency in your views? Dawkins: I sort of do. Yes. But it is an inconsistency that we sort of have to live with otherwise life would be intolerable.,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/10/who_wrote_richard_dawkinss_new002783.html

In what should be needless to say, if it is impossible for you to live as if your worldview were actually true then your worldview cannot possibly reflect reality as it really is but your worldview must instead be based on a delusion.

Existential Argument against Atheism - November 1, 2013 by Jason Petersen 1. If a worldview is true then you should be able to live consistently with that worldview. 2. Atheists are unable to live consistently with their worldview. 3. If you can’t live consistently with an atheist worldview then the worldview does not reflect reality. 4. If a worldview does not reflect reality then that worldview is a delusion. 5. If atheism is a delusion then atheism cannot be true. Conclusion: Atheism is false. http://answersforhope.com/existential-argument-atheism/

Moreover, this insanity inherent to the atheistic/materialistic worldview is born out empirically, in that people who claim to be atheists tend to suffer mentally and physically, as a result of their worldview, much more than believers do.

“I maintain that whatever else faith may be, it cannot be a delusion. The advantageous effect of religious belief and spirituality on mental and physical health is one of the best-kept secrets in psychiatry and medicine generally. If the findings of the huge volume of research on this topic had gone in the opposite direction and it had been found that religion damages your mental health, it would have been front-page news in every newspaper in the land.” - Professor Andrew Sims former President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists - Is Faith Delusion?: Why religion is good for your health - preface https://books.google.com/books?id=PREdCgAAQBAJ&pg=PR11#v=onepage&q&f=false “In the majority of studies, religious involvement is correlated with well-being, happiness and life satisfaction; hope and optimism; purpose and meaning in life; higher self-esteem; better adaptation to bereavement; greater social support and less loneliness; lower rates of depression and faster recovery from depression; lower rates of suicide and fewer positive attitudes towards suicide; less anxiety; less psychosis and fewer psychotic tendencies; lower rates of alcohol and drug use and abuse; less delinquency and criminal activity; greater marital stability and satisfaction… We concluded that for the vast majority of people the apparent benefits of devout belief and practice probably outweigh the risks.” - Professor Andrew Sims former President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists - Is Faith Delusion?: Why religion is good for your health – page 100 https://books.google.com/books?id=PREdCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA100#v=onepage&q&f=false

bornagain77

April 18, 2018

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asauber--

Personhood is the basis on which you and I can possibly have a rational conversation.

No, it is not the case that personhood is the basis for two people having a conversation. You are inflating and over-complicating the matter. Moreover, you provide no clarification or defense to the assertion, rendering it pretty much vacuous. You also fail to connect how worldview "confers" personhood. You seems to want to make "personhood" ideological, when it's easier and and more straightforward to tie it to material characteristics. A human being is therefore a person and so has "personhood."LarTanner

April 18, 2018

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bb - your interpretation might be right except for one problem - ba77 has repeatedly said that I am not a person. Not that I shouldn't consider myself a person, but that I am not a person.Bob O'H

April 18, 2018

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worldviews conferring or not conferring “personhood” is claptrap

LarTanner, This is a grave error. Personhood is the basis on which you and I can possibly have a rational conversation. If you can't get the concept right, you doth beclown yourself an a/mat bag of meat troll making noises. Andrewasauber

April 18, 2018

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Bob O'H, Maybe I can help, as a bystander. I don't see ba77 denying your humanity. I see him pointing out how materialism denies you your humanity, and ba77 trying to describe how incoherent it is for you to embrace a worldview that denies what you know about yourself. To be consistent with materialism is to agree with the idea that a person is just matter in motion, and nothing more, which is the logical conclusion of materialism. ba77 shared a quote in these pages long ago, that makes the point:

Fortunately, materialism is never translated into life as it’s lived. As colleagues and friends, husbands and mothers, wives and fathers, sons and daughters, materialists never put their money where their mouth is. Nobody thinks his daughter is just molecules in motion and nothing but; nobody thinks the Holocaust was evil, but only in a relative, provisional sense. A materialist who lived his life according to his professed convictions—understanding himself to have no moral agency at all, seeing his friends and enemies and family as genetically determined robots—wouldn’t just be a materialist: He’d be a psychopath.

-Andrew Ferguson, in a column on Thomas Nagel The Weekly Standard, The Heretic, Mar 25, 2013, Vol. 18, No. 27 The Atheist Soviet Union, Mao's China, North Korea, Castro's Cuba all demonstrated the psychopathic condition resulting from actually living out what materialism concludes about humanity.bb

April 18, 2018

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Bob, you are confusing my Christian belief that you are a real person with God's sole power and authority to actually endow a human being with 'personhood'. Belief that people are real persons and the actual power and authority to endow it on, and within, humans are two VERY different things. You are asking me to be inconsistent in my worldview in that you are asking me to confuse my belief with God's actual power and authority, and endow you with the status of being a real person which is a power and authority I simply do not have. I AM NOT GOD! Might I suggest that atheists and Darwinists forgetting who God actually is, as you are now doing, and being under the delusion that they can be like God, (i.e. Hitler, Mao, Stalin, to name a few tyrants), and can therefore decide who gets to be a 'person' and can therefore further decide who gets to live and who gets to die, has been the cause of much suffering in the world? Only under Theism, and only in a nation who truly lives "under God", is the status of personhood given a sure footing in which people are guaranteed legal rights of 'persons' that can be, for the most part, trusted to endure. As the founders of America stated, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness….” Of related note. The Darwinian worldview is clearly at war with the sanctity of human life ethic that was crucial to the founding of America

How Darwin's Theory Changed the World Rejection of Judeo-Christian values Excerpt: Weikart explains how accepting Darwinist dogma shifted society’s thinking on human life: “Before Darwinism burst onto the scene in the mid-nineteenth century, the idea of the sanctity of human life was dominant in European thought and law (though, as with all ethical principles, not always followed in practice). Judeo-Christian ethics proscribed the killing of innocent human life, and the Christian churches explicitly forbade murder, infanticide, abortion, and even suicide. “The sanctity of human life became enshrined in classical liberal human rights ideology as ‘the right to life,’ which according to John Locke and the United States Declaration of Independence, was one of the supreme rights of every individual” (p. 75). Only in the late nineteenth and especially the early twentieth century did significant debate erupt over issues relating to the sanctity of human life, especially infanticide, euthanasia, abortion, and suicide. It was no mere coincidence that these contentious issues emerged at the same time that Darwinism was gaining in influence. Darwinism played an important role in this debate, for it altered many people’s conceptions of the importance and value of human life, as well as the significance of death” (ibid.). http://www.gnmagazine.org/issues/gn85/darwin-theory-changed-world.htm The Cultural Impact of Darwinian Evolution - John West, PhD - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFh4whzh_NU

bornagain77

April 18, 2018

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Are we considering the word "person" to be synonymous with "human being"? If so, why would an atheist--or a theist, or deist, or conspiracy theorist, for that matter--NOT be able to identify some being as a person. On what basis could a non-theist deny the entire category of person? The whole discussion about worldviews conferring or not conferring "personhood" is claptrap and a sideshow. BA77, your virtue signaling is tiresome. Maybe it's time to get back to your bread and butter: how about a nice series of links on the Shroud of Turin, NDEs, and quantum entanglement?LarTanner

April 18, 2018

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Thanks for saying that is a great question! Now how about answering it?Bob O'H

April 18, 2018

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Great question Bob,,, "Why are you making all this effort not to apply your own worldview to the issue?" Hint: I am being consistent with my worldview. It is you that is not being consistent with your own worldview, and, moreover, insisting that I not be consistent with mine. You did not earn the nickname "bob and weave" for no reason Bob! Inconsistency is the overriding characteristic of your debating style. Moreover, the sheer insanity inherent in your worldview goes much deeper than just the denial of personhood:

Basically the atheist claims he is merely a ‘neuronal illusion’ (Coyne, Dennett), who has the illusion of free will (Harris), who has illusory perceptions of reality (Hoffman), who, since he has no real time empirical evidence substantiating his grandiose claims for Darwinian evolution, must make up illusory “just so stories” with the illusory, and impotent, ‘designer substitute’ of natural selection (Behe, Gould, Sternberg), so as to ‘explain away’ the appearance (i.e. illusion) of design (Crick, Dawkins), and who must make up illusory meanings and purposes for his life since the reality of the nihilism inherent in his atheistic worldview is too much for him to bear, and who must also hold morality to be subjective and illusory since he has rejected God. Bottom line, nothing is real in the atheist’s worldview, least of all, morality, meaning and purposes for life. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-ubiquitin-system-functional-complexity-and-semiosis-joined-together/#comment-655355 Thus, Darwinists have lost any coherent basis for reality and are, in fact, adrift in a world of illusions and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab onto. It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science than Atheistic Materialism has turned out to be. 2 Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

Frankly, I don't blame you for not living consistently within that garbage worldview. Anyone who did tried to do so would be driven completely insane.bornagain77

April 18, 2018

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Thus we are back to you making a ‘blind faith’ philosophical and theological argument as to why I, a person who is definitely NOT GOD, should grant you the status of being a real person.

Hm, yes. Blind faith that you will follow up on your convictions. This should be so simple - you should use your philosophical and theological arguments, to decide whether I am a real person. Why are you making all this effort not to apply your own worldview to the issue?Bob O'H

April 18, 2018

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Despite what you may want to believe, (since you have now rejected your Creator who alone has the authority to grant you the status of being a real 'person'), the entire concept of personhood is now rigorously shown, experimentally and logically, to forever be beyond the scope of reductive materialistic explanations.

See post 32 https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/aw-faceboook-quit-blaming-ai-for-your-goofs-and-shady-practices/#comment-656536

Basically, your belief that you are not a neuronal illusion but are a real person, is a belief that is born out of Theistic presuppositions. You simply have no evidence, logical or empirical, that atheistic materialism can ground "personhood". PERIOD! (If you have evidence for the genesis of conscious from matter, then go get your Nobel prize and fame that awaits you) Thus we are back to you making a 'blind faith' philosophical and theological argument as to why I, a person who is definitely NOT GOD, should grant you, a neuronal illusion, the status of being a real person. Again,

I don’t know what to tell you (if there really is a ‘you’ in there somewhere). You keep wanting me to grant you the status of being a real person even though you yourself acknowledge that only God has the authority to do so. Do you think I am God??? I can assure you for a 100% fact that I AM NOT GOD. You also tell me that you don’t believe in your Creator, i.e. God, so I am now forced, since I AM NOT GOD, to take you at your word and to hold that you are not a real person since you have rejected the only Person who has the authority to grant you the status of being a real person. Again, see Pinocchio

bornagain77

April 18, 2018

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ba77 - I'm actually suggesting that you acknowledge the authority you claim God has. If, as you say, God grants people personhood, then why are you disagreeing with that? Surely God has granted me personhood, regardless of what I, personally believe? Why are you so keen to deny what, so you claim, God has granted? I have never "acknowledge[d] that only God has the authority to do so [grant me personhood]." I have acknowledged that you and asauber claim that, and suggested courses of action you could take given you hold that belief. What make this more absurd is the argument you give for saying I am not a person is that (so you claim) I don't believe I am a person. But do believe that I am a person, because I believe personhood doesn't come from God, it is an intrinsic aspect of being conscious. So, I think I'm a person. As far as I can tell, God thinks I am a person (or would do if He existed). But you don't. You're the only person denying my personhood.Bob O'H

April 18, 2018

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I don't know what to tell you (if there really is a 'you' in there somewhere). You keep wanting me to grant you the status of being a real person even though you yourself acknowledge that only God has the authority to do so. Do you think I am God??? I can assure you for a 100% fact that I AM NOT GOD. You also tell me that you don't believe in your Creator, i.e. God, so I am now forced, since I AM NOT GOD, to take you at your word and to hold that you are not a real person since you have rejected the only Person who has the authority to grant you the status of being a real person. Again, see Pinocchiobornagain77

April 18, 2018

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